SECTION 9.OBSER VA 770 A 7 . 63 



to be in its place, but as regularly omit it, when it is not 

 there the usual explanation being that the sight of the article 

 gives rise to the enquiry, and not the reverse. Or to consider an 

 even more telling and yet common occurrence: bent on recall- 

 ing an event when somebody with me is engaged on the same 

 quest, I think that we have simultaneously succeeded when in 

 reality I am confusing hurried repetition of what my neighbour 

 says with independent recollection. 1 Brushing aside, then, fraud 

 of every kind as well as gross self-deception, both of which 

 are far from being rarities, we still infer that it argues mon- 

 strously lax observation to collect at random a series of affir- 

 mative instances of a selected order and ground thereon a far- 

 reaching conclusion. Yet who would say that the examples 

 analysed here are not almost typical of most of the so-called 

 scientific work beyond the frontiers of the established sciences? 



A kindred and related instance to telepathy is that of the 

 widely-obtaining attitude towards the problem of sub-con- 

 sciousness. Poincare had noticed that solutions of important 

 mathematical problems occurred to him not infrequently when 

 he was apparently absorbed in considering some matter extra- 

 neous to these problems; whence he concluded that the sub- 

 conscious activities of the mind possess greater value than its 

 conscious activities. Methodologically this seems a precipitate 

 conclusion to draw. Before we are entitled to deliver such a 

 verdict, we must be clear following Conclusions 27 and 28 

 concerning what "conscious" and "sub-conscious" mean; where 

 the two possibly pass into one another; whether "spontaneous" 

 solutions of an inferior character do not present themselves to 

 us; whether there are not multitudes of cases in which "sub- 

 conscious" thought is superficial like, or even more superficial 

 than, conscious thought; and we must be furthermore tho- 

 roughly satisfied about the precise facts relating to the alleged 

 spontaneous solutions whether, for instance, we are at the 

 particular moment really absorbed in something else, or whether 

 it is not a question of a pause favourable for recollection or 

 cogitation. 



Prof. William James has sought the nature of religion in the 

 realm of the sub-conscious; Hartmann has written a ponderous 

 work on the Philosophy of the Unconscious; at the present 

 moment Freud's psycho-analysis is developing into the psycho- 

 logy of the sub-conscious; and it would require pages to 

 enumerate the various virtues and activities attributed to the 

 sub-conscious in man. Nevertheless one vainly looks for a 

 scientific analysis or cautious discrimination pertaining to funda- 

 mentals in the various dissertations on the subject. Without pro- 

 nouncing on the basic issue as to whether "sub-conciousness", 

 or unconscious consciousness, is a fact, we may say that the 



1 An identical explanation frequently applies when two individuals are 

 said to yawn simultaneously. 



