1", it was in a certain schoolroom, with a
certain teacher and a certain group of schoolfellows. You were perhaps
animated at that moment by the desire to secure the approval of that
teacher and to shine before those schoolfellows. Does it follow, then,
that every time you now make use of that bit of the multiplication
table, you are "unconsciously" gratifying that wish of long ago? To
believe that would be to neglect all that we have learned of
"shortcircuiting" and of the "substitute stimulus" generally.
[Footnote: See p. 338.] That wish of long ago played its part in
linking the response to the stimulus, but the linkage became so close
that that precise wish was no longer required. The same response has
been made a thousand times since, with other wishes in the game, and
when the response is made to-day, a new wish is in the game. It is the
same with the biologist. Suppose, for the sake of argument, what
probably is true in only a fraction of the cases, that the biologist's
first interest in making any minute study of animals arose from sex
curiosity. As soon, however, as he engaged in any real study of
animals, substitute stimuli entered and got attached to his exploring
responses; and to suppose that that identical wish of long ago is
still subconsciously active, whenever the biologist takes his
microscope in hand, is to throw out all {569} these substitute stimuli
and their attachments to many new responses, and to see in a very
complex activity only one little element.

In making use of the conception of the unconscious to assist us in
interpreting human conduct, we are thus exposed to two errors. First,
finding a motive which was not analyzed out by the individual, and
which was only vaguely and implicitly conscious, and formulating that
motive in an explicit way, we are then liable to the error of
supposing that the motive must have been explicitly present, not
indeed in consciousness but in the unconscious; whereas the whole
truth is exhausted when we say that it was consciously but only
implicitly present--active, but not active all alone. Second, having
traced out how a certain act was learned, we are apt to suppose that
its history is repeated whenever it is performed afresh--that the
wishes and ideas that were essential to its original performance must
be unconsciously present whenever it is once more
performed--neglecting thus the fact that what is retained and renewed
consists of responses, rather than