e action itself. The finger movement in piano playing finds only a
disposition in my brain centers, in case I am trained; the movement
itself does not last. But the disposition is at least itself a change
in the physical world. The molecules are somehow differently placed, the
disposition has thus as much objective existence as the resulting
movement. Nothing at all similar can be imagined in the sphere of
psychical contents. Such mental dispositions would have to exist
entirely outside the world of concrete mental experiences and, if we
scrutinize carefully, we soon discover that such theories are only
lingering reminiscences of the purposive view of life, and do not fit at
all into the causal one. If we take the purposive attitude, then every
idea and every will contains indeed all that its meaning involves and
everything which we can logically develop out of it is by intention
contained in it. All mathematical calculations are then contained in the
thought of figures and forms, but they are contained there only by
intention, they are logically inclosed; psychologically the
consciousness of the figures and forms does not contain any disposition
for the development of mathematical systems. We indeed have no right to
throw into a psychological subconsciousness all that which is not
present but involved by intention in the ideas and volitions of our
purposive life.

If thus the memory idea is linked with the past experience entirely by
the lasting physiological change in the brain, we have no reason to
alter the principle, when we meet the memory processes of the hypnotized
person or the hysteric. It is true their memory may bring to light
earlier experiences which are entirely forgotten by the conscious
personality, but that ought to mean, of course, only that nerve paths
have become accessible in which the propagation of the excitement was
blocked up before. That does not bring us nearer to the demand for a
subconscious mental memory. The threshold of excitability changes under
most various conditions. Cells which respond easily in certain states
may need the strongest stimulation in others. The brain cells which are
too easily excited perhaps in maniacal exultation would respond too
slowly in a melancholic depression. Hypnotism, too, by closing the
opposite channels and opening wide the channels for the suggested
discharge, may stir up excitements for which the disposition may have
lingered since the days of childhood