Maudsley says:  “It is surprising how uncomfortable a person may be made by the obscure idea of something which he ought to have said or done, and which he cannot for the life of him remember.  There is an effort of the lost idea to get into consciousness, which is relieved directly the idea bursts into consciousness.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes said:  “There are thoughts that never emerge into consciousness, and which yet make their influence felt among the perceptive mental currents, just as the unseen planets sway the movements of the known ones.”  The same writer also remarks:  “I was told of a business man in Boston who had given up thinking of an important question as too much for him.  But he continued so uneasy in his brain that he feared he was threatened with palsy.  After some hours the natural solution of the question came to him, worked out, as he believed, in that troubled interval.”

Dr. Schofield mentions several instances of this phase of the workings of the unconscious planes of the mind.  We mention a couple that seem interesting and to the point: 

“Last year,” says Dr. Schofield, “I was driving to Phillmore Gardens to give some letters to a friend.  On the way, a vague uneasiness sprang up, and a voice seemed to say, ‘I doubt if you have those letters.’  Conscious reason rebuked it, and said, ’Of course you have; you took them out of the drawer specially.’  The vague feeling was not satisfied, but could not reply.  On arrival I found the letters were in none of my pockets.  On returning I found them on the hall table, where they had been placed a moment putting on my gloves.”

“The other day I had to go to see a patient in Folkestone, in Shakespeare Terrace.  I got there very late, and did not stay but drove down to the Pavilion for the night, it being dark and rainy.  Next morning at eleven I walked up to find the house, knowing the general direction, though never having walked there before.  I went up the main road, and, after passing a certain turning, began to feel a vague uneasiness coming into consciousness, that I had passed the terrace.  On asking the way, I found it was so; and the turning was where the uneasiness began.  The night before was pitch dark, and very wet, and anything seen from a close carriage was quite unconsciously impressed on my mind.”

Prof.  Kirchener says:  “Our consciousness can only grasp one quite clear idea at once.  All other ideas are for the time somewhat obscure.  They are really existing, but only potentially for consciousness, i.e., they hover, as it were, on our horizon, or beneath the threshold of consciousness.  The fact that former ideas suddenly return to consciousness is simply explained by the fact that they have continued psychic existence:  and attention is sometimes voluntarily or involuntarily turned away from the present, and the appearance of former ideas is thus made possible.”