666 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



as follows : Only thirty per cent claim to have suddenly discovered the 

 results of creative effort, which they would venture to call new, in the 

 line of practical inventions, poetry, literary conceptions, mathematical 

 solutions, and the like ; these creations appeared suddenly, most often 

 while the individuals were engaged on matters foreign to the dis- 

 covery. About forty per cent do not answer the question, and thirty 

 per cent answer in the negative, while, of those answering affirma- 

 tively, only about twenty-five per cent are able to give exanij^les. 



III. 



To clearly apprehend the significance of the facts thus set forth, 

 it is necessary to understand tlioroughly the conception of human con- 

 sciousness. The chief difficulty which obscures this subject is a lack 

 of proper differentiation between self-consciousness and consciousness, 

 in their several relations to human iinconsciousness. Self-conscious- 

 ness is the intellectual percejjtion by which the ego recognizes the 

 ego as seeing, thinking, judging, feeling, etc. Consciousness, though 

 often confounded with self-consciousness, is not a synonym for it, 

 but is merely the environment in which self-consciousness is mani- 

 fested. Human consciousness is not an intellectual property or state 

 of the mind — it is purely a state of nervous activity ; it is nervous en- 

 ergy in a most intensified form. Human unconsciousness is a less in- 

 tensive state of nervous activity, wherein self-consciousness can not 

 be manifested. 



Nervous activity is ever the same in kind, and, while there is a 

 great difference between the simplest reflex action and the highly de- 

 veloped state of consciousness, yet this is one of degree alone. Intel- 

 lectual activity is ever present in the brain, and every moment is pro- 

 ducing new results without cessation from birth to the grave. As a 

 condition precedent to the existence of these results of our changing 

 thought-life, the brain requires a supply of blood commensurate to 

 the calls made upon the nervous energy and corresponding to the in- 

 tensity of its activity. 



There is a broad belt of border-land between consciousness and un- 

 consciousness, whose limits are uncertain, yet where the manifesta- 

 tions of intellectual activity are recognized, which prove the kinship 

 of the life of those two great regions. The world judges each indi- 

 vidual by his intellectual activity manifested in consciousness. Upon 

 this our judgment of him is based, as this can be the only known or 

 possible method of determination. INIany " mute inglorious Miltons " 

 undoubtedly exist, yet for the world they do not really exist. Shake- 

 speare produced the character of Hamlet, Hamlet came through the 

 door of Shakespeare's consciousness to greet and astonish the world, 

 yet Hamlet and Lear and all the glorious company of Shakespeare's 

 known creations represent not a tenth part of the finished idealized 

 conceptions of character that were born in Shakespeare's brain while 



