ch cases, some external symptoms of response can usually be found if
consciousness exists.

We have already realized how complex, intricate, and changing is fully
developed consciousness.

THE UNCONSCIOUS

But the mind of man knows two distinct conditions of activity--the
conscious and the unconscious. Mind is not always wide awake. We
recognize what we call the _conscious_ mind as the ruling force in our
lives. But how many things I do without conscious attention; how often I
find myself deep in an unexplainable mood; how the fragrance of a flower
will sometimes turn the tide of a day for me and make me square my
shoulders and go at my task with renewed vigor; or a casual glimpse of a
face in the street turn my attention away from my errand and settle my
mind into a brown study. Usually I am alert enough to control these
errant reactions, but I am keenly aware of their demands upon my mind,
and frequently it is only with conscious effort that I am kept upon my
way unswerved by them, though not unmoved.

When we realize that nothing that has ever happened in our experience is
forgotten; that nothing once in consciousness altogether drops out, but
is stored away waiting to be used some day--waiting for a voice from the
conscious world to recall it from oblivion--then we grasp the fact that
the quality of present thought or reaction is largely determined by the
sum of all past thinking and acting. Just as my body is the result of
the heritage of many ancestors plus the food I give it and the use to
which I subject it, so my mind's capacity is determined by my
inheritance plus the mental food I give it, plus everything to which I
have subjected it since the day I was born. For it forgets absolutely
nothing.

"That is not true," you say, "for I have tried desperately to remember
certain incidents, certain lessons learned--and they are _gone_.
Moreover, I cannot remember what happened back there in my babyhood."

Ah, but you are mistaken, my friend. For you react to your task today
differently because of the thing which you learned and have "forgotten."
Your mind works differently because of what you disregarded then. "You"
have forgotten it, but your brain-cells, your nerve-cells have not; and
you are not quite the same person you would be without that forgotten
experience, or that pressing stimulus, which you never consciously
recognized, but allowed your subconsciousness to accept. Some night you
have a strange,