vel, and the fact that, as well as the outward-looking
mind which alone we usually recognize, there is also the psychic matrix
from which it has been developed, the inward-looking mind, caring for a
variety of interests of which we hardly, as we say, think at all. We
know as yet little about this mysterious psychic whole: the inner nature
of which is only very incompletely given to us in the fluctuating
experiences of consciousness. But we do know that it, too, receives at
least a measure of the light and the messages coming in by the window of
our wits: that it is the home of memory instinct and habit, the source
of conduct, and that its control and modification form the major part of
the training of character. Further, it is sensitive, plastic, accessible
to impressions, and unforgetting.

Consider now that half-lit region which is called the foreconscious
mind; for this is of special interest to the spiritual life. It is, in
psychological language, the region of autistic as contrasted with
realistic thought.[85] That is to say, it is the agent of reverie and
meditation; it is at work in all our brooding states, from day-dream to
artistic creation. Such autistic thought is dominated not by logic or
will, but by feeling. It achieves its results by intuition, and has its
reasons which the surface mind knows not of. Here, in this
fringe-region--which alone seems fully able to experience adoration and
wonder, or apprehend the values we call holiness, beauty or love--is the
source of that intuition of the heart to which the mystic owes the love
which is knowledge, and the knowledge which is love. Here is the true
home of inspiration and invention. Here, by a process which is seldom
fully conscious save in its final stages, the poet's creations are
prepared, and thence presented in the form of inspiration to the reason;
which--if he be a great artist--criticizes them, before they are given
as poems to the world. Indeed, in all man's apprehensions of the
transcendental these two states of the psyche must co-operate if he is
to realize his full powers: and it is significant that to this
foreconscious region religion, in its own special language, has always
invited him to retreat, if he would know his own soul and thus commune
with his God. Over and over again it assures him under various
metaphors, that he must turn within, withdraw from the window, meet the
inner guest; and such a withdrawal is the condition of all
contempla