270 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



the rest are stacked quietly in the cellars; while in 

 repression, part of the workmen want to build a 

 different sort of building, and have to be forcibly 

 held down by some of the rest to prevent their do- 

 ing so. 



But in whatever way the subconscious may be or- 

 ganized it is always with us, and there will always 

 be a remainder of our soul, or of its possibilities, 

 which is not incorporated in our personal life at all, as 

 well as much which is not closely organized with the 

 main everyday personality, but is connected with it 

 only by vague and loose bonds, approachable only 

 by narrow pathways instead of by broad roads. 



There is another process at work in the human 

 mind which is of the utmost importance for our 

 problem. I mean the process of sublimation. If it 

 is not easy to give a short and clear definition of sub- 

 limation, at least the process is familiar to all. The 

 commonest example is "falling in love,'' where the 

 simple sex-instinct becomes intertwined with other 

 instincts and with past emotional experience, and 

 projects itself in wholly new guise upon its object. 

 We may perhaps best say that a sublimated instinct 

 has more and higher values attached to its satisfac- 

 tion than one unsublimated. The mere satisfaction 

 of the sexual impulse need be little more than a 

 physiological desirability; but the satisfaction of 

 passionate love involves every fibre of the mental 

 organism, hopes and ideals converging with memories 

 and instincts on to the highest pitch of being. 



