CHAPTER XV 

 THE SUBCONSCIOUS 



Because intellectual crimes have been committed in the 

 name of the subconscious is no reason for refusing to admit 

 that what is not explicitly present makes up a vastly greater 

 part of experience than does the conscious field to which 

 thinkers have devoted themselves. — John Dewey 



The precise nature of my conscious reaction upon today s 

 experience depends not on what I can formally recollect of 

 past experience^ but on the form of equilibrated unity which is 

 the result of past experience in its progressive reaction upon my 

 nature. — C. L. Herrick 



IT seems to be a common belief that all of the 

 functions of the cerebral cortex are manifest in 

 consciousness and that so-called unconscious 

 cerebration is subcortical activity. These is no proof 

 of this nor of the other prevalent idea that only cor- 

 tical activities are involved in consciousness. In fact, 

 we have reason to believe that simple affective ex- 

 perience is largely if not wholly thalamic. 



The conscious act appears to be the efflorescence 

 of a long series of biological processes whose roots 

 strike deep down into ancestral impulses and instinc- 

 tive actions, and there is no ground for doubting that 

 even the higher association centers may on occasion 

 be involved in reactions which do not reach the con- 

 scious level at all. Such unconscious processes may 

 leave mnemonic vestiges which, when linked with 



268 



