THE SUBCONSCIOUS 283 



of regarding consciousness as a simple element which 

 obeys the all-or-none law of nervous physiology. Our 

 awareness may be vivid, intense, and extraordinarily 

 complex, or on the other hand it may be a vague, 

 scarcely recognizable feeling of well-being or malaise, 

 an unanalyzed impulse, or a dimly recognized uninter- 

 preted sense impression. The subconscious (that is, 

 unconscious) cortical activities may flash into con- 

 sciousness momentarily to be immediately again sub- 

 merged beyond recall. 



The conscious activities of the normal healthy 

 person are integrated into a coherent unity, probably 

 incidental to the dominance of certain systems of 

 cortical and thalamic associations related to the 

 constant streams of incoming sensory impressions 

 from the visceral, proprioceptive, and other so-called 

 organic apparatus of living, the "intimate senses" of 

 Starbuck. These are acting at subconscious levels 

 more or less uniformly all the time, and they emerge 

 more or less dimly into the conscious level most of the 

 time. The rapid fluctuations in the impulses of sen- 

 sori-motor adjustments to the manifold complexities 

 of the external world do not disturb the unity of this 

 basic conscious experience as a whole. 



It is a familiar fact that in dream and reverie there 

 is in perfectly normal people more or less of isolation 

 or dissociation of certain chains of experience from 

 the remainder of the conscious life, a process which 

 may be carried so far in pathological or hypnotic 



