“Quite easily. Here you are taking care of a poor little boy with one arm, and there you are sinking a ship with the other. It can’t be like you.” “Ah, but which is me? I can’t be two mes, you know.” “No. Nobody can be two mes.” “Well, which me is me?” “Now I must think. There looks to be two.” “Yes. That’s the very point—You can’t be knowing the thing you don’t know, can you?” “No.” “Which me do you know?” “The kindest, goodest, best me in the world,” answered Diamond, clinging to North Wind. […] “Do you know the other me as well?” “No. I can’t. I shouldn’t like to.” “There it is. You don’t know the other me. You are sure of one of them?” “Yes.” “And you are sure there can’t be two mes?” “Yes.” “Then the me you don’t know must be the same as the me you do know—else there would be two mes?” “Yes.” “Then the other me you don’t know must be as kind as the me you do know?”
1871, George MacDonald, “[At the Back of the North Wind] Out in the Storm”, in Harry Thurston Peck, Frank R[ichard] Stockton, Julian Hawthorne, editors, Masterpieces of the World’s Literature, Ancient and Modern: The Great Authors of the World with Their Master Productions, volume XIV, New York, N.Y.: American Literary Society, published 1899, pages 7514–7515