I go back and hunt for it in every nook and corner in vain; suddenly I put my hand in my pocket, and there is the key." This shows that an action which is quite intelligible can be performed unconsciously - i.e., without the agent noticing what he is doing or breaking off the conversation he is engaged in. The experiment made by Barkworth, a member of the English Society for Psychical Research, is much more complicated than this. He can add up long rows of figures while carrying on a lively discussion, without allowing his attention to be at all diverted from the discussion. Recently some American investigators - Speir, Armstrong, and Child - have brought forward interesting statistics of unconscious cerebration. It is shown that during this activity, though it goes on in the lower consciousness, most people have a distinct feeling of effort. If, for instance, one cannot recall a name and purposely refrains from trying to do so, these statistics show that there is still very frequently a certain sense of effort.

This shows that, in the first place, there is an unconscious intelligence in men, as is seen in the mechanical rubbing of the cold hands, and that, in the second place, there is an unconscious memory; Barkworth; for example, must have at least two groups of figures in his memory to make a third out of them; he must retain the third to add a fourth. But this chain of memory is independent of the other chain by means of which he carries on the conversation. Max Dessoir thinks that we have here the elements of a second personality. At least we can picture to ourselves consciousness as consisting of two halves, a primary and a secondary consciousness, which act independently. The mental processes which take place consciously to the individual are called the primary consciousness and those which go on without his knowledge the secondary consciousness. Thus in Barkworth's case the primary consciousness carried on the conversation, while the secondary one mechanically performed the addition.

From the above it will be seen that what we call primary consciousness has hitherto habitually been called consciousness. Generally speaking, "consciousness" means the mental processes that are subjectively perceived. In future we shall give it a wider meaning, so as to indicate the sum of all our mental processes. Consciousness thus falls into two halves, primary and secondary. To avoid confusion I shall in future only use the word "consciousness" in this latter sense.

With regard to the existence of a secondary consciousness, much that is instructive may be learned from a study of automatic writing. I owe my knowledge of this to Dr. Max Dessoir, whom I again thank for his unselfish and scientific help in the preparation of the previous editions of this book. Automatic writing has also been observed among uncivilized peoples (Doolittle, Bastian). We will now proceed to examine it carefully.

There are men who habitually strum on the table or do something similar while they are talking or thinking. When such people take a pencil in their hand they make all sorts of scribbled marks without observing it. This scribbling may be regarded as the beginning of automatic writing. It may, however, develop into something more than mere scribbling. Schiller says that when reflecting he has often covered whole sheets of paper with little horses (Max Dessoir). Other persons also automatically write letters and words, and this process is called automatic writing; it is evidently guided by a species of intelligence, as without it no rational words could be written. But this intelligence resides in the writer, though it may not be conscious in the ordinary sense of the word; it is the secondary consciousness which carries on movements and actions as does the primary consciousness, although the person concerned does not remark them. Spiritualists imagine that this writing, which they call mediumistic, is the work of some external force or spirit.

I now ask the reader to follow me through some experiments with automatic writing. I give X. a pencil and ask him to answer some question in writing - for example, what he had for dinner yesterday; he is, however, to leave his hand passive and not to write on purpose; at the same time I put the point of the pencil on paper. It would not be strange that X. should write down something he is thinking of. It would remind us of the experiments in thought-reading described on page 62. X. thinks of roast veal, and the hand makes corresponding movements. But the process becomes rather different when I talk to the writer meanwhile. We talk about the theatre, the weather, etc.; in the meantime the hand writes "roast veal." It appears that this was yesterday's dinner. In this case the hand wrote without any concentration of thought on the writer's part; and this is already very different from the usual thought-reading.

Now, though X. did not know that he was writing, he knew the fact which he unconsciously wrote down; i.e., he knew that he had had roast veal the day before. But people often write automatically about things they do not know. For example, when X. is asked what he had for dinner every day last week, he will automatically write down the whole list of dishes correctly, although he cannot give a correct answer by word of mouth.

Such experiments can be made in hypnosis with good results, and many phenomena, especially negative sense-delusions, are made more intelligible by them. I suggest to X., in hypnosis, that A. and B., who are really present, have gone away. X. ceases entirely to respond to A. and B.; he neither hears nor sees them, apparently. When I ask him who is present, he says, " only you and I "; upon which I give him a pencil, the point of which I put on a piece of paper, and ask him to answer the question in writing. He writes down, "Dr. Moll, Mr. A., Mr. B., and myself." Consequently he has given a correct answer automatically - i.e., without knowing that he is writing. This shows that he can give the right answer by means of automatic writing to questions to which he cannot reply correctly in the ordinary way by word of mouth.