650 GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 



the lowest forms of life, and the beginning of what is objective in 

 all forms. May it not x be said that we here come upon the problem 

 of the One and the Many in a very concrete form, and that it is as 

 intractable for psychology as is the more abstract, perhaps more 

 legitimate form, in which it presents itself to metaphysics? 



Simpler and less intractable is the somewhat cognate problem of 

 subconsciousness. We hear of subconscious sensations as well as 

 of subconscious memories or ideas: here I refer only to the latter. 

 They are sometimes spoken of as traces or residua; sometimes as 

 "dispositions," psychical or neural or both; the one term implying 

 their actual persistence from the past, the other their potentiality 

 as regards the future. The nature of this potentiality is what chiefly 

 concerns us. Even here there must be something actual if we are to 

 escape the absurdity of puissances ou facultes nues, with which in 

 this very connection Leibnitz twitted Locke. Disposition is a some- 

 what ambiguous term. It means primarily an arrangement or collec- 

 tion, as when we talk of the disposition of stones in a mosaic or of 

 troops in a battle. But it usually carries a second meaning, which, 

 however, presupposes, and is consequential on, the first. Every 

 actual combination entails a definite potentiality of some sort, and 

 usually several, one or other of which will on a certain condition 

 become actual. Sometimes this condition is something to be added, 

 sometimes it is something to be taken away. A locomotive with 

 the fire out has no tendency to move, but with "steam up " it is only 

 hindered from moving by the closure of the throttle-valve or the 

 grip of the brake. Now presentational dispositions may be assumed 

 to be of this latter sort, to be, that is to say, processes or functions 

 more or less "inhibited," the inhibition being determined by their 

 relation to other presentational processes or functions. This, of 

 course, is the Herbartian view. On this view the use of the term 

 " subconscious " is justifiable, as long as the latency is relative and 

 not absolute. But if we regard the so-called disposita merely struc- 

 turally, if such an expression may be allowed, if, in other words, we 

 suppose all functioning to be absent, then there seems no warrant 

 for the term "subconscious," nor yet for such a phrase as "physio- 

 logical disposition," meaning tendency, and still less for that of 

 "psychical disposition" or tendency. But on the physiological side, 

 at any rate, it seems reasonable to assume the persistence of a cer- 

 tain neural "tone" or activity: what is known as "skeletal tone " or 

 muscular tonicity is indeed evidence of such persistence. Yet from 

 the psychological side there comes the supposed fatal objection: 

 it is surely incredible that all the incidents of a long life, and all the 

 items of knowledge of a well-stored mind, that may possibly recur, 

 are continuously presented in the form and order in which they were 

 originally experienced or acquired. But no advocate of subcon- 



