Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/732

712 very high authority, a contradiction in terms. But all the facts adduced by Dr. Carpenter to prove unconscious cerebration are distinctly mental changes such as, according to Mill, it is a contradiction in terms to designate as unconscious.

These mental changes may be classed almost entirely under two heads: 1. Recollection without effort; and, 2. Apparent increase in the results of thought without further thought.

It may be taken as one of the commonest mental experiences of most men, that a fact, and especially a name, which they endeavor to remember, which escapes from the determinate effort of recollection, often suddenly jumps, as it were, into the recollection without effort, after they have been thinking of other matters. Dr. Carpenter explains this by the theory that the part of the brain engaged in storing up and reproducing past impressions is not the same part of the brain which is engaged in the consciousness of those impressions, or in the consciousness of their reproduction; and that after the seat of consciousness has given up its futile labor, the seat of memory unconsciously continues its activity, and when it has unconsciously brought its work to a successful issue it communicates the result to the seat of consciousness; then, and not before, the fact is consciously remembered. Upon this we must remark that the conscious effort to command the memory, without guide or clew, is generally and singularly unsuccessful in result. The only way to succeed in remembering some forgotten thing is to seek some clew, some thread of ideal association which may lead us to it. The direct bald effort fails, for the simple reason that the attention is fixed upon the effort, and not upon the idea sought. Withdraw the effort, and the attention fixes upon the idea. The memory of the thing was in the brain, must have been there all the time, or it could never again have been remembered. Memory is a latent power, and always unconscious. Recollection is the mental activity which opens the cells of memory to the consciousness and recollection, therefore must always be conscious. That any portion of brain-work is done unconsciously in the act of recollection, is a theory to which we cannot subscribe without far stronger evidence than any which we have yet seen adduced.

The second class of facts adduced to prove that mental work can be performed by the brain without consciousness, are almost as common among men who are in the habit of employing their minds in intricate and difficult subjects. A man thinks on some matter which needs to be considered from various points of mental view, which appears to have bearings on many other subjects which seem to need elucidation from many quarters; he turns all the mental material over and over again until the whole business seems a jumble, and, in confusion and weariness of thought, he puts it aside. He sleeps upon it, and the next day that which overnight was a daub of confused colors, is seen as a bright and clear mental picture. The instances