7rcTIX1xP

The Eighth Lesson: The Highlands and Lowlands of Mind.615
Oliver Wendell Holmes says: “Our different ideas are stepping-stones;
how we get from one to another we do not know; something carries us.
We (our conscious selves) do not take the step. The creating and informing
spirit, which is within us and not of us, is recognized everywhere in real life.
It comes to us as a voice that will be heard; it tells us what we must believe;
it frames our sentences and we wonder at this visitor who chooses our brain
as his dwelling place.”
Galton says: “I have desired to show how whole states of mental operation
that have lapsed out of ordinary consciousness, admit of being dragged
into light. “
Montgomery says: “We are constantly aware that feelings emerge
unsolicited by any previous mental state, directly from the dark womb
of unconsciousness. Indeed all our most vivid feelings are thus mystically
derived. Suddenly a new irrelevant, unwilled, unlooked-for presence
intrudes itself into consciousness. Some inscrutable power causes it to
rise and enter the mental presence as a sensorial constituent. If this vivid
dependence on unconscious forces has to be conjectured with regard to
the most vivid mental occurrences, how much more must such a sustaining
foundation be postulated for those faint revivals of previous sensations that
so largely assist in making up our complex mental presence!”
Sir Benjamin Brodie says: “It has often happened to me to have
accumulated a store of facts, but to have been able to proceed no further.
Then after an interval of time, I have found the obscurity and confusion to
have cleared away; the facts to have settled in their right places, though I
have not been sensible of having made any effort for that purpose.”
Wundt says: “The traditional opinion that consciousness is the entire field
of the internal life cannot be accepted. In consciousness, psychic acts are
very distinct from one another, and observation itself necessarily conducts
to unity in psychology. But the agent of this unity is outside of consciousness,
which knows only the result of the work done in the unknown laboratory
beneath it. Suddenly a new thought springs into being. Ultimate analysis