THE BACKGROUNDS OF PERSONALITY 195 



those which arouse the brain cells. In the metaphorical language 

 of the old psychology, the threshold value, that is the strength 

 or loudness of stimulus sufficient to make itself felt or heard, is 

 less for the vegetative apparatus than for the brain. So we begin 

 to glimpse why an emotion seems to be experienced before the 

 visceral changes that really preceded it, but pressed their way 

 into consciousness later. This gives us a clue to the unconscious 

 as the more sensitive and deeper part of the mind. 



More than that, it supplies us with a physical basis for the 

 unconscious which will explain much of the observed laws of its 

 workings. It provides a reason for the apparent swiftness, spon- 

 taneity, and unreasonableness of what is called intuition. And 

 it may show us a source for a good deal of the material of dreams 

 and dream states. 



We have said that we think and we remember, not alone with 

 the brain, but with the muscles, the viscera and the endocrines. 

 So do we forget not alone with the brain, but with the muscles, 

 the viscera, the endocrines and their nerves. The utmost impor- 

 tance of muscle attitudes in remembering has been established 

 in the experimental laboratory. 



It is one of the great services Freud rendered to psychology 

 (and one, by the way, largely responsible for the acceptance of 

 his doctrines by the disinterested intelligence) that he showed that 

 a species of forgetting is nothing casual, but active and* purpose- 

 ful, a manifestation of the life of the unconscious. However, 

 though his description of the process was correct, he left it to 

 occur in a vacuum. As a matter of fact this forgetting consists 

 in the inhibition of associative memory by a process in the vege- 

 tative apparatus, so as to maintain the equilibrium within itself 

 which is reflected in consciousness as comfort. 



The unconscious, in short, consists of the buried associations 

 among the parts of the vegetative apparatus and the brain cells. 

 We seem to be much nearer to grasping the nature of the uncon- 

 scious, when we look upon it as a historical continuum, a com- 

 pound or emulsion of different and various states of intravisceral 

 pressure and tone, in the vegetative apparatus, dependent upon 

 the balance between the endocrines, as well as upon past experi- 

 ences of the viscera in the way of stimulation or depression. We 

 forget that which is held down, literally, in the vegetative appa- 

 ratus. This explanation of forgetting tells, too, why the forgotten 

 (stored in the sub-brain, the endocrine-vegetative system) con- 

 tinually projects itself into and interferes with the regular flow 



