quite correct, do not hit the nail on the head, just because they do not grasp the notion of the Unconscious as principle of thought apart from a brain. The consciousness of mental effort observed in these processes is only the feeling of the tension of the brain and the scalp (by reflex action). The moments of vacancy of consciousness that are described, on which the result follows without our being aware how it has been arrived at, are those very moments when, in the productive thinking out of a zealously pursued object of study, the skipping of a longer train of inferences takes place.

Truly man is so accustomed to find in his consciousness results of which he is quite ignorant how he has come by them, that in any particular case he is not wont to wonder at it in the least; and therefore it is also natural that an inquirer should not first reach the notion of the Unconscious from this starting-point. But as in general the reaction of the Unconscious is wont most frequently to fail when one intentionally seeks to stimulate it, so in the eager and intentional reflection on a subject this effective entrance of the Unconscious might be less easy to establish to the satisfaction of the majority, than in the socalled mental digestion and assimilation of the received nutriment, which does not occur on a conscious impulse, but at an indeterminate time, and is only announced by the results, which opportunely occur without our having been consciously occupied with the affair. (Schopenhauer calls this "unconscious rumination," comp. above, p. 29.) Thus it regularly happens with me when I have read a work which presents new points of view essentially opposed to my previous opinions. The proofs of such ingenious ideas are often rather weak; and even if they are good and apparently irrefutable, still no human. being can be so rapidly converted from his old opinions, for he can advance just as good grounds for the latter, or, if he cannot do so himself, he confides in himself and not the new author and thinks: counter-proofs will be

VOL. I.

X

found, although I am not at present acquainted with them. Then there intervene other occupations; the matter is not sufficiently important to hunt for counterarguments, for which search must be made in books, often for weeks, nay, months; in short, the first impression gets weak, and the whole affair is in time forgotten. Sometimes, however, it is different. If the new ideas have made a really deep impression, they may be referred provisionally, unaccepted, as undecided questions, to the court of memory, may even be obstructed by other occupations, or, still better, intentionally laid on one side, in order to be thought of again. Nevertheless the matter is only apparently laid to rest, and after days, weeks, or months, when the wish and opportunity arise to give an opinion on the question, we find to our very great astonishment that we have undergone a mental regeneration on the point, that the old opinions which we had taken for actual conviction up to that moment have been entirely renounced, and that new ones have already become quietly lodged there. This unconscious mental process of digestion and assimilation I have several times experienced in my own case, and have always had a certain instinct not to disturb this process prematurely by conscious reflection in real questions of principle affecting the general view of the world and of the mind.

I am of opinion that even in more unimportant questions, as soon as they only awaken interest with sufficient vividness, thus in all concerns of practical life, the process described always affords the right and true decision, and that the conscious reasons will only be subsequently right when the judgment has been already formed. The ordinary understanding, however, which does not pay attention to these processes, really imagines that it is swayed in its opinion by the reasons which have been sought for, whilst an acuter self-observation would teach it that these only come in the cases alluded to when its view is already fixed, its resolution taken. In saying this, it is by no

means asserted that the Unconscious is not determined by logical reasons. This is most undoubtedly the case; it is only tolerably indifferent so far as concerns the certainty of the decision, at any rate at first, whether the reasons afterwards sought for by consciousness agree with those reasons which have determined the Unconscious or not! In the case of acutely thinking brains the former, with the great majority the latter, will be prevailingly the case, and accordingly the phenomenon is explained, that people often seem to derive such firm conviction from such bad reasons, and allow themselves to be dispossessed of it with much difficulty by the best counter-arguments. It lies just in this, that the true unconscious reasons are not at all known to them, and therefore are not to be refuted. It is here indifferent whether their conviction contains truth or not; also of errors (which as said never arise from false conclusions, but from the insufficiency and falsehood of the premisses), those are most difficult to eradicate which are the result of an unconscious process of thought (e.g., in political opinion those which are unconsciously rooted in professional and class interests).

If now, however, any one should be led by these considerations to lightly estimate conscious ratiocination, such an one would fall into serious error. Just because, in conclusions attained at a bound, errors easily slip in, it is imperatively necessary in important questions to render the individual terms clear by discursive thought, and to descend by such small stages of thought that one may be as far as possible protected from errors in the conclusion. Just because in the opinions, whose true proof lies in the Unconscious, the perversion of the judgment by interests and inclinations is withdrawn from all control and has such free scope, it is doubly necessary to draw the subjective proof to the light, and to confront it with the results of discursive logical inferences, since only in the latter is there to be found a certain, if also always a very defective, guarantee of objectivity. If the subjective prejudices

be stronger for the moment, conscious logic gains ground with time, if not in one, yet in the course of many generations. But even in this emergence of certain truths to the light of consciousness, and in their struggle and victory over dominant ideas of the time, there rules again, as we shall see hereafter, an unconscious logic, a historical providence, which has never been perceived more clearly than by Hegel.

VIII.

THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE ORIGIN OF SENSE-PERCEPTION.

KANT in his "Transcendental Esthetic" maintained that Space was not passively received by the mind, but spontaneously produced by it,―hereby causing an entire philosophical revolution. But now, why has this correct statement been at all times so stoutly opposed by common sense, as well as, with few exceptions, by the scientific mind?

I. Because Kant, and after him Fichte and Schopenhauer, drew from a true proposition subjective-idealistic consequences, which were false and repugnant to the instinct of the healthy reason.

2. Because Kant had given faulty proofs of his correct assertion; which in truth proved nothing at all.

3. Because Kant, without giving any further account of it, speaks of an unconscious process in the mind, whilst the previous mode of treatment only knew and regarded as possible conscious mental processes, but consciousness denies a spontaneous production of Space and Time, and with perfect truth insists upon their being given in senseperception as faits accomplis.

4. Because Kant put Time, of which this proposition does not hold good, on a level with Space.

These four points we have successively to consider, since the unconscious production of Space is the indispensable foundation of sensuous perception, with which consciousness takes its rise and which in its turn is the foundation of all conscious thought.