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striking incongruity between our feelings and the ideas which seem to awaken them. One child upsets a bottle of ink and we take it good-naturedly; again, our mood being similar, another spills a drop of ink and we are very angry, the presence of the second child always meaning annoyance or destruction. The same words spoken to us with intent to please may be received with aversion or with delight, in accordance with our attitude toward the speaker. Again, we may often perceive that the orderly progress of our mental operations in definite directions is under the control of tendencies or guiding influences yet find these latter but dimly recognizable.

The influence of "suggestion," which sways us all continually, implies elaborate unconscious processes. Like feeling, of which it may be only an aspect, suggestion may generate marked physiological changes in the circulatory, respiratory, glandular, and other functions, open up one set of channels for thought and close or inhibit others, induce illusions and hallucinations, and paralyze the power of judgment; but for these observable phenomena there must always be an inferable basis in the realm of the unconscious. When we are alarmed by the violence of a storm at sea and are soothed by the captain's few words of assurance, what is it that abruptly dispels the array of good reasons which occasion our anxiety? Not the mere, palpable meaning of the words surely, for from the mouth of a landsman they would have little or no effect. There must be some unconscious series of considerations which establishes the trustworthiness of the captain's judgment. So with the influence of symbols, charms, and amulets.

The phenomena of post-hypnotic suggestion give

very striking illustration of the existence and influence of unconscious thought. The hypnotized subject may be directed to ring a bell or to make some definite remark at a certain hour after his awaking. At the appointed time-the subject not knowing why-the order is carried out with precision. Here, evidently, the order is receiving continual consideration in the unconscious mind, is being compared in some way with such events as mark the passage of time, until the proper moment arrives for its expression in action; and even, although the accomplishment of the order is consciously performed, the true motive, the hypnotizer's command, remains hidden in the

unconscious.

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"Automatic writing," of which we have heard so much during the past few years, is a striking revelation of unconscious processes. In this manifestation there is often given out not only such thought as might be the product of mere memory but also original composition, perhaps in a foreign tongue, as Greek or Latin; and the unconscious thought may be accompanied by much unconscious emotion. "Thus once,' says an automatic writer, "I found the tears running down my face when the writing was over; the contents apparently alluded to two friends of mine who had died under tragic circumstances." In the case of Hélène Smith,' there was ingeniously constructed, by means of automatic writing, a new language, which, for a time, was very puzzling to the savants who investigated the phenomenon. The intelligence of the unconscious processes revealed through automatic writing has often appeared so remarkable that many persons have been

Th. Flournoy, Des Indes à la planète Mars. 4me édit., Paris. Lib. Fischbacher.

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led to regard it as "supernormal," and as the revelation of "discarnate" spirits.

According to the views of Freud, in the dream, as in the waking life, the conscious thought-processes are underlain and conditioned by thought-processes which are unconscious. The dream is not senseless but full of meaning, a fulfillment of the dreamer's wish, an unconscious attempt to supply an equivalent or compensation for something that the individual desires but must do without. When the dream is remembered, there appears only its superficial or manifest layer, which the individual can seldom interpret, but there is a deeper and latent stratum, within the unconscious, which is the true significance of the dream, and this may be brought to light by the indirect method of psychoanalysis. It now seems established that the mind of the hysterical patient is filled with efficient but unconscious thoughts, through which arise all the symptoms; and that such is the case with all the psycho-neuroses.

The unconscious processes of mind follow their way with little regard for the conscious, transmitting to the realm of the latter only a minimum of their content, directing and controlling the whole man, as it seems, without his own knowledge; and experience indicates that this domination by the unconscious is for our good. How often have we found, when conscious judgment has been difficult, that it was our safest course to base our decision upon what we call "feeling" or "instinct" - which is only unconscious judgment; and that if an explanation of our course had been required of us we should have had to admit, perhaps, that it was apparently unreasonable. Lord Mansfield advised a young judge: "Never give the grounds for your decisions, for while the latter will usually be correct, the former

will usually be wrong." The conscious has at command only such evidence as it can gather at the moment; the evidence of the unconscious is derived from the whole range of our past experience.

The Under-currents of Mind.-The revelation of the under-currents of mind is, perhaps, the most striking feature of the new psychology. That mental states should disappear for a period and then reappear as memories with no bond between the two manifestations would seem impossible. Some mode of continuity there must be, some latent phase of mind which binds the conscious phases together. If all mind be conscious, how should thought be possible as a continuous chain, when consciousness leaves out so many seemingly essential links? How, in thought, can we leap from A to F, and why should we leap to F rather than to E or G, if there are no intermediates-B, C, and D? This difficulty has made it impossible to construct a science of mind analogous to the other sciences, where effect follows cause, or antecedent precedes consequent, in uniform sequence.

In the case of conscious mental operations, we may assume with confidence that the process proceeds, as it were, in waves, of which the crests come into full consciousness, the elements adjacent to the crests into only faint consciousness, while the elements at a lower level, remaining completely unconscious, form the essential links of connection which establish an unbroken continuity of the waves. We may represent the wave of thought, then, by A, B, C, D, E, F, and suppose that consciousness is vivid at A, less so at B, extinguished at C and D, faint at E, and vivid again at F,-consciousness, like an arrow shot horizontally, touching

only the crests of the undulatory surface of mind. The rise of the wave into its conscious crests at A and F, rather than at other points, we may attribute to special intensification of the concomitant feeling, as interest or attention.

It appears probable that there is usually a multiplicity of simultaneous currents constituting the mind. To make for ourselves a clearer picture, we may crudely conceive of the mind as a troubled sea, the waves of which clash not only at the surface but also, as other and independent wave-forms, at various lower levels. If we suppose an elevation just above the general surface of this sea to represent consciousness and the several wave-strata to be of different colors, then we may imagine that, as the upper or blue stream undulates along its course, there is a sudden irruption into its midst, from far beneath, of a red wave, which speedily develops into a crest, transforming the consciousness into that of the red variety, and a moment later, from some intermediate level, an uprush of a green wave, which develops several consecutive crests perhaps a consciousness now of the green variety, the blue water which has been displaced by the red and green sinking meanwhile to lower levels, in the undulations of which it takes its part, perhaps as crests, perhaps as depressions. The water of these red and green crests also may sink to other strata, their place being taken by crests of blue or yellow water.

The fact seems to be that the elements of the various thought-currents constantly intermingle and so gradually modify or abruptly transform the content and direction of the conscious stream. This constant intermingling, which we have pictured as a shifting of the currents of different levels, adds immensely to the

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