448 



The Journal of Heredity 



Mendelian ratio, similar to hair color in 

 certain animals. 



Thorndike aptly remarks (36): "One 

 fears that Professor Pearson may next 

 produce coefficients of correlation to 

 show that the political party a man joins, 

 the place where he lives, and the dialect 

 he speaks, are matters of pure inherit- 

 ance uninfluenced by family training" 

 (p. 242). It is due to these conceptions 

 that it is so difficult to eradicate such 

 false terms as "born criminal," "royal 

 blood," etc. 



One great weakness of all these 

 studies has been that all have remained 

 satisfied, it seems, in their belief that 

 conscious phenomena presented to them 

 the complete picture of the psyche. 

 Psychologists generally are beginning 

 to recognize more and more that con- 

 sciousness is by far the less important, 

 and that the great storehouse for 

 motives to action is the unconscious. 



' ' There is much of the cave-man even 

 in the most cultured individual, which 

 comes to the surface when opportunity 

 presents itself and environment supplies 

 the stimulus. Civilization is only skin- 

 deep, — culture is only superficial. Be- 

 neath the thin veneer of our civiliza- 

 tion lies the great mass of the race 

 experience with all its primitive emo- 

 tions, tendencies and impulses" (27, 

 pp. 96,97). 



UNCONSCIOUS ACTIVITY 



It might be well to cite some o]3inions 

 on the unconscious at this point. In a 

 recent book by Holt (17) we find the 

 following: "Experimental psychology, 

 then, should relinquish its fetish of 

 introspection, at least until a great deal 

 has been learned about the simpler 

 conscious processes which introspection 

 wots not of. . . . But the greater 

 region lies uncxi)lored by psychologists: 

 it is those lower responses of the ner\'ovis 

 system which ]jsychology has hitherto 

 been pleased to call 'unconscious' reflexes 

 and automatisms, that a sound scien- 

 tific instinct should select as being the 

 simplest and hence the elementary 

 ])roeesses of consciousness, out of which 

 the more comi^licatcd processes are 

 compounded, — even at last the self 

 reflective" (p. 200). 



Atkinson (27) quotes Sir Wm. Hamil- 

 ton, who states: "I do not hesitate to 

 affirm that what we are conscious of is 

 constructed out of what we are not 

 conscious of — that our whole knowledge 

 in fact is made up of the unknown and 

 incognizable. The sphere of our con- 

 sciousness is only a small circle in the 

 center of a far wider sphere of action 

 and passion, of which we are only con- 

 scious through its effects. . . . The 

 fact of such latent mental modifications 

 is now established beyond a rational 

 doubt; and on the supposition of their 

 reality, we are able to solve various 

 psychological phenomena otherwise in- 

 explicable" (pp. 13, 14). This is in line 

 with Stanley Hall's frequent remark that 

 the psychic life may be compared to a 

 floating iceberg: that which is visible 

 is the conscious; and easily, nine-tenths 

 of the whole mass remains submerged, 

 unconscious. And it is being daily 

 verified that by far the major portion of 

 our mental life never enters the realm 

 of consciousness. We would all be sad 

 wrecks in but a very short space of 

 time were all the mental activity of 

 each successive moment to i)rojcct 

 itself into our conscious field. 



In our studies of mental heredity we 

 have placed consciousness and con- 

 scious phenomena on too high a pedestal. 

 Ladd and Woodworth in their " Physio- 

 logical Psychology" emphasize time 

 and again the enormous handicaps 

 which beset one in attem])ting to 

 inquire into the elemental factors which 

 go to make up our complex mental 

 states, when either introspection or 

 objective experimentation is used as 

 the analytical instrument. 



How dangerously simple then do 

 some of our confreres make mental 

 traits ! 



DIFFICULTY OF INVESTIGATION 



Leibniz (21) was near stating the 

 ])roblem accurately when he said that 

 "petites perceptions" determine our 

 will fiats. Of course, interpreting his 

 statement in modern terms we would 

 say that unconscious ideas, constella- 

 tions and eomi)lexes are some of the 

 chief motivating factors of conduct. 



Retrardini/ the nature of the uncon- 



