INTUITION 



" finally two days ago I succeeded . . . like a sudden flash of 

 lightning the riddle happened to be solved. I cannot myself say 

 what was the conducting thread which connected what I pre- 

 viously knew with what made my success possible." 



Intuitions sometimes occur during sleep and a remarkable 

 example is quoted by Cannon. Otto Loewi, professor of pharma- 

 cology at the University of Graz, awoke one night with a brilliant 

 idea. He reached for a pencil and paper and jotted down a few 

 notes. On waking next morning he was aware of having had an 

 inspiration during the night, but to his consternation could not 

 decipher his notes. All day at the laboratory in the presence of 

 familiar apparatus he tried to remember the idea and to decipher 

 the note, but in vain. By bedtime he had been unable to recall 

 anything, but during the night to his great joy he again awoke 

 with the same flash of insight. This time he carefully recorded it 

 before going to sleep again. 



" The next day he went to his laboratory and in one of the 

 neatest, simplest and most definite experiments in the history of 

 biology brought proof of the chemical mediation of nerve 

 impulses. He prepared two frogs' hearts which were kept beating 

 by means of salt solution. He stimulated the vagus nerve on 

 one of the hearts, thus causing it to stop beating. He then 

 removed the salt solution from this heart and applied it to the 

 other one. To his great satisfaction the solution had the same 

 effect on the second heart as the vagus stimulating had had on 

 the first one: the pulsating muscle was brought to a standstill. 

 This was the beginning of a host of investigations in many 

 countries throughout the world on chemical intermediation, not 

 only between nerves and the muscles and the glands they affect 

 but also between nervous elements themselves." ^^ 



Cannon states that from his youth he was accustomed to get 

 assistance from sudden and unpredicted insight and that not 

 infrequently he would go to sleep with a problem on his mind 

 and on waking in the morning the solution was at hand. The 

 following passage shows a slightly different use of intuition. 



" As a matter of routine I have long trusted unconscious pro- 

 cesses to serve me — for example, when I have had to prepare a 

 public address. I would gather points for the address and write 



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