SOME KELATIONS OP MIND AND BODY. 157 



■conscious mind does, and the result is that we find ourselves 

 unconsciously repeating- the words, or humming the tune ; 

 and the curious part is, that we can often hum the air 

 perfectly if we will do it with the sub-conscious mind, 

 whereas, if we try to hum it consciously it goes from us. 

 After a time, however, when its impression has had time to 

 deepen, we can hum it at will. For the same reason we can 

 often remember things better when we cease to try to do 

 so with our conscious minds. 



During sleep, for instance, thoughts range themselves 

 anew. The powers of the unconscious mind can do more in 

 this way than the most arduous effort, in arranging facts 

 and ideas in due proportions. Hence we like to sleep over 

 a thing before deciding, and Judges in a difficult case always 

 like to take time to deliver judgment — often on the 

 morrow. 



More than this, we may read, hear, see, indeed do almost 

 anything involving the highest centres of the cortex, un- 

 consciously — the result being only recorded by our sub- 

 conscious mind. 



Our conscious mind, as compared with the unconscious 

 mind, has been likened to the visible spectrum of the sun's 

 rays, as compared to the invisible part which stretches 

 indefinitely on either side. We know now that the chief 

 part of heat comes from the ultra red rays that show no 

 light, and the main part of the chemical changes in the vege- 

 table world are the result of the ultra-violet rays, at the 

 other end of the spectrum, which are equally invisible to the 

 eye, and are only recognised by their potent eftects. Indeed, 

 as these invisible rays extend indefinitely on both sides of 

 the visible spectrum, so we may say that-the mind includes 

 not only the visible or conscious part, and what we have 

 termed the sub-conscious, that lies below or at the red end, 

 but the supra-conscious mind, that lies beyond at the other 

 end — all the regions of higher soul and spirit life, of which 

 we are only at times vaguely conscious, but which always 

 exist, and link us on to eternal verities, on the one side, as 

 surely as the sub-conscious mind links us to the body on the 

 other. 



The mind, indeed, reaches all the way, and while on one 

 hand it is inspired by the Almighty, on the other it energises 

 the body cell or tiny amoeba, all whose active life it 

 originates. We may call the supra-conscious mind the sphere 

 of the spirit life, the sub-conscious the sphere of the body life, 



