They are much less separated than ourselves from the
whole of the circumambient life and they still possess a number
of those more general and indeterminate senses whereof we have
been deprived by the gradual encroachment of a narrow and
intolerant special faculty, our intelligence. Among these senses
which up to the present we have described as instincts, for
want--and it is becoming a pressing want--of a more suitable and
definite word, need I mention the sense of direction, migration,
foreknowledge of the weather, of earthquakes and avalanches and
many others which we doubtless do not even suspect? Does all this
not belong to a subconsciousness which differs from ours only in
being so much richer?
30
I am fully aware that this explanation by means of the subliminal
consciousness will not explain very much and will at most invoke
the aid of the unknown to illuminate the incomprehensible. But to
explain a phenomenon, a Dr. J. de Modzelwski very truly says, "is
to put forward a theory which is more familiar and more easily
comprehensible to us than the phenomenon at issue." This is
really what we are constantly and almost exclusively doing in
physics, chemistry, biology and in every branch of science
without exception. To explain a phenomenon is not necessarily to
make it as clear and lucid as that two and two are four; and,
even so, the fact that two and two are four is not, when we go to
the bottom of things, as clear and lucid as it seems.
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