RELIGION AND SCIENCE 269 



fall between two stools. If a child gets a serious 

 fright in the dark, darkness will tend to arouse fear. 

 But darkness also comes with evening and with the 

 time for sleep. Two modes of reaction to darkness 

 are therefore given, and they are self-contradictory. 

 One part of the mind comes down its pathway to- 

 wards action, and finds itself met by another which 

 is coming along the same path in the opposite direc- 

 tion. If neither moves, there is a conflict; in our 

 hypothetical case sleep is delayed; and if it comes, 

 is disturbed by nightmares — the echoes of the fright 

 — and the childish organism suffers. 



Exactly similar conflicts in which fear plays a part 

 may occur in adult life, e.g., in so-called "shell- 

 shock"; or the sex-instinct may come into conflict 

 with other parts of the personality. 



These conflicts are resolved through one tendency 

 or part of experience being passed into the sub- 

 conscious, where it no longer can meet its opponent 

 on the path to action. And this passage into the 

 subconscious can be apparently automatic, unwit- 

 ting, when it is called suppression, or performed only 

 by voluntary effort, when it is called repression. In 

 the former case, it would appear that the conflict may 

 wholly or almost wholly cease; whereas in the second, 

 the repressed portion of mind is perpetually striving 

 to come to the surface again, and must thus per- 

 petually be held down by force. 



If we hold by our metaphor of the building, then 

 in suppression, bricks which would not go well with 



