Below that threshold,
though actual processes, they are unknown to us. The teaching of
modern psychology is that all mental action is at the start
unconscious, requiring a certain bulk of stimulus in order to emerge
into conditions where we become aware of it. The cumulated result we
know; the minute factors which must be gathered together to form that
result, we do not know. I do not pronounce judgment on this
psychological question. I state the belief merely in order to show how
probable it is that our conscious life is superposed upon unconscious
conditions.
In conduct itself I believe every one will acknowledge that his
moments of consciousness are like vivid peaks, while the great mass of
his acts--even those with which he is most familiar--occur
unconsciously. When we read a word on the printed page, how much of it
do we consciously observe? Modern teachers of reading often declare
that detailed consciousness is here unnecessary or even injurious.
Better, they say, take the word, not the letter, as the unit of
consciousness. But taking merely the letter, how minutely are we
conscious of its curvatures? Somewhere consciousness must stop,
resting on the support of unconscious experiences. Matthew Arnold has
declared conduct to be three fourths of life. If we mean by conduct
consciously directed action, it is not one fourth.
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