THE SUBCONSCIOUS 273 



the mind of man, perhaps quite without voluntary 

 effort. The "brownies" that thus work for us in their 

 own way and at times of their own choosing are not 

 under the control of our voluntary efforts. They act 

 "spontaneously.'' This spontaneity is no new faculty 

 of the human mind; it is the lineal descendant of that 

 capacity for storing reserves of latent vital energies 

 which is expressed even as low down as Protozoa in 

 "overproduced movement," vital reserves, etc., and 

 also in that exuberance of play and reactions in excess 

 of vital requirements to which Ritter (1919) has of 

 late devoted so much attention. 



Now, in the cerebral cortex this same capacity to 

 evoke reserves of latent energy laid by during the 

 whole period of past experience comes to superlative 

 expression. These reserves are not merely undiffer- 

 entiated potentialities of vital energy, like water 

 stored in a high reservoir; they are organized in defi- 

 nite patterns which are stable, just as the time lock of 

 a bank vault is set on Saturday afternoon to release 

 the lock at ten o'clock Monday morning. The time 

 lock does not open the door; the cashier must do that 

 from the outside; but he cannot do it before ten 

 o'clock. Nor are these reserves the mythological 

 gnomes of the Freudian system — -"complexes," "cen- 

 sors," or other fabulous monsters without legitimate 

 parentage or scientifically demonstrable nature. 



A simpler illustration, perhaps, is a seismograph 

 set to record earth tremors. Ordmarily it lies inert, 



