he done so when the wonderfully ingenious
observations of Binet, and especially of Janet in France, gave to this
view the completest of corroborations. These observations have been
extended in Germany, America, and elsewhere; and although Binet and Janet
worked independently of Myers, and did work far more objective, he
nevertheless will stand as the original announcer of a theory which, in
my opinion, makes an epoch, not only in medical but in psychological
science, because it brings in an entirely new conception of our mental
possibilities.

Myers' manner of apprehending the problem of the Subliminal shows itself
fruitful in every possible direction. While official science practically
refuses to attend to Subliminal phenomena, the circles which do attend to
them treat them with a respect altogether too undiscriminating,--every
Subliminal deliverance must be an oracle. The result is that there is no
basis of intercourse between those who best know the facts and those who
are most competent to discuss them. Myers immediately establishes a
basis by his remark that in so far as they have to use the same organism,
with its preformed avenues of expression--what may be very different
strata of the Subliminal are condemned in advance to manifest themselves
in similar ways. This might account for the great generic likeness of so
many automatic performances, while their different starting-points behind
the threshold might account for certain differences in them. Some of
them, namely, seem to include elements of super-normal knowledge; others
to show a curious subconscious mania for personation and deception;
others again to be mere drivel. But Myers' conception of various strata
or levels in the Subliminal sets us to analyzing them all from a new
point of view. The word Subliminal for him denotes only a region, with
possibly the most heterogeneous contents. Much of the content is
certainly rubbish, matter that Myers calls dissolutive, stuff that dreams
are made of, fragments of lapsed memory, mechanical effects of habit and
ordinary suggestion; some belongs to a middle region where a strange
manufacture of inner romances perpetually goes on; finally, some of the
content appears superiorly and subtly perceptive. But each has to appeal
to us by the same channels and to use organs partly trained to their
performance by messages from the other levels. Under these conditions
what could be more natural to expect than a conf