J.—PSYCHOLOGY. 191 
sciousness. So, too, we may go to sleep determined to wake up at a given 
_ hour, or we may accept, in the hypnotic state, a decision to carry out some 
prescribed act on the lapse of a prescribed period of time after emerging 
from that state; and at the ordained moment the sleeper wakes, or an 
uncontrollable impulse is felt to perform the suggested act. 
But not only is purposive activity not limited to the duration of 
conscious activity; it need not originate there. The inspirations of 
genius and the intuitive judgments and decisions which, crude though 
they may be before submission to the self’s judgment, arise apparently 
from the ‘depths’ of the mind with impulsive force and compelling 
conviction afford striking examples of this fact. The well-known 
improvements in learning which continue after we have ceased to practice, 
so that it has been said of us that we learn to skate in summer and to swim 
in winter, are further examples of such activity—whether or not we 
choose to ascribe such improvement to the gradual disappearance of 
adverse initial inhibitions or to the direct strengthening ( ‘ consolidation ’) 
_ of acquired integrations (or associations). Further, the self is continually 
being played upon both by the impulsive and by the perseverating forces 
of lower mental systems. They struggle, not less than the self, for their 
own existence and for their own lower ‘ self-ish’ ends. Where they are 
modified by inhibition (or repression), it is only to ensure general harmony 
_and general compatibility. Inhibition is not to be viewed as a mere act 
of passive drainage of energy from one mental constellation to another, 
_ but as an active repressive force against which the inhibited constellation 
_ ever tends to rebel in its endeavour to gain somehow or another liberty of 
action, in some lower degree purposeful and directive. 
Tae PsycuicaL INDESCRIBABILITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 
Despite certain unscientific methods and no little prejudice in inter- 
‘pretation and procedure on their part, we owe a debt to the psycho- 
analysts for their detailed study of the conflicts responsible for such 
_repressions and of the ways in which repressive forces exert their influence 
and are not infrequently, as it were, outwitted. But let us not imitate 
the psycho-analysts in their failure to recognize that we can never describe 
the nature of unconscious mental processes in terms of consciousness. 
_ We are as powerless to do this as we are powerless to describe the nature 
of God in terms of the human body and mind. ‘ Psycho-morphism ’ 
‘in psychology is an error not less cardinal than anthropomorphism in 
Teligion. We are bound to adopt an agnostic position as to the nature 
of the unconscious. To describe in the language of consciousness an 
“unconscious wish,’ an ‘ unconscious motive,’ an ‘ unconscious emotion ’ 
or an ‘ unconscious idea’ is a contradiction in terms. At best we can but 
say that if a particular unconscious mental process were to become con- 
‘scious, it would manifest itself as a certain wish, motive, emotion or idea. 
But the extremely uncertain nature of such statements must be kept 
ever before us. 
Tur CEREBRAL LOCALISATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
While consciousness always implies self-activity, and while the self is 
to be regarded as the expression of the highest level of mental activity, 
