ws of living bodies are to be studied, in the first place, without
any undue haste to subordinate them to the laws of physics. Boyle's law
and the rest had to be discovered before the kinetic theory of gases
became possible. But in psychology we are hardly yet at the stage
of Boyle's law. Meanwhile we need not be held up by the bogey of
the universal rigid exactness of physics. This is, as yet, a mere
hypothesis, to be tested empirically without any preconceptions. It may
be true, or it may not. So far, that is all we can say.

Returning from this digression to our main topic, namely, the criticism
of "consciousness," we observe that Freud and his followers, though they
have demonstrated beyond dispute the immense importance of "unconscious"
desires in determining our actions and beliefs, have not attempted the
task of telling us what an "unconscious" desire actually is, and have
thus invested their doctrine with an air of mystery and mythology which
forms a large part of its popular attractiveness. They speak always as
though it were more normal for a desire to be conscious, and as though
a positive cause had to be assigned for its being unconscious. Thus
"the unconscious" becomes a sort of underground prisoner, living in a
dungeon, breaking in at long intervals upon our daylight respectability
with dark groans and maledictions and strange atavistic lusts. The
ordinary reader, almost inevitably, thinks of this underground person as
another consciousness, prevented by what Freud calls the "censor" from
making his voice heard in company, except on rare and dreadful occasions
when he shouts so loud that every one hears him and there is a scandal.
Most of us like the idea that we could be desperately wicked if only we
let ourselves go. For this reason, the Freudian "unconscious" has been a
consolation to many quiet and well-behaved persons.

I do not think the truth is quite so picturesque as this. I believe an
"unconscious" desire is merely a causal law of our behaviour,* namely,
that we remain restlessly active until a certain state of affairs is
realized, when we achieve temporary equilibrium If we know beforehand
what this state of affairs is, our desire is conscious; if not,
unconscious. The unconscious desire is not something actually existing,
but merely a tendency to a certain behaviour; it has exactly the same
status as a force in dynamics. The unconscious desire is in no way
mysterious; it is the natural primitiv