From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



The very marked psychic inequalities between 

 persons of the same parentage and of similar life and 

 education, are in no way correlative to their physical 

 inequalities. 



Physiologists, indeed, no longer seek the cause of 

 these psychic inequalities in the weight, size, or con- 

 formation of the brain; they invoke imperceptible and 

 inappreciable variations in the cerebral tissue, unper- 

 ceived causes, diverse influences (pathological or other) 

 during intra-uterine life, unknown conditions of con- 

 ception, genealogical combinations, etc. ... all of 

 them hypotheses without even the beginnings of proof. 



To sum up: from the fact that it is inborn and not 

 hereditary, the subconscious appears to be as indepen- 

 dent of the anatomical organisation of the brain as it is 

 of intellectual acquirements and the efforts these require. 



From the fact that it often appears from infancy, 

 it seems independent of the complete development of 

 the brain. 



Here, then, is one point established. There is no 

 psycho-physiological parallelism between the appearance 

 or the development of the subconscious, and the indi- 

 vidual development of the nerve-centres. 



4. ABSENCE OF PARALLELISM BETWEEN THE SUBCON- 

 SCIOUS AND THE CEREBRAL ACTIVITY 



* Psychic activity,* we are next taught, ' is pro- 

 portional to the activity of the nerve-centres.' 



There the reasoning is simple and clear. If there is 

 one axiom which physiology cannot deny without 

 stultifying itself, it is that ' the output of an organ of 

 given power is proportional to the degree of its activity.' 

 The analytical study of conscious psychism, taking the 

 seeming psycho-physiological parallelism as its basal 



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