66o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



blurted out the name -without any conscious volition on my part, or 

 ^vithout thinking anything about the book at all." 



4. The writer, being asked who was the author of the pamphlet en- 

 titled "Taxation no Tyranny," althougb knowing well, was unable to 

 answer. Two days afterward, while working at a law brief, suddenly 

 said aloud, "Dr. Johnson wrote 'Taxation no Tyranny.'" lie took 

 pains to examine the writing before him and the chain of reasoning 

 engaged in at the time, but could not find the slightest suggestion of 

 the answer. He had apparently forgotten entirely about the question 

 asked him for at least forty-eight hours prior to answering it, and had 

 experienced no trouble or weight of mind in the interval. 



5. Mr. B , of New York city, writes : " Only recently, being 



asked a lady's name, I found myself only able to recall the surname. I 

 said, ' I will think of the other — wait a moment.' Walking along the 

 street a few minutes later, I heard one small boy say to another, * You lie 



like ! ' Instantly, I was conscious that something in that phrase 



bore upon something else that I had been thinking about, but what it 

 was I could not tell. An hour or so later, when occupied in writing, 

 it flashed upon me that the name of the lady that I was searching for 

 was 'Lila,' and instantaneously the relevancy of the phrase overheard 

 in the street came to me ; it was the resemblance in sound, 'Lila,' to 

 'lie like.'" 



Under this head the statistical result may be summed up thus : 

 Ninety-five persons answered this particular inquiry. Of these, ninety- 

 one per cent state that they have had similar experiences, three per 

 cent have not. With forty per cent there was often an oppressive 

 feeling of trouble or anxiety experienced just before the solution had 

 come, and not then attributable to anything in particular ; but after 

 the answer had come, twenty per cent almost instinctively attributed 

 this oppression to the fatigue of mental effort involved in finding the 

 answer. AVith sixty per cent no oppression was noted ; about thirty 

 per cent noticed that the answers frequently came after comparative 

 rest or sleep, and seventy per cent have not noticed the time of the 

 recovery. Almost every individual says concerning these experiences, 

 "They are of such frequent occun-ence that when they happen I pay 

 no special attention to them." 



Second. If, while imconscious, it is possible to attain the result that 

 can only come from reckoning — a judgment founded on the compara- 

 tive relations of a unit — this must be the result of an intellectual ac- 

 tivity which exists unknown to the conscious self, and entirely escapes 

 all notice from the moderately keen eye of self-consciousness. Most 

 people can approximately tell what hour of the day it is without con- 

 sulting a timepiece, and, the less they are in the habit of depending 

 upon such a luxury, the more accurate their computation is likely to 

 be. This computation is founded on a calculation of the comparative 

 value of the time between two known points translated into the arbi- 



