The story of the subconscious mind can be told in three words: there is
none. But it may need many more words to make clear what that means, and
to show where the misunderstanding of those who give to the subconscious
almost the chief role in the mental performance sets in. The psychology
of suggestion, for instance, which we have now fully discussed without
even mentioning the word subconscious, figures in most popular books in
the treatises of both physicians and ministers as a wonderful dominance
of the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind alone receives the
suggestions and makes them effective, the subconscious mind controls the
suggestive processes in consciousness, and the subconscious mind comes
into the foreground and takes entire hold of the situation when the
hypnotic state sets in.

But we are always assured that there is no need of turning to the
mystery of suggestion and hypnotism to find that uncanny sub personality
in us. We try to remember a name, or we think of the solution of a
problem; what we are seeking does not come to consciousness and now we
turn to other things; and suddenly the name flashes up in our mind or
the solution of the problem becomes clear to us. Who can doubt that the
subconscious mind has performed the act? While our attention was given
over to other questions, the subconscious mind took up the search and
troubled itself with the problem and neatly performed what our conscious
mind was unable to produce. Moreover in every situation we are
performing a thousand useful and well-adapted acts with our body without
thinking of the end and aim. What else but the subconscious mind directs
our steps, controls our movements, and adjusts our life to its
surroundings? And is not every memory picture, every reminiscence of
earlier experiences a sufficient proof that the subconscious mind holds
its own? The poem which we learned years ago did not remain somewhere
lingering in our consciousness, and if we can repeat it today, it must
be because our subconscious mind has kept it carefully in its store and
is ready to supply us when consciousness has need for it.

Surely if we think how this, our subconscious mind, is able to hold all
our memories and all our learning, and how it transacts all the work of
controlling our useful actions and of bringing up the right ideas, we
may well acknowledge that compared with it our conscious life is rather
a small part. It is as with the iceberg in the ocean; we know that only
a small part is visible above the surface of the water and a ten times
larger mountain swims below the sea. It seems, therefore, only logical
to attach this whole subconscious mental life to a special subconscious
personality. Then we come to the popular theory of the two minds in us,
the upper and the lower, of which we can hardly doubt that the lower one
has on the whole the larger part of the business to perform. And we
certainly have no right to give to the word lower mind the side-meaning
that the activity is of a lower order. The most brilliant thoughts of
the genius are not manufactured in his upper consciousness, they spring
suddenly into his mind, their whole creation belongs thus to the
assiduous work of the subconscious neighbor. There the inventor and
discoverer gets his guidance, there the poet gets his inspiration, there
the religious mind gets its beliefs. In short, the constitution of the
mental state allows on the whole to the upper consciousness a rather
decorative part while the real work is left for the lower house.

Yet it must be acknowledged that the scholars somewhat disagree as to
the dignity of the lower mind. Considering the usually accepted fact
that in hypnotism the lower mind comes entirely over the surface, just
these hypnotic events can indeed suggest two different views of the
subconscious and this doubleness is reinforced if we still add the
entertaining material which comes to light by the automatic writing of
mediums in their trance. The hypnotized person is ready to perform any
foolishness, is not influenced by any considerations of tact and taste
and wisdom and respect, and thus some of the chief believers in the
subconscious personality stick to the diagnosis that the lower mind in
us which shows up in hypnotism is a rather brutal, stupid, lazy,
cowardly, immoral creature which ordinarily rather deserves to be
subdued by our noble and wise upper personality. And the automatic
writings of the mediums indorse this disrespectful view, for it is
difficult to gather more idiotic slang than the emanations of these
letters of the planchette. On the other hand, the hypnotized person
shows an increase of sensitiveness and hyperesthesia in which perhaps
optical impressions or smells may be noticed which the ordinary man
cannot perceive. Moreover the memory of the hypnotized is, as we saw,
abnormally sharpened. Entirely forgotten experiences may awake again.
The same holds true for the hysteric in whom also, of course, the
subconscious takes hold of the inner life. Thus it seems entirely safe
to say that the powers of the subconscious personality far surpass those
of the upper conscious fellow, and that agrees with all those facts as
to the subconscious origin of the work of the genius. Further, has it
not been found again and again that the hypnotized and the hysteric
cannot only remember long-forgotten parts of the past but have
telepathic knowledge for distant events and even mysterious premonitions
of the field of occurrences of the future?