Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/499

Rh including another that involved going to the kitchen, mixing the ingredients for a pie, and placing it in the lighted gas-range, the charred remains astonishing the nocturnal cook the next morning; or of still others recounting the prowling about at night in response to the sensations of hunger, or seeking coats and wraps because of sensations of cold. Subconscious doing in sleep as in waking reflects the motor versatility of our habits adjusted by training to the complex life in which we live and move.

The sensory side of the process demands equal recognition. It is well to repeat that all of these several types of subconscious action, the motor aspects of which have been singled out for analysis, do also involve a recognition of the situation, a sensitiveness to the suggestions of the environment, that both realizes—though it may be imperfectly or mistakenly—and responds thereto with submerged awareness. The first group of instances, in which actions are entered upon in oblivion of their accomplished performance, shows how readily sensations, that would ordinarily be registered, fail to make an impression; but this 'absent-minded' insensibility is still more neatly illustrated when an article is deliberately sought, and yet the sensations by which its presence would normally be recognized remain persistently ignored. This is indeed an accepted trait of the distrait. My collection is replete