THE LAPSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 501 



in addition, not merely a rehearsal of, but an advance upon, the fore- 

 going stages. Those without much new progress or with only slight 

 variations of the theme are clearly more frequent than those that 

 browse in pastures new ; and the simplest of these are hardly more than 

 reverberations of neural excitement. After an ocean voyage many 

 persons continue for days to react in their sleep to the sensation of the 

 ship's motion, which enters variously into dream-composition. A 

 young man, having been occupied during the day in hay-making, and 

 another in rolling stones, each continues with the same operation in his 

 dreams; a young lady having spent a weary day in making paper 

 poppies sees rows of these in her dreams ; and so on with familiar varia- 

 tions. The whereabouts of articles that have been mislaid and looked 

 for strenuously, but in vain, is clearly revealed in a dream; anticipated 

 examinations are rehearsed, and imaginary but pertinent questions set 

 and answered; missing quotations are referred to their proper source; 

 forgotten lines to complete a stanza are recalled; arguments to defend 

 an actual position are passed in review; and in rarer cases such rational 

 procedures find their way to utterance, the dreamer mumbling or speak- 

 ing the words that express the onward movement of his thought; and 

 in the rarest of cases the sleeper arises and records them. So various 

 are these operations that it is safe to say that they include the entire 

 range of psychological processes that enter into constructive thought; 

 and likewise do they retain analogy to the intrinsic relations and modes 

 of procedure that characterize them when performed with normal 

 waking attention. Even these most rational achievements of the sub- 

 conscious bear unmistakably the stamp of the normal habit of thought, 

 and emphasize their conformity in spirit, along a variable divergence 

 in form, to the characteristic traits of human psychology. 



This collection of illustrations thus suggests upon what various 

 occasions, with what different tempos, the mind freed of its normal 

 guidance continues to trot with the accustomed gait, stopping, like 

 the horse that draws the milk-cart, at the proper points of call without 

 direction of the driver (who for the moment may be asleep) ; though, 

 like the horse, content with the mere appearance of a service performed, 

 unappreciative in part of its meaning, subject to lapses and inconse- 

 quential wanderings. But horse and driver are endowed with very 

 different psychologies; and the relations that become established be- 

 tween them, however intimate and intelligent, reflect the limitations 

 and divergence of needs and interests of the two. It is quite mislead- 

 ing to think of the subconscious as a veritable, independently organ- 

 ized ' psyche,' or as a subservient understudy, however partially apposite 

 and wholly legitimate such comparisons may be as metaphorical aids. 

 The conscious and the subconscious (if we may clothe these aspects of 

 our mental life in substantive form) are two souls with but a single 



