128 Unconscious Memory 



day, need be ashamed of joining in with an opinion which 

 was maintained by all the great spirits of antiquity except 

 Epicurus — an opinion whose possible truth hardly one of 

 our best modern philosophers has \'entured to contravene, 

 and which the champions of German enlightenment were 

 so little disposed to relegate to the domain of old wives' 

 tales, that Goethe furnishes us with an example of second 

 sight that fell within his own experience, and confirms it 

 down to its minutest details. 



Although I am far from believing that the kind of phe- 

 nomena above referred to form in themselves a proper 

 foundation for a superstructure of scientific demonstra- 

 tion, I nevertheless find them valuable as a completion 

 and further confirmation of the series of phenomena pre- 

 sented to us by the clairvoyance which we observe in 

 human and animal instinct. Even though they only con- 

 tinue this series^ through the echo that is awakened within 

 our consciousness, they as powerfully support the account 

 which instinctive actions give concerning their own nature, 

 as they are themselves supported bj^ the analogy they 

 present to the clairvo3'ance observable in instinct. This, 

 then, as well as mj^ desire not to lose an opportunity of 

 protesting against a modern prejudice, must stand as my 

 reason for having allowed myself to refer, in a scientific 

 work, to a class of phenomena which has fallen at present 

 into so much discredit. 



I will conclude with a few words upon a special kind of 

 instinct which has a very instructive bearing upon the 

 subject generally, and shows how impossible it is to evade 

 the supposition of an unconscious clairvoyance on the 

 part of instinct. In the examples adduced hitherto, the 

 action of each individual has been done on the individual's 

 own behalf, except in the case of instincts connected with 



^ Ebenso well es diese Reihe nur in gesteigerter BCTvusstsein- 

 resonanz fortsetzt, stiitzt es jene Aussagen der Instincthandlungen 

 liber ihr eigenes Wesen ebenso sehr," &c. — Philosophy of the Un- 

 conscious, 3d ed., p. 97. 



