88 Unconscious Memory 



extreme simplicity. He rests upon a fact of daily and 

 hourly experience, namely, that practice makes things 

 easy that were once difficult, and often results in their 

 being done without any consciousness of effort. But if 

 the repetition of an act tends ultimately, under certain 

 circumstances, to its being done unconsciously, so also 

 is the fact of an intricate and difficult action being done 

 unconsciously an argument that it must have been done 

 repeatedly already. As I said in " Life and Habit," it is 

 more easy to suppose that occasions on which such an 

 action has been performed have not been wanting, even 

 though we do not see when and where they were, than 

 that the facility which we observe should have been 

 attained without practice and memory (p. 56). 



There can be nothing better established or more easy, 

 whether to understand or verify, than the unconsciousness 

 with which habitual actions come to be performed. If, 

 however, it is once conceded that it is the manner of 

 habitual action generally, then all a priori objection to 

 Professor Hering's philosophy of the unconscious is at 

 an end. The question becomes one of fact in individual 

 cases, and of degree. 



How far, then, does the principle of the convertibility, as 

 it were, of practice and unconsciousness extend ? Can 

 any line be drawn beyond which it shall cease to operate ? 

 If not, may it not have operated and be operating 

 to a vast and hitherto unsuspected extent ? This 

 is all, and certainly it is sufficiently simple. I some- 

 times think it has found its greatest stumbling-block 

 in its total want of mystery, as though we must be 

 like those conjurers whose stock in trade is a small deal 

 table and a kitchen-chair with bare legs, and who, with 

 their parade of "no deception " and " examine everything 

 for yourselves," deceive worse than others who make use 

 of all manner of elaborate paraphernalia. It is true we 

 require no paraphernalia, and we produce unexpected 

 results, but we are not conjuring. 



