Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/799

Rh The usual faintness of highly generalized ideas is forcibly brought home to us by the sudden increase of vividness that our conception of a substantive is sure to receive when an adjective is joined to it that limits the generalization. Thus it is very difficult to form a mental conception corresponding to the word "afternoon"; but if we hear the words "a wet afternoon," a mental picture arises at once that has a fair amount of definition. If, however, we take a step further and expand the phrase to "a wet afternoon in a country house," the mind becomes crowded with imagery.

The more we exercise our reason, the more we are obliged to deal with the higher order of generalizations and the less with visual imagery; consequently our power of seeing the latter becomes blunted by disuse. Probably, also, the mind becomes less able to picture things to itself as we advance in age. I am sure there is wide difference between my mental imagery now and what it was when I was a child. It was then as vivid and as gorgeous as in a dream.

It is a perfect marvel to me, when watching the working of my mind, to find how faintly I realize the meaning of the words I hear or read, utter or write. If our brain-work had been limited to that part of it which lies well within our consciousness, I do not see how our intellectual performances would rise much above the level of those of idiots. For instance, I just now opened a railway prospectus, and the following words caught my eye, the purport of which was taken in block, "An agreement will be submitted for the consideration and approval of the proprietors on Friday next"; yet I am certain that I had not, and I doubt if I could easily obtain, a good general idea corresponding to any one of the six principal words in the passage, "agreement," "submitted," "consideration," "approval," "proprietors," and "Friday." If I puzzle over the words in detail until I fully realize their meaning, I lose more than I gain; there is time for the previous words to slip out of mind, and so I fail to grasp the sentence as a whole.

The more I have examined the workings of my own mind, whether in the walk along Pall Mall, or in the seventy-five words, or in any other of the numerous ways I have attempted but do not here describe, the less respect I feel for the part played by consciousness. I begin with others to doubt its use altogether as a healthful supervisor, and to think that my best brain-work is wholly independent of it. The unconscious operations of the mind frequently far transcend the conscious ones in intellectual importance. Sudden inspirations and those flashings out of results which cost a great deal of conscious effort to ordinary people, but are the natural outcome of what is known as genius, are undoubted products of unconscious cerebration. Conscious actions are motived, and motives can make themselves attended to, whether consciousness be present or not. Consciousness seems to do little more than attest the fact that the various organs of the brain do