ys hold of bits of information which, in ways that we cannot even
follow conjecturally, leak into it by way of the Subliminal. The
ulterior source of a certain part of this information (limited and
perverted as it always is by the organism's idiosyncrasies in the way of
transmission and expression) Myers thought he could reasonably trace to
departed human intelligence, or its existing equivalent. I pretend to no
opinion on this point, for I have as yet studied the evidence with so
little critical care that Myers was always surprised at my negligence. I
can therefore speak with detachment from this question and, as a mere
empirical psychologist, of Myers' general evolutionary conception. As
such a psychologist I feel sure that the latter is a hypothesis of
first-rate philosophic importance. It is based, of course, on his
conviction of the extent of the Subliminal, and will stand or fall as
that is verified or not; but whether it stand or fall, it looks to me
like one of those sweeping ideas by which the scientific researches of an
entire generation are often moulded. It would not be surprising if it
proved such a leading idea in the investigation of the near future; for
in one shape or another, the Subliminal has come to stay with us, and the
only possible course to take henceforth is radically and thoroughly to
explore its significance.

Looking back from Frederic Myers' vision of vastness in the field of
psychological research upon the programme as most academic psychologists
frame it, one must confess that its limitation at their hands seems not
only implausible, but in truth, a little ridiculous. Even with brutes
and madmen, even with hysterics and hypnotics admitted as the academic
psychologists admit them, the official outlines of the subject are far
too neat to stand in the light of analogy with the rest of Nature. The
ultimates of Nature,--her simple elements, it there be such,--may indeed
combine in definite proportions and follow classic laws of architecture;
but her proximates, in her phenomena as we immediately experience them,
Nature is everywhere gothic, not classic. She forms a real jungle, where
all things are provisional, half-fitted to each other, and untidy. When
we add such a complex kind of subliminal region as Myers believed in to
the official region, we restore the analogy; and, though we may be
mistaken in much detail, in a general way, at least, we become plausible.
In comparison with