THE ANTECHAMBER OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 657 



behind the center small patches of blue sky appear. Farther from the 

 center we find showers or cold squalls; beyond them, hard detached 

 cumulus or strato-curaulus ; still farther the sky is blue again. In the 

 south of the cyclone, near the outskirts, the long, wispy clouds known 

 as windy cirrus and " mares' tails " are observed. These indicate 

 wind rather than rain, as they are outside of the rainy portion of 

 the cyclone. 



THE ANTECHAMBER OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 



By FEANCIS SPEIR, Je. 

 I. 



THACKERAY, in that delightful "Roundabout Paper," " De Fini- 

 bus," confidentially discusses with the reader the genesis of his 

 literary creations. In introducing the subject of this article I shall 

 quote this passage as presenting a pleasing exposition of a certain phase 

 of literary work that is accomplished apparently without any action of 

 the will to account for the result : "I have been surprised at the obser- 

 vations made by some of my characters. It seems as if an occult power 

 was moving the pen. The personage does or says something, and I ask, 

 'How the dickens did he come to think of that?' Every man has 

 observed in dreams the vast dramatic power that is evinced — I won't 

 say the surprising power, for nothing does surprise you in dreams — 

 but those strange characters you meet make instant observations, of 

 which you never can have thought previously. In like manner the 

 imagination foretells things ; we spake anon of the afflated style, 

 when a writer is like a pythoness on her oracle tripod, and mighty 

 words — words which he can not help — come blowing, and whistling, 

 and moaning through the speaking-tubes of his bodily organ." Our 

 literature is full of suggestions such as this, pointing to an intellectual 

 workhouse where all is unknown, but from which comes forth pol- 

 ished, finished work, done how or where we know not. 



My attention for some years has been directed to the subject of 

 unconscious cerebration, as it is called, and to the literature of the 

 subject, from the suggestion of its existence by Leibnitz, to its present 

 exposition by Carpenter, Holmes, and Miss Cobbe. It was with a 

 desire to throw the light of further-collected facts upon the relation 

 of a conscious activity to a possible unconscious cerebral activity that 

 I undertook the task of collecting the necessary data. The method 

 employed in collecting these data was the well-known one of the distri- 

 bution of printed questions to be answered from personal experience. 

 While much of the ground has been gone over before, the questions 

 at issue have been tested largely upon hearsay evidence — tales that 

 somebody has told of somebody else ; hence, with our human infirmi- 

 ties, the generalization founded on such facts can fairly be questioned. 



VOL. XXXII. — 42 



