l fiction. Let us
turn to the concrete facts, let us see them in the spirit of modern
scientific psychology, let us try to explain them in harmony with the
principles of psychological explanation, and let us discriminate the
various groups of facts which have led to that easy-going hypothesis of
the subconscious. Discrimination indeed is needed, as it would be
impossible to bring the whole manifold of facts under one formula, but
there is certainly no unification reached by simply putting the same
label on all the varieties and behaving as if they are all at once
explained when they are called the functions of the subconscious. Two
large groups may be separated. Facts are referred to the subconscious
mind which do not belong to the mind at all, neither to a conscious nor
to a subconscious one, but which are simply processes in the physical
organism; and secondly, facts are referred to the subconscious mind
which go on in the conscious mind but which are abnormally connected.
Thus the subconscious mental facts are either not mental but
physiological, or mental but not subconscious.

What does the scientific psychologist really mean by consciousness? We
must now think back to our discussion of the principles which control
the fundamental conceptions of modern psychology. We saw clearly that
the psychology which is a descriptive and explanatory science of mental
phenomena can by no means have the ambition to be a full interpretation
of the inner reality. Our inner life, we saw, is not a series of
phenomena, is not a chain of objects which we are aware of and which we
therefore can describe, and which finally we can explain. But in its
living reality, we saw that it is purposive, has a meaning and aim, is
will and intention, and can thus be understood in its true character,
not by describing and explaining it but by interpreting it and
appreciating it. This is the life attitude towards personalities when we
deal man to man. We do not at first consider ourselves or our fellows as
mental objects to be explained but always as subjects to be understood
in their meaning. If we pass from this primary attitude to the attitude
of the scientific psychologist we gain, as we saw, an artificial
perspective. We must consider then our inner experience of ourselves
with all our states as a series of objects made up of elements connected
by law. Instead of the real things which in our real life are objects of
will and purpose, tools and me