The subconscious.

  • Jastrow, J.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The subconscious. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    in this domain, it is best to set forth in purely objective appraisal, the logical status of the the- ory that chiefly disputes the field with the one here supported. To beo-in with, it seems difficult to understand how such an independent, and in its essence transcendent capacity could have found mainte- nance in the evolutionary conditions of our being. To conceive it as an atavistic function that is in its decadence is clearly unnatural, because such func- tions can hardly be concerned with the econo- mies of elaborated and highly complex service; atavism is survival from below, not a culling from above. It can only be urged that consciousness is itself a lapsed function, adjusted to the present stages of evolution, and has thus replaced a form of psychic energy that existed previous to con- sciousness, and achieved a perfection of mental efficiency similar, though superior, to that offered by our present form of that privilege; such issue was attained by service of susceptibilities now lost except in sporadic instances. Those who coura- geously embrace this view relieve themselves of further obligations to provide for subliminal func- tioning in normal life, and may be driven to this position by the difficulty of finding a place in the evolutionary field for a function of such occa- sional service and yet of such high potency and independent status. The feeble support that the