FREDERIC MYERS. 383 



as a head of classification in chemistry, or 'vermin,' in zoology. 

 Whatever they are, they are things with a right to definite description 

 and to careful observation. 



I cannot but account this as a great service rendered to psychology. 

 I expect that Myers will ere long distinctly figure in mental science as 

 the radical leader in what I have called the romantic movement. 

 Through him for the first time, psychologists are in possession of their 

 full material, and mental phenomena are set down in an adequate 

 inventory. To bring unlike things thus together by forming series 

 of which the intermediary terms connect the extremes, is a procedure 

 much in use by scientific men. It is a first step made towards 

 securing their interest in the romantic facts, that Myers should have 

 shown how easily this familiar method can be applied to their study. 



Myers's conception of the extensiveness of the Subliminal Self quite 

 overturns the classic notion of what the human mind consists in. The 

 supraliminal region, as Myers calls it, the classic-academic conscious- 

 ness, which was once alone considered either by associationists or 

 animists, figures in his theory as only a small segment of the psychic 

 spectrum. It is a special phase of mentality, teleologically evolved for 

 adaptation to our natural environment, and forms only what he calls 

 a 'privileged case' of personality. The outhing Subliminal, according 

 to him, represents more fully our central and abiding being. 



I think the words subliminal and supraliminal unfortunate, but 

 they were probably unavoidable. I think, too, that Myers's belief in the 

 ubiquity and great extent of the Subliminal will demand a far 

 larger number of facts than sufficed to persuade him, before the next 

 generation of psychologists shall become persuaded. He regards the 

 Subliminal as the enveloping mother-consciousness in each of us, from 

 which the consciousness we wot of is precipitated like a crystal. But 

 whether this view get confirmed or get overthrown by future inquiry, 

 the definite way in which Myers has thrown it down is a new and 

 specific challenge to inquiry. For half a century now, psychologists 

 have fully admitted the existence of a subliminal mental region, under 

 the name either of unconscious cerebration or of the involuntary life; 

 but they have never definitely taken up the question of the extent of 

 this region, never sought explicitly to map it out. Myers definitely 

 attacks this problem, which, after him, it will be impossible to ignore. 



What is the precise constitution of the Subliminal — such is the 

 problem which deserves to figure in our science hereafter as the prob- 

 lem of Myers; and willy-nilly, inquiry must follow on the path which 

 it has opened up. But Myers has not only propounded the problem 

 definitely, he has also invented definite methods for its solution. Post- 

 hypnotic suggestion, crystal-gazing, automatic writing and trance- 

 speech, the willing-game, etc., are now, thanks to him, instruments of 



