Certain men have received a special gift, which distinguishes them
in a striking fashion from their fellows. The moment discus-throwers
or generals, poets or clowns, sculptors or financiers rise above the
common level, they demand the particular attention of the observer.
The predominance of one of their faculties marks them out for
analysis, and for that analytical method which consists in successive
differentiation. We come thus to discern in mankind a class whose
distinguishing trait is difference, just as, for common humanity, this
trait is resemblance. There are men who let us know nothing of what
they are going to say when they begin to speak. These are few. There
are others who tell us all, as soon as they open their mouths. It is
alleged that in this class there are marked disparities; for it is
undeniable that, even among those who, at first sight, resemble each
other most closely, there are no two creatures who are not, at bottom,
contradictory. It is the highest glory of man, and the one that science
has been unable to wrest from him, that there is no science of man.
If there be no science of the common man, still less is there a science
of the different man, since the manifestation of this difference makes
him solitary and unique, that is to say, incomparable. Yet, just as
there is a general physiology, so there is a general psychology, also.
Whatever their nature, all the beasts of the earth breathe the same
air, and the brain of the genius, like that of the ordinary mortal,
derives its primordial form from sensation. We have only a rough idea
by what mechanism sensation is transformed into action. All we know is
that the intervention of consciousness is not needed to bring about
this transformation. We know also that this intervention may prove
harmful through its power to modify the predetermined logic, to break
the series of associations in order to create in the mind the first
link of a new volitional chain.
Consciousness, which is the principle of liberty, is not the principle
of art. It is possible to express quite clearly what has been conceived
in the unconscious shades. Intellectual activity, far from being
intimately allied with the functioning of consciousness, is more often
disconcerted by it. We listen badly to a symphony, when we know we are
listening. We think badly, when we know we are thinking. Consciousness
of thinking is not thought.
The subconscious state is the state of automatic cerebration in full
freedom, while intellectual activity pursues its course at the extreme
limit of consciousness, a little below it and beyond its reach.
Subconscious thought may remain for ever unknown. It may, on the other
hand, come to light, either at the precise moment when the automatic
activity ceases, or later--even after several years. These facts of
cogitation do not, then, belong to the domain of the unconscious,
properly speaking, since they can become conscious. Besides, it will
doubtless be preferable to reserve to this rather vast word the
meaning given it by a particular philosophy. The subconscious state
differs also from the state of dreams, though dreams may be one of
its manifestations. The dream is almost always absurd, with a special
sort of absurdity, and is incoherent or orderly, according to its
associations which are entirely passive,[2] and whose procession
differs even from that of ordinary passive associations, conscious or
unconscious.[3]
Imaginative intellectual creation is inseparable from the frequency
of the subconscious state, and in this category of creations must
be included the discovery of the scientist and the ideological
construction of the philosopher. All who have invented or discovered
something new in any field whatsoever, are imaginatives as well
as observers. The most deliberate, the most thoughtful, the most
painstaking writer is constantly, and in spite of himself, enriched
by the effort of the subconscious. No work is so completely a product
of the will that it does not owe some beauty or novelty to the
subconscious. No sentence, perhaps, however worked over, was ever
spoken or written in absolute accord with the will. The search for the
right word in the vast, deep reservoir of verbal memory is itself an
act which escapes so completely from the control of the will, that very
often the word on its way flees at the very moment when consciousness
is about to perceive and to grasp it. Everyone knows how hard it is to
find, by sheer force of will, the word wanted, and also with what ease
and rapidity certain writers summon up, in the heat of composition, the
rarest or the most appropriate words.
It is, however, imprudent to say: "Memory is always unconscious."[4]
Memory is a secret pool where, unknown to us, the subconscious casts
its net. But consciousness fishes there quite as readily. This pond,
full of chance fish previously caught by sensation, is particularly
well known to the subconscious. Consciousness is less skilful in
provisioning itself from this source, though it has at its service
several useful tricks, such as the logical association of ideas and
the localization of images. Man acquires a different personality,
according as the brain works in the darkness or by the lantern-light
of consciousness; but, save in pathological cases, the second of
these states is not so well defined that the first cannot intervene
without interrupting the effort. It is under these conditions, and in
accordance with this concert, that most works conceived, in the first
instance either by the will or by the dream faculty, are completed.
In Newton's case (as a result of constant attention) the work of
the subconscious is continuous, but connects itself periodically
with voluntary activity. Now conscious, now unconscious, his thought
explores all the possibilities. With Goethe, the sub-conscious is
almost always active and ready to deliver to the will the multiple
works which it elaborates without its aid and far from it. Goethe
himself has explained this in a marvellously lucid and instructive
page:[5] "Every faculty of action, and consequently every talent,
implies an instinctive force at work unconsciously and in ignorance
of the rules whose principle is, however, implicit. The sooner a man
becomes educated, the sooner he learns that there is a technique,
an art, which will furnish him the means of attaining the regular
development of his natural faculties. It would be impossible for
what he acquires to injure in any way his original individuality.
The supreme genius is he who assimilates and appropriates everything
without prejudice to his innate character. Here we are confronted
with the divers relations between consciousness and unconsciousness.
Through an effort of exercise, of apprenticeship, of persistent and
continuous reflection, through results obtained, whether good or bad,
through the movements of resistance and attraction, the human organs
amalgamate, combine unconsciously the instinctive and the acquired,
and from this amalgam--from this chemistry at once conscious and
unconscious--there issues at last a harmonious whole which fills the
world with words. It is nearly sixty years since, in the full flush
of my youth, the conception of _Faust_ came to me perfectly clear and
distinct, all its scenes unfolding before my eyes in the order of their
succession. From that day the plan never left me, and living with it in
view, I took it up in detail and composed, one after the other, those
bits which, at the moment, interested me most, with the result that,
when this interest has failed me, there have occurred gaps, as in the
second part. The difficulty, at such points, was to obtain, by sheer
force of will, what, in reality, is obtainable only by a spontaneous
act of nature." It also happens conversely that a work conceived in
advance and deferred in execution, comes at last to impose itself upon
the will. The subconscious then seems to overflow and submerge the
conscious, dictating things that are written only with repugnance.
This is the obsession which nothing discourages, and which triumphs
over even the most lackadaisical laziness, the most violent aversion.
Later, once the work is completed, there is often experienced a sort
of satisfaction. The idea of duty, which, ill understood, causes so
many ravages in timid consciences, is no doubt an elaboration of the
subconscious. Obsession is perhaps the force which impels to sacrifice,
just as it is that which incites to suicide.
Schopenhauer used to compare the obscure and continuous effort of the
unconscious, in the midst of impressions imprisoned in the memory,
to rumination. This rumination, which is purely physiological, may
suffice to modify convictions or beliefs. Hartmann discovered that
a hostile idea, at first brushed aside, succeeded, after a certain
time, in supplanting in his mind the idea which he was accustomed to
entertain of man or of a fact: "If you wish or have the occasion to
express your opinion upon the same subject, after days, weeks, or even
months, you discover, to your great surprise, that you have undergone
a veritable mental revolution--that you have completely abandoned
opinions which, up to that time, you had firmly believed to be yours,
and that new ideas have completely taken their place. I have often
noted this unconscious processus of digestion and mental assimilation
in my own case, and have always instinctively refrained from disturbing
the process by premature reflection, whenever it involved important
questions affecting my conceptions of the world and of the mind."[6]
This observation might be extended to the exceedingly interesting
problem of conversion. There is no doubt that people have suddenly felt
themselves brought, or brought back, to religious ideas, when they
had neither wish nor fear nor hope for this change. In conversion the
will can act only after a long effort on the part of the subconscious,
and when all the elements of the new conviction have been secretly
assembled and combined. This new force, which supports the convert, and
whose origin is unknown to him, is what theology calls grace. Grace is
the result of a subconscious effort. Grace is subconscious.
Like Hartmann, but instinctively, and not, in his case, by philosophic
preconception, Alfred de Vigny entrusted to the subconscious the
nurture of his ideas. When they were ripe, he recovered them. They
came back of their own accord to offer themselves rich with all the
consequences of their secret burgeoning. It may be supposed that, like
Goethe, he was a subconscious whose promissory notes were on very
long time, since Vigny left, between certain of his works, unusually
long intervals. It is highly probable that, if there are individuals
whose subconsciousness is inactive, there are others who, after a
period of activity, cease suddenly to produce, either as a result of
premature exhaustion, or through a modification in the relations of
the brain cells. Racine offers the singular example of a twenty years'
silence broken just halfway by two works which have only a formal
resemblance to those of his first phase. Can it be supposed that it
was through religious scruple that he so long refused to listen to the
suggestions of the subconscious? Can it be supposed that religion,
which had modified the nature of his perception, had, at the same time,
diminished the physiological power of his brain? Such a supposition
would run counter to all other observations, which go to show, on the
contrary, that a new belief is a new excitant. It seems, then, probable
that Racine became silent simply because he had almost nothing more
to say. It is a common adventure, and he found in religion the common
consolation.
A distinction should then be made between two sorts of subconscious
individuals--those whose energy is short-lived and strong, and those
whose force is less ardent but more sustained. The two extremes are
exemplified by the man who produces a remarkable work in his early
youth, then ceases, and by the man who offers for sixty years the
spectacle of a mediocre, useless and continuous effort. I am speaking,
of course, of those works in which the imaginative intelligence
plays the major part--works in which the subconscious is always the
master-collaborator.
More practically, and from a totally different point of view, M.
Chabaneix, having studied the continuous subconscious, divides it into
nocturnal and waking subconsciousness. If the former be a question of
sleep or of the moments preceding sleep, it is oneiric or pre-oneiric.
Maury, who was particularly afflicted by them, has carefully considered
the hallucinations which are formed the moment the eyes close in sleep.
It is not clear that these hallucinations which are called hypnagogic,
and which are almost always visual, can have a special influence on the
ideas undergoing elaboration in the brain. They are rather embryonic
dreams which influence the course of the thought only as dreams
influence it. It happens, at times, that the conscious effort of the
brain is prolonged during the dream, even reaching its goal there,
and that, on awaking, the dreamer finds himself, without reflection
or difficulty, master of a problem, a poem, a combination, which had
baffled him previously. Burdach, a Koenigsberg professor, made, in
his dreams, several physiological discoveries which he was afterwards
able to verify. A dream was sometimes the point of departure for an
undertaking. Sometimes a work was entirely conceived and executed
during sleep. It is highly probable, however, that it is the conscious
reason which, at the moment of awaking, judges and rectifies the
dream spontaneously, gives it its true value, and divests it of that
incoherence peculiar to all dreams, even the most rational.
Inspiration, during the waking state, seems the clearest manifestation
of the subconscious in the domain of intellectual creation. In its most
pronounced form, it would seem to come very close to somnambulism.
Certain attitudes of Socrates (according to Aulus Gellius), of Diderot,
of Blake, of Shelley and of Balzac, give force to this opinion. Doctor
Régis[7] says that almost all men of genius have been "waking sleepers"
butt the waking sleeper is not infrequently an "absent-minded"
individual--one whose mind tends to become concentrated upon a problem.
Thus the excess and the absence of psychological consciousness would
seem, in certain cases, to manifest themselves by identical phenomena.
Of what did Socrates think days when he remained motionless? Did he
think? Was he conscious of his thought? Do the fakirs think? And
Beethoven, when, hatless and coatless, he let himself be arrested as a
tramp? Was he under voluntary obsession, or in a quasi-somnambulistic
condition? Did he know what he was pondering so deeply, or was his
cerebral activity unconscious? John Stuart Mill composed his work on
logic in the streets of London, as he went daily from his house to the
offices of the India Company. Will anyone believe that this work was
not planned in a state of perfect consciousness? What was subconscious
in Mill, says M. Chabaneix, was the effort to make his way in a
crowded street. "There was here automatism of the inferior centres."
This reversal of terms--more frequent than certain psychologists have
believed--may suggest doubts as to the true nature of inspiration.
One ought at least to ascertain whether, from the moment when the
realization--even purely cerebral--of a work begins, it is possible for
this effort to remain wholly subconscious. Mozart's letter explains
nobody but Mozart: "When I feel well and am in a good humour, whether
riding in a carriage or taking a walk after a hearty meal, or at night
when I cannot sleep, thoughts come thronging to me, and without the
slightest effort. Where do they come from, and by what avenue do they
reach me? I know nothing about it, have nothing to do with it. I keep
in my head those that please me, and hum them--at least, so others
have told me. Once I have my air, another soon comes to join it. The
work grows, I hear it continually and get it more and more distinct,
till at last the composition is entirely completed in my head, though
it may be a long one.... All this takes place in me as in a beautiful,
distinct dream.... If I start to write afterwards, I have nothing
to do but to take out of the sack of my brain what has previously
accumulated there, as I have explained to you. Thus it takes scarcely
any time at all to put the whole thing on paper. Everything is already
in perfect shape, and my score seldom differs very much from what I had
in my head beforehand. It does not bother me to be interrupted while
I am writing...."[8] With Mozart, the whole process is, therefore,
subconscious, and the material labour of execution amounts to little
more than mere copying.
I have seen a writer hesitate to correct his spontaneous composition
for fear of marring the tone. He was aware that the state in which he
corrected would be quite different from that in which he had written,
and in which he had, at the same time, conceived his work. Often a
word overheard, an attitude caught sight of, a singular individual
passed in the street, gave him the sole suggestion for his tales,
which he improvised in three or four hours. If he attempted to follow
a preconceived plan, he almost always abandoned it after the first
page, and finished his story in accordance with a new logic, reaching
a conclusion quite different from that which had seemed best to him
when he began. Some of these plans had been drafted under so strong
a subconscious influence, that later he no longer understood them,
recognized them only by the writing, and was able to determine their
date only by the kind of paper he had used, and by the colour of the
ink. On the contrary, other projects (for longer works) recurred to him
quite frequently. He was conscious of thinking of them several times
a day, and was convinced that it was these reveries, even when vague
and inconsistent, that rendered the work of execution comparatively
easy. In fact, I have never seen him seriously preoccupied with regard
to works which were, however, supposed to be the result of a rather
arduous effort. He never spoke of them, and I believe firmly that he
never gave them a conscious thought till the moment when he wrote the
terrible first lines. But, once the work was under way, almost all
his intellectual life concentrated on it, the periods of subconscious
rumination perpetually returning to join those of voluntary meditation.
As nearly as I have been able to make out, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam had
this same method of working. Once an idea had entered his mind--and
it sometimes entered quite suddenly, in the course of a conversation
most often, for he was a great talker, and profited by everything--this
idea, which had come in timidly and silently through the side-door,
soon installed itself as if it were at home, and invaded all the
reserve spaces of the subconscious. Then, from time to time, it rose
to the conscious level, and really obliged Villiers to act under its
obsession. At such moments, no matter who was with him, he talked. He
talked even when he was alone. Indeed he always talked as if he were
alone, when he talked of his idea. I heard thus, fragmentary, several
of his last stories, and once when we were seated in front of a café on
the boulevard, I had the impression that I was listening to veritable
mental wanderings in which this assertion recurred periodically: "There
was a cock! There was!" It was only some months later, when _Le Chant
du Coq_ appeared, that I understood. He spoke in a low voice, without
addressing me. Yet his conscious aim, in thus turning over his ideas
aloud, was to attempt to divine their effect upon a hearer. But, little
by little, this purpose became obscured. It was the subconscious that
was talking in his stead. He worked slowly. There exist five or six
superimposed manuscripts of _L'Ève Future_, and the first differs
so much from the last that Edison's name alone serves to link them
together. It is often said of a man, who has written little, that he
has done little work; but I am convinced that Villiers de l'lsle-Adam
never stopped working an instant, even when asleep. In spite of the
often absolute blockade that his ideas established about his attention,
no mind ever worked more rapidly or was better gifted for conversation.
He knew nothing of the twilight moments of awaking. After the fewest
hours of sleep, he found himself, at a bound, in full possession of his
verve and of his lucidity. Though, he was unquestionably the man of his
books, it would, however, be possible to find in him the sketch of a
dual personality, in which the conscious and unconscious so overlapped
that it would be difficult to disentangle them. It would, on the
other hand, be easy to write two lives of Mozart--one on the social
individual, the other on the man in his second state, both perfectly
legitimate.
Baudelaire used to say: "Inspiration means working every day"; but
this aphorism does not appear to epitomize his personal experience.
Regular daily work is, so to speak, inspiration regularized,
domesticated, enslaved. These terms do not involve a contradiction,
for it is certain that the second state can only gain in depth by
becoming periodic. Habit, so powerful, reinforces nature to strengthen
a psychological state which then comes to be a veritable necessity.
Those who depart from a daily routine experience a certain uneasiness
both during and after their regular working-hours--sometimes a real
distress--especially if they remain in the same surroundings. Remorse
has, perhaps, no other origin, whether it be connected with an habitual
act which has not been accomplished, or with an act which is not
habitual, and which has violently interrupted the customary procession
of the days.
If inspiration be a second state, it may, then, be a second state
induced voluntarily. There is no doubt that artists, writers,
scientists can work without preparation when obliged to, spurred on
only by necessity, and that, on the other hand, the work thus produced
is quite as good as that done entirely for its own sake. This does not
mean that the subconscious has remained inactive during the effort
initiated by the will, but that its activity has been induced. There
is, then, a subconscious state which is not spontaneous, which comes to
mingle with the conscious when required by the will, but which, little
by little, as the work progresses, substitutes itself for the will. It
is often enough to set to work, in order to feel all the difficulties
that had paralyzed effort vanish one by one; but perhaps this reasoning
is paralogical, and the work has precisely become possible only because
of the preliminary breaking-down of the obstacles which had confronted
the mind in the first place. In either case, however, there is evident
intervention of the subconscious forces.
How does a sensation become an image, the image an idea? How does the
idea develop? How does it assume the form which seems best to us? How,
in writing, is contribution levied upon the verbal memory? These are
all questions which seem to me insoluble, yet whose solution would be
necessary in order to formulate a precise definition of inspiration.
"Neither reflection nor will-power can take the place of inspiration
for the purpose of original creation," writes M. Ribot.[9] No doubt;
but reflection and force of will may nevertheless have their rôle in
the evolution of this mysterious phenomenon, and then, too; on the
other hand, cases of pure intellectual automatism are rather rare. It
must doubtless be supposed that those who are capable of experiencing
the happy influence of inspiration, are also those most capable of
feeling with force and with frequency the shocks of the external
world. Imaginatives are also sensitives. Their brain reserves must be
very rich in elements. This supposes a constant supply of sensations,
as well as a very lively sensibility and an incessantly renewed
capacity for feeling. This sensibility, too, belongs, in large part,
to the domain of the subconscious. There are, according to Leibnitz's
expression, "thoughts which our soul does not perceive." There are also
sensations which our senses do not perceive, and it is perhaps these
sensations which leave our brain as they entered it--subconsciously.
The most fruitful observations are those which we make without knowing
it. To live without thinking of life is often the best means for
coming to know life. After half a century and more, a man sees the
surroundings, the scenes, and the events of his unreflecting childhood
rise before him. As a child, he had dwelt in the external world as
in an extension of himself, with a purely physiological concern. He
had seen without seeing. Yet now, while the middle distance remains
veiled in mist, it is this period of his most fleeting impressions
that returns and takes on life before his eyes. It is very evident
that the sensation, which has entered us without our being aware of
it, can never, at any moment, be voluntarily evoked; but the conscious
sensation, on the contrary, can return suddenly, without any assistance
from the will. The subconscious has, then, dominion over two orders of
sensations, whereas consciousness has but one at its disposal. This
may explain why will and reflection have so restricted a share in the
creations of literature and of art.
But what is their rôle in the rest of life?
In principle, man is an automaton, and it would seem that in him
consciousness is an acquisition, an added faculty. Let us not be
deceived. Because man walks, acts, talks, he is not necessarily
conscious, nor is he ever completely conscious. Consciousness, if we
take the word in its precise, absolute sense, is without doubt the
possession of the few. In crowds men become particularly automatic.
Indeed, their very instinct to herd together, to do all of them the
same thing at the same time, is unmistakable evidence as to the nature
of their intelligence. How can we suppose consciousness and will to
exist in the members of those dense throngs which, on days of festivals
or during disorders, move forward in a mass toward the same point, with
the same cries and the same gestures? They are ants, that come out from
under the blades of grass after a rain, and nothing more. The conscious
man, who mingles without reflection in the crowd, who acts as the crowd
acts, loses his personality. He is now merely one of the tentacles of
the great artificial octopus, and almost all his sensations die away in
the collective brain of the hypothetical animal. From this contact he
will bring back next to nothing. The man who comes out of the crowd,
like the man saved from drowning, has one recollection only--that of
having fallen into the water.
It is among the small number of the conscious élite that must be
sought the veritably superior examples of a humanity of which they
are, not the leaders--that would be a pity, and too contrary to
instinct--but the judges. However--and this is a subject for serious
meditation--these individuals, raised above the rest, attain their
full power only at moments when the conscious, becoming subconscious,
opens the locks of the brain and lets the renewed floods of sensation
rush back to the world whence they were derived. They are magnificent
instruments on which the subconscious alone plays with genius, for it,
too, is subconscious. Goethe is the type of these dual men, and the
supreme hero of intellectual humanity.
There are other men, not less rare, but less complete, in whom the
will plays but a very ordinary rôle, and who are nothing the moment
they cease to be under the influence of the subconscious. Their genius
is often only the purer and more energetic because of this. They are
more docile instruments under the breath of the unknown God. But, like
Mozart, they do not know what they do. They obey an irresistible force.
That is why Gluck had his piano moved out into the middle of a meadow,
in the full sunlight. That is why Haydn gazed at a ring, why Crébillon
lived surrounded by dogs, why Schiller frequently inhaled the odour of
rotten apples with which he had filled the drawer of his table. Such
are the most innocent fantasies of the subconscious. There are others
that are both more insistent and more terrible.
[1] Suggested by _Physiologie cérébrale: Le Subconscient chez les
artistes, les savants, et les écrivains_, by Dr. Paul Chabaneix,
Paris, J.-B. Baillière. This study was already written when M. Ribot's
masterly work, _L'Imagination créatrice_ (July, 1900), appeared.
[2] See in a dream related by Maury (_Le Sommeil et les Rêves_) the
word _jardin_ causing the dreamer to visit Persia, then to read _L'Ane
mort_ (Jardin, Chardin, Janin); and in another dream, the syllable lo
conducting the mind from the word _kilomètre_ to _loto_, viâ _Gilolo,
lobélia, Lopez_. However, the poet (by reason of rhyme or alliteration)
experiences similar associations, but he must have the ability to
render them logical, a thing which rarely happens in dreams pure and
simple. Victor Hugo, a veritable incarnation of the Subconscious,
rioted in these associations, which were at first involuntary.
[3] With regard to dreams, M. Chabaneix says (p. 17) that those who
often think in visual images are subject to dreams in which the images
are objectified in amplified form. A personal observation contradicts
this, but in mentioning it I am only opposing a single observation to
many observations. I refer to a writer who, although besieged, when
awake, by internal visual images, sees images but rarely in dreams and
never has any characteristic hallucinations. Recently, having reread
Maury's book during the day, he experienced that night, for the first
time, two or three vague hypnotic hallucinations, caused doubtless by
the desire or fear of knowing this state.... This case may serve to
explain the contagion of hallucination by books.--He saw kaleidoscopic
flashes, then grinning heads, finally a figure clad in green, of life
size, of whom the dreamer, looking out of the corner of his right eye,
saw only one-half. At this moment, he was awaking. The figure evidently
came from an illustrated history of Italian painting, which he had
glanced at in the forenoon.
[4] _Le Subconscient_, p. 11.
[5] Letter to W. von Humboldt, 17 March, 1832 (_Le Subconscient_, p.
16). Goethe was then eighty-three; he died five days later. The whole
letter is quoted by Eckermann.
[6] _Le Subconscient_, p. 24.
[7] Preface to _Le Subconscient_.
[8] Jahm, quoted in _Le Subconscient_, p. 93.
[9] _Psychologie des Sentiments_.--W. von Humboldt said: "Reason
combines, modifies and directs; it cannot create, because the vital
principle is not in it" (_Ideas on the New French Constitution_).