482 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



purpose; such lapses not only disclose the nature of the ordinary well- 

 adjusted relations, but offer an interesting means of determining what 

 otherwise would be but vaguely recognized. As to the conditions 

 favoring such lapses, they are so familiar as to make it sufficient to 

 recall that they occur in moments of weakened or too dispersed atten- 

 tion. It is because the reins are too freely relaxed, or are relaxed at an 

 inopportune moment, that our habits take the bit between the teeth, 

 and, it may be, lead us where we had no intention of wandering. The 

 state of mind in which this, as well as other types of subconscious 

 action, occur, we call distraction ; and when it becomes more pronounced, 

 the type of the lapse may become both more variable and indicative of 

 more complex deviations. 'Absent-mindedness' (for which the Ger- 

 man has the more telling expression, ' Zerstreutheit ') offers the most 

 typical and familiar attitude favorable to the display of these lapses of 

 consciousness, trivial, amusing, but psychologically interesting. It is 

 with the natural history of this familiar species and its varieties that 

 we shall here be occupied. 



To obtain a realistic survey of the kind of activities for which the 

 subconscious gearings of our mental machinery are ordinarily held re- 

 sponsible, I instigated an inquiry among a group of persons* to whom 

 I had access, asking them little more than to give such accounts of sub- 

 conscious experiences as they could easily and rather distinctly recall. 

 One need not claim for such a collection anything more than a fairly 

 representative showing of the manner in which the subconscious disports 

 itself in daily life and compels notice by the lack of harmony between 

 intent and execution, or between memory and circumstantial evidence, 

 or by intrusion of the dim and submerged operations into the ken of the 

 conscious self. But as such, and with proper allowance for inaccuracy 

 and prejudice in favor of the more picturesque incidents, their survey 



* These responses ( some two hundred in number selected as available 

 from a group of about three hundred) were prepared by students of the Uni- 

 versity of Wisconsin, in the main in the form of a set theme, as part of the 

 work in English composition, and others as specific contributions by students 

 of psychology. There seems no reason to suppose that the instances differ 

 essentially from those that could be collected in other circles; yet they 

 naturally reflect something of the occupations of young men and young women 

 devoted, though by no means exclusively, to scholastic pursuits. It would 

 require a detailed and more systematically conducted inquiry to yield ma- 

 terial capable of specific and minute discussion: but the general relations and 

 types of frequency that alone are considered in the present apergu are suffi- 

 ciently ' documented ' by this casual yet suggestive collection. 



It should also be noted that the data did not specifically call for lapses 

 of conscious attention, but suggested these and other types of instances as 

 appropriate. It thus does appear that lapses actually furnish the largest 

 quota of ordinary observations of subconscious activity. I have considered 

 these as central, but have found it profitable to consider with them related 

 types of ' cases.' 



