he things that happen
presuppose imagination, reason, intelligence, will, emotion, desire,
all the elements of mind. We cannot see this mind, but we can see its
products. To deny the subconscious is to deny the artist while looking
at his picture, to disbelieve in the poet while reading his poem, and
to doubt the existence of the explosive while listening to the report.
The subconscious is an artist, a poet, and an explosive by turns. If
we deny its existence, a good portion of man's doings are
unintelligible. If we admit it, many of his actions and his
afflictions which have seemed absurd stand out in a new light as
purposeful efforts with a real and adequate cause.
=The Submerged Nine Tenths.= The more deeply psychologists and
physicians have studied into these things, the more certainly have
they been forced to the conclusion that the conscious mind of man, the
part that he can explore at will, is by far the smaller part of his
personality. Since this is to some people a rather startling
proposition, we can do no better than quote the following statement
from White on the relation of consciousness to the rest of the psychic
life:
Consciousness includes only that of which we are _aware_, while
outside of this somewhat restricted area there lies a much wider
area in which lie the deeper motives for conduct, and which not
only operates to control conduct, but also dictates what may and
what may not become conscious. Stanley Hall has very forcibly put
the matter by using the illustration of the iceberg. Only
one-tenth of the iceberg is visible above water; nine-tenths is
beneath the surface. It may appear in a given instance that the
iceberg is being carried along by the prevailing winds and
surface currents, but if we keep our eyes open we shall sooner or
later see a berg going in the face of the wind, and, so,
apparently putting to naught all the laws of aerodynamics. We can
understand this only when we come to realize that much the
greater portion of the berg is beneath the surface and that it is
moving in response to invisible forces addressed against this
submerged portion.
Consciousness only arises late in the course of evolution and
only in connection with adjustments that are relatively complex.
When the same or similar conditions in the environment are
repeatedly presented to the organism so that it is call
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