the subliminal for everything they wish to assert, and to heap upon its broad unconscious back an illarranged extensive burden of magic, miracle, and mystery.

Fortunately, for our own purpose, it is not necessary to make these extensive demands upon it. Many remarkable psychic phenomena may be proved beyond dispute, and indeed a good deal that would have stirred the eyebrows of our fathers has been already established; but for our more humble purpose of illustrating the influence of soul on body, the simplest and most uncontrovertible acts will suffice.

In the first place, it is certain that the undermind is not really an unconscious mind at all — it is subconscious, but not unconscious; it is not a mere animal force controlling animal functions — it may be partly that, it must contain that in some way; but it contains also all important elements of the reasoning mind; it contains, for instance, such conscious facts as memories which we can dive for, hook up, and bring to the centre of our conscious activity. Thus, it is that the undermind is not only the repository of physical control, not only the sphere of strange doings in the hypnotic subject, but is also the sphere of quite different forces - of genius, for instance, so that a man of genius (and to a lesser extent, every man) will sometimes produce things from the hidden regions of his mind, of which he was till then unaware; this subliminal uprush, as Myers calls it, shows that there are in the undermind thoughts, memories, feelings, creative powers, which must be

classed as conscious facts of some sort, outside the margin of consciousness though they are.1

Secondly, we are here concerned to observe that this undermind is in some way connected with the functioning of the physical organism; it is the inner life of the body. And, if anyone should object that there must then be more than one mind in the subliminal region, we would reply that we have at any rate agreed to include whatever minds there be in the general designation of undermind or subconscious self; there may be different layers, as it were - there must be higher and lower functions; 2 and in some abnormal cases it is certainly possible to strip off more than one state of consciousness, so that two, or even more, alternating personalities can appear in one person. Yet there is even in such cases a general unity of mind-stuff. And indeed in all of us the centre of consciousness shifts and fluctuates, yet the mind is one. Overmind and undermind are one, whatever functions may be done in either; high works and lowly, good thoughts and evil, come from the mind, and the mind is the same, even when it suffers disease in one form as hysteria or in another as insanity.

66

Thus we are on secure ground if we class all the activities of the self or spirit of man as Mind, and divide it into two regions — Overmind being that which is conscious, and Undermind being that which is below (or outside, since all terms of space are arbitrary in this realm) the primary consciousness.

All of us are accustomed to pass from one mindrealm to the other, because all of us go to sleep. In this familiar condition, mind is still active, though the overmind is laid aside. A man when he is awake is concerned mainly with the centres of supraliminal thought, with his conscious mind, and he exercises but little control over the subliminal part of him, which indeed knows its work and can do it by a sort of routine without the need of conscious direction. But in sleep the undermind assumes control, and works undistracted by supraliminal activities or emotions; and it has strong recuperative powers, so that the body is renewed in sleep, and in sleep many ills of the body are healed. “If he can but sleep!” we often say, as a sick friend tosses on his bed; and after a long and strong sleep he may awake restored.

Thus the undermind in sleep has a very powerful and intimate concern with the functioning of the body. But it is not a separate being confined to the lower nerve centres; it can assume command of the voluntary nerves as well and " night can outdo the most complex achievements of day,” for in the somnambulistic state the voluntary muscles can be moved with both a delicacy and a strength that are beyond a man's ordinary possibilities, and he can walk securely along perilous ridges. It can also, as a nor

mal occurrence, keep a record of time, and tell the overmind what's o'clock, so that many people can arrange with their undermind overnight as to the precise hour when they desire to wake up in the morning. Dreams also show that in some strange way the undermind can, during sleep, be busy with the higher centres of thought, and not necessarily in a fumbling and disjointed manner, since great intellectual achievement is possible during sleep: Robert Louis Stevenson, for instance, tells us that the main ideas for some of his greatest works were formed in dreams which he had deliberately prepared for by self-suggestion before sleep.

In the undermind, then, we have our first rough explanation of the physical structure of man. Every part of the body is pervaded by organs of mental communication called nerves; these nerves are connected with a central organ of intelligence. Yet the greater part of them convey orders of which we are not aware. Psychology has shown that there is indeed mind below the normal level of consciousness, which can be explored, and some of its properties demonstrated, by hypnotic and other experiments. Thus psychology begins to supply the all-important

1 In hypnosis extraordinary results have been obtained by Delbeuf (Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research, VIII, pp. 414-421), and later by Dr. Milne Bramwell. The latter, for instance, suggested to a patient under hypnosis on Wed., Jan. 8th, 1896, that she should make a mark on a piece of paper after the expiration of 4,417 minutes, and of 11,470 minutes, and of 10,070 minutes. This she did, without consciously knowing anything about it, at precisely the right time on Jan. 11th, Jan. 16th, and Jan. 15th, the minutes being calculated subconsciously without any error. Ibid. XII (1896), pp. 176–203.

2 R. L. Stevenson, Across the Plains, chapter on Dreams, 1892, pp. 247-252.

knowledge which physiology has ignored, or has designated as “a something” la something which anatomy does not reveal, but which exists behind all the physiological phenomena, and is more real and more important than they.

One reads in the ordinary text-books of physiology about the various organs of the body and the remarkably delicate work they accomplish; but as to the power that sets all this machinery in motion no information is vouchsafed, and no curiosity is evinced. It used to be taken for granted, or ascribed to a female goddess called “ Nature.” This polite ascription may have been a justifiable form of words in the days when science really did not know; but now when the spiritual nature of man has been discovered, or rediscovered, a system which treats of the body and ignores the intelligence to which the body owes its existence is in danger of becoming like a theory of literature that should ignore the author and deal only with the printing press.

The Psychology of the New Testament Before we proceed to a slight analysis of the undermind, it is worth while to make a digression and to ask ourselves how far the psychology of the New Testament writers applies to the knowledge which we have acquired in recent years. There is a tendency at the present day to read modern scientific ideas into the New Testament - to assume, for in

1 The "heart contains within itself a something which causes its different parts to contract in a definite succession and at regular intervals.” T. Huxley, Lessons in Elementary Physi-. ology, 1886, p. 41.