with the dominant (here
serious) attitude of that personality.

The Unconscious, or, the Subconscious Mind

Here at last, it may strike the reader, we have come to the core of
the whole subject of psychology; for many readers will undoubtedly
have been attracted by the statements {562} sometimes made, to the
effect that the "unconscious" represents the deeper and more
significant part of mental life, and that psychologists who confine
their attention mostly to the conscious activities are treating their
subject in a very partial and superficial manner. There is a sort of
fascination about the notion of a subconscious mind, and yet it will
be noticed that psychologists, as a rule, are inclined to be wary and
critical in dealing with it. Let as take up in order the various sorts
of unconscious mental processes.

In the first place, _retention is unconscious_. The host of memories
that a person possesses and can recall under suitable conditions is
carried about with him in an unconscious condition. But there need be
no special mystery about this, nor is it just to speak about memories
being "preserved in the unconscious". The fact simply is that
retention is a resting condition, whereas consciousness is an active
condition. Retention is a matter of brain structure, neurone
connections, neural mechanisms ready for action when the proper
stimulus reaches them but remaining inactive till the stimulus comes.
An idea is like a motor reaction, to the extent that it is a reaction;
and we retain ideas in the same way that we retain learned motor
reactions. Now no one would think of saying that a learned motor
reaction was retained in the unconscious. The motor reaction is not
present at all, until it is aroused; the neuro-muscular mechanism for
executing the reaction is present, but needs a stimulus to make it
active and give the reaction. In the same way, an idea is not present
in the individual except when it is activated, but its neural
mechanism is present, and unconscious just because it is inactive.

Unconscious inactivity is therefore no great problem. But there is
such a thing as _unconscious activity_. Two sorts of such activity are
well known. First, there are the {563} purely "physiological"
processes of digestion, liver and kidney secretion, etc. We are quite
reconciled to these being unconscious, and this is not the sort of
unconscious activity that gives us that fascinatingly uncanny feeling.
Second, there are