Though subjective purely, it has more vividness than any external event; and though strictly intrinsic to life, it is more startling than any accident of fate or fortune.

This experience of the boy's, at once so singular and yet so general, is nothing less than the sudden revelation to him one day of the fact of his own personality.
Somewhere about the time when sensation is giving place to sensitiveness as the great self-educator, and the knowledge gained by the five bodily senses is being fused into the wisdom of that mental one we call common sense, the boy makes a discovery akin to the act of waking up.

All at once he becomes conscious of himself; and the consciousness has about it a touch of the uncanny.

Hitherto he has been aware only of matter; he now first realizes mind.

Unwarned, unprepared, he is suddenly ushered before being, and stands awe-struck in the presence of--himself.
If the introduction to his own identity was startling, there is nothing reassuring in the feeling that this strange acquaintanceship must last.
For continue it does.