Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/342

320 instinctively rouses opposition; while, contrariwise, that of one's own inspires one's self with distrust, so essentially modest is man. But with the hypnotized, personality in both phases lies dormant. For, in the hypnotized mind, when abandoned to its own devices, activity is nil. Hypnotic subjects, when left to themselves, and asked of what they are thinking, usually reply: "Of nothing."

VIII.

Ideo-ideal activity is a higher and later stage in the progress of mind evolution than motor-ideal action; response to objective stimuli preceding the subjective action of the mind upon itself, as the development from amœba to man testifies. Although the protozoön doubtless has consciousness of a rudimentary sort, by which he differentiates his own absorbing person from his no less engrossing food, his brain is his belly, and his one idea a kind of conscious digestion. His mind is a process of nervous pepsia, which, thanks to evolution, has unfortunately become nervous dyspepsia in such men as let their thoughts follow the same line; so true is it that what is one creature's meat proves