Chapter X

numerous proofs of the reality of this split-off condition of portions of consciousness. Since in man the hemispheres indubitably co-operate in these secondarily automatic acts, it will not do to say either that they occur without consciousness or that their consciousness is that of the lower centres, which we know nothing about. But either lack of memory or split-off cortical consciousness will certainly account for all of the facts.[180]

_Third Proof._ Thinking of A, we presently find ourselves thinking of C. Now B is the natural logical link between A and C, but we have no consciousness of having thought of B. It must have been in our mind '_un_consciously,' and in that state affected the sequence of our ideas.

_Reply._ Here again we have a choice between more plausible explanations. Either B was consciously there, but the next instant forgotten, or its _brain-tract_ alone was adequate to do the whole work of coupling A with C, without the idea B being aroused at all, whether consciously or 'unconsciously.'

_Fourth Proof._ Problems unsolved when we go to bed are found solved in the morning when we wake. Somnambulists do rational things. We awaken punctually at an hour predetermined overnight, etc. Unconscious thinking, volition, time-registration, etc., must have presided over these acts.

_Reply._ Consciousness forgotten, as in the hypnotic trance.

_Fifth Proof._ Some patients will often, in an attack of epileptiform unconsciousness, go through complicated processes, such as eating a dinner in a restaurant and paying for it, or making a violent homicidal attack. In trance, artificial or pathological, long and complex performances, involving the use of the reasoning powers, are executed, of which the patient is wholly unaware on coming to.

_Reply._ Rapid and complete oblivescence is certainly the explanation here. The analogue again is hypnotism. Tell the subject of an hypnotic trance, during his trance, that he _will_ remember, and he may remember everything perfectly when he awakes, though without your telling him no memory would have remained. The extremely rapid oblivescence of common _dreams_ is a familiar fact.

_Sixth Proof._ In a musical concord the vibrations of the several notes are in relatively simple ratios. The mind must unconsciously count the vibrations, and be pleased by the simplicity which it finds.

_Reply._ The brain-process produced by the simple ratios may be as directly agreeable as the conscious process of comparing them would be. No counting, either conscious or 'unconscious,' is required.

_Seventh Proof._ Every hour we make theoretic judgments and emotional reactions, and exhibit practical tendencies, for which we can give no explicit logical justification, but which are good inferences from certain premises. We know more than we can say. Our conclusions run ahead of our power to analyze their grounds. A child, ignorant of the axiom that two things equal to the same are equal to each other, applies it nevertheless in his concrete judgments unerringly. A boor will use the _dictum de omni et nullo_ who is unable to understand it in abstract terms.

"We seldom consciously think how our house is painted, what the shade of it is, what the pattern of our furniture is, or whether the door opens to the right or left, or out or in. But how quickly should we notice a change in any of these things! Think of the door you have most often opened, and tell, if you can, whether it opens to the right or left, out or in. Yet when you open the door you never put the hand on the wrong side to find the latch, nor try to push it when it opens with a pull.... What is the precise characteristic in your friend's step that enables you to recognize it when he is coming? Did you ever consciously think the idea, 'if I run into a solid piece of matter I shall get hurt, or be hindered in my progress'? and do you avoid running into obstacles because you ever distinctly conceived, or consciously acquired and thought, that idea?"[181]

Most of our knowledge is at all times potential. We act in accordance with the whole drift of what we have learned, but few items rise into consciousness at the time. Many of them, however, we may recall at will. All this co-operation of unrealized principles and facts, of potential knowledge, with our actual thought is quite inexplicable unless we suppose the perpetual existence of an immense mass of _ideas in an unconscious state_, all of them exerting a steady pressure and influence upon our conscious thinking, and many of them in such continuity with it as ever and anon to become conscious themselves.

_Reply._ No such mass of ideas is supposable. But there are all kinds of short-cuts in the brain; and processes not aroused strongly enough to give any 'idea' distinct enough to be a premise, may, nevertheless, help to determine just that resultant process of whose psychic accompaniment the said idea _would_ be a premise, if the idea existed at all. A certain overtone may be a feature of my friend's voice, and may conspire with the other tones thereof to arouse in my brain the process which suggests to my consciousness his name. And yet I may be ignorant of the overtone _per se_, and unable, even when he speaks, to tell whether it be there or no. It leads me to the idea of the name; but it produces in me no such cerebral process as that to which the _idea of the overtone_ would correspond. And similarly of our learning. Each subject we learn leaves behind it a modification of the brain, which makes it impossible for the latter to react upon things just as it did before; and the result of the difference may be a tendency to act, though with no idea, much as we should _if_ we were consciously thinking about the subject. The becoming conscious of the latter at will is equally readily explained as a result of the brain-modification. This, as Wundt phrases it, is a 'predisposition' to bring forth the conscious idea of the original subject, a predisposition which other stimuli and brain-processes may convert into an actual result. But such a predisposition is no 'unconscious idea;' it is only a particular collocation of the molecules in certain tracts of the brain.

_Eighth Proof._ Instincts, as pursuits of ends by appropriate means, are manifestations of intelligence; but as the ends are not foreseen, the intelligence must be unconscious.

_Reply._