=A Real Mind.= We learn of our internal machinery by what it does.  We must infer a part of our minds which introspection does not reveal, a mind within the mind, able to work for us even while we are unaware of its existence.  This inner mind is usually known as the subconscious, the mind under the level of consciousness.[16] We forget a name, but we know that it will come to us if we think about something else.  Presently, out of somewhere, there flashes the word we want.  Where was it in the meanwhile, and what hunted it out from among all our other memories and sent it up into consciousness?  The something which did that must be capable of conserving memories, of recognizing the right one and of communicating it,—­surely a real mind.

[Footnote 16:  Writers of the psycho-analytic school use the word “unconscious” to denote the lower layers of this region, and “fore-conscious” to denote its upper layers.  Morton Prince uses the terms “unconscious” and “conscious” to denote the different strata.  As there is still a good deal of confusion in the use of terms, it has seemed to us simpler to use throughout only the general term “subconscious.”]

One evening my collaborator fumbled unsuccessfully for the name of a certain well-known journalist and educator.  It was on the tip of her tongue, but it simply would not come, not even the initial letter.  In a whimsical mood she said to herself just as she went to sleep, “Little subconscious mind, you find that name to-night.”  In the middle of the night she awoke, saying, “Williams—­Talcott Williams.”  The subconscious, which has charge of her memories, had been at work while she slept.

The history of literature abounds in stories of under-the-surface work.  The man of genius usually waits until the mood is on, until the muse speaks; then all his lifeless material is lighted by new radiance.  He feels that some one outside himself is dictating.  Often he merely holds the pen while the finished work pours itself out spontaneously as if from a higher source.

But it is not only the man of genius who makes use of these unseen powers.  He may have readier access to his subconscious than the rest of us, but he has no monopoly.  The most matter-of-fact man often says that he will “sleep over” a knotty problem.  He puts it into his mind and then goes about his business, or goes to sleep while this unseen judge weighs and balances, collects related facts, looks first at one side of the question and then at the other, and finally sends up into consciousness a decision full of conviction, a decision that has been formulated so far from the focus of attention that it seems to be something altogether new, a veritable inspiration.