the laws of its being are at last beginning to be
understood; giving a new content to the ancient command "Know thyself."
We are learning that psycho-therapy, which made such immense strides
during the war, is merely one of the directions in which this knowledge
may be used, and this control exercised by us. That regnancy of spirit
over matter towards which all idealists must look, is by way of coming
at least to a partial fulfilment in this control of the conscious over
the unconscious, and thus over the bodily life. Such control is indeed
an aspect of our human freedom, of the creative power which has been put
into our hands. In all this religion must be interested: because, once
more, it is the business of religion to regenerate the whole man and win
him for Reality.

If we could get rid of the idea that the unconscious is a separate, and
in some sort hostile or animal entity set over against the conscious
mind; and realize that it is, simply, our whole personality, with the
exception of the scrap that happens at any moment to be in
consciousness--then, perhaps, we should more easily grasp the importance
of exploring and mobilizing its powers. As it is, most of us behave like
the owners of a well-furnished room, who ignore every aspect of it
except the window looking out upon the street. This we keep polished,
and drape with the best curtains that we can afford. But the room upon
which we sedulously turn our backs contains all that we have inherited,
all that we have accumulated, many tools which are rusting for want of
use; machinery too which, left to itself, may function satisfactorily,
or may get out of order and work to results that we neither desire nor
dream. The room is twilit. Only by the window is a little patch of
light. Beyond this there is a fringe of vague, fluctuating, sometimes
prismatic radiance: an intermediate region, where the images and things
which most interest us have their place, just within range, or the
fringe of the field of consciousness. In the darkest corners the
machinery that we do not understand, those possessions of which we are
least proud, and those pictures we hate to look at, are hidden away.

This little parable represents, more or less, that which psychology
means by the conscious, foreconscious, and unconscious regions of the
psyche. It must not be pressed, or too literally interpreted; but it
helps us to remember the graded character of our consciousness, its
fluctuating le