Feminism and Sex-Extinction Part 16

II

Is that which I surmise to be the _Woman_--and emotional half of brain, the site of the mysterious province known as The Subconsciousness, into the strange powers and phenomena whereof scientists are now beginning to inquire?

Is it the seat of that which Myers designated "The Subliminal Consciousness," but which might well be called the Supra-Consciousness, because, in the regions of its higher functioning, it cognises things beyond power of Concrete Consciousness to apprehend; intuitions, premonitions, apparitions, telepathic messages?

Is it medium of those inherences and that sub-intelligent emotionalism known as _Instinct_; which may be regarded as the implanted religion of rudimentary organisms, leading them upward in blind subconscious obedience, at sacrifice of their self-interests and disposition?

Respecting the regeneration of the crystalline lens of the eye of a Triton, Bergson says:

"_Whether we will or no, we must appeal to some inner directing principle in order to account for this convergence of effects._"

May it not be that this brain-half--seemingly functionless, albeit as marvellously constructed and const.i.tuted as its fellow-half--is, in its merely organic departments, the agency of such an "inner principle,"

engendering the vital potentials of Life and Evolution, of health, of nervous recuperation and of biological repair? While in its departments of Mind, it functions as instinct, as intuition, as inspiration, aspiration; serves as the subtly receptive medium by way of which The Divine Influx wells in human attribute; whereby Divine Revelation is communicated to the concrete brain-half, for interpretation in speech and in writing. Bergson says also: "The consciousness of a living being may be defined as an arithmetical difference between _potential_ and _realised_ activity. It measures the interval between representation and action." (Duality is indicated.)

The trait essentially distinguis.h.i.+ng the human from the brute-mind, is Intelligent Purpose. And Purpose is the product of Impulse (or Instinct) and Reason, (or Concrete Intelligence). (Duality again.) Impulse is an emotion and is feminine. Reason is masculine. Intelligent Purpose may well be, therefore, a resultant of the co-operation of the feminine half of the brain, which supplies Impulse, with the masculine half, which supplies Reason.

Instinct, Professor James, the American psychologist, has pointed out, exists independently of any recognition of its purpose. While Reason exists apart from instinct--apart therefore from the emotional impulse which gives it the personal motive-power to become purpose. Thus, either mode of brain without the other to supplement it would be incapable of function.

_Self_-consciousness requires two departments of Consciousness--each of which is aware of the other. So that a man may judge and restrain impulses in himself that are contrary to reason and expedience, or, on the other hand, may choose to sacrifice both reason and self-interest to emotional impulse, n.o.ble and uplifting, or ign.o.ble and debasing.

Describing Intellect as characterised by a natural inability to comprehend Life, Professor Bergson further says: "Instinct, on the contrary, is moulded on the very form of Life.... If the consciousness that slumbers in it should awake, if it were wound up into knowledge instead of being wound off into action, if we could ask and it could reply, it would give up to us the most intimate secrets of Life."

Again Duality of mental processes is inferred. As too in the following pa.s.sage:

"Instinct is sympathy. If this sympathy could extend its object and also reflect upon itself, it would give us the key to vital operations--just as intelligence, developed and disciplined, guides us into Matter....

Intelligence, by means of science ... brings us, and moreover only claims to bring us, a translation of Life in terms of inertia.... But it is to the very inwardness of Life that Intuition leads us--by Intuition I mean instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely."

III

The phenomena of Hypnotism seem to set the Duality of cerebral processes beyond dispute.

Dr. George H. Savage, Consulting Physician and late Lecturer on Mental diseases at Guy's Hospital, in his Harveian Oration, October 1909, testified as follows to the strangeness and authenticity of hypnotic evidences:

"Wis.h.i.+ng to follow our great master in not accepting anything without personal investigation, I took advantage of the opportunity offered by Dr. Wright, to test some of the points of most importance to which I have referred.

"A gentleman, an engineer, who had been relieved by treatment by Dr. Wright, was willing to allow him to demonstrate the various stages of hypnotism and their effects.... He was asked to sit down and talk quietly about his relations.h.i.+p to hypnotism. Then he was told to go to sleep. A few pa.s.ses being made over his head, he slowly closed his eyes, and in less than a minute he was sleeping placidly. By the gentle stroking of his left arm this was rendered inflexible. The pulse was in no way affected; pupils were equal, but rather larger than before he slept, and were sluggish. He was slowly aroused (it being well always to recall the subject slowly).

After a talk on general matters he stated that he had no sense of fatigue in the arm, nor any recollection of anything said and done during the period of hypnosis.

"He was again, in a similar way, sent to sleep. It was then suggested that at the end of seven minutes he should lose all power and sensibility in his right side. He was roused, given a cigarette, which he smoked while he talked, having no knowledge of the suggestion which had been made. About five minutes after he had been roused, _his right arm fell useless by his side, he pa.s.sing at the same time into a partial stage of hypnosis_. _This is common when a post-hypnotic suggestion is being carried out. The whole of the right side, including the face, was insensitive_; the pupils were smaller and inactive. He was again slowly aroused, and resumed smoking, having no feeling of oppression, or recollection of anything which had been said or done. He was later again hypnotised, and in that condition he was asked what had been done formerly. After some hesitation, he, in part, recalled the facts.

"It is interesting to note that though constantly the acts performed during hypnosis are not recalled when awake, they are fully remembered on a second hypnosis. We tested his emotional side by getting him to recall scenes in a comic opera, at which he heartily laughed but had no knowledge of on waking. While unconscious, it was suggested that when he woke he should remark upon a strong odour of violets. He was awakened and offered a cigarette; but, looking about the room, he asked whence the strong smell of violets came.

"I inquired as to the revival of long-past impressions, and it seems that occurrences which took place before his present memory existed, had been revived and verified. But still more interesting was his experience in reference to a mathematical formula which he had forgotten. Being hypnotised, he dictated it, and though when once more awake he did not remember it, when shown what he had just dictated he recognised it as the lost formula. This, of course, is in a way parallel to the solution of difficult problems during sleep."

Be it observed that when at the end of seven minutes (as had been "suggested" to him should happen) the subject lost all power and sensibility in his right side and "_his right arm fell useless by his side_," he pa.s.sed "_at the same time into a partial state of hypnosis_.

_This is common_," Dr. Savage adds, "_when a post-hypnotic suggestion is being carried out_."

Here is strong corroboration of my argument that the right side of the body, with its allied half-brain, is the agent of Material Consciousness, of muscular action and of physical sensation, and that it operates normally in fencing in the higher faculties of Mind from the outer plane of concrete happenings, as also of interpreting them upon this plane.

Hypnosis is induced by devices occasioning muscular exhaustion, and thus temporarily paralysing "voluntary muscles"--muscles, that is, which are under conscious control. It is induced as well (as in the case cited) by stroking, and thus putting to sleep the sensory nerves--nerves which define the patient's consciousness of his material personality. It would seem that by such inhibition, or paralysis, of the perceptions of the outer consciousness, faculties of Subconsciousness--even of Supra-consciousness--are exposed, so that Mind itself may be dealt with direct.

Every form of insensibility is closely allied with muscular relaxation or paralysis.

IV

Examples of the operation of the Supra-conscious faculties upon the concrete plane are supplied by the marvellous feats of "lightning calculators."

The most intricate mathematical problems--calculations that would call for lengthy and complicated intellectual processes on the part of expert mathematicians to work out by ordinary methods--are solved instantaneously by the genius of such natural "calculators." You cannot puzzle them; you cannot baffle them. Scarcely have you stated your problem than they have calmly presented you with the solution. As Maeterlinck records in his interesting book, _The Unknown Guest_, this genius for figures developed in Colbourn and Safford at the age of six, in Mangiamele at ten, in Gauss and Whateley at three. All that and more than expert mathematicians laboriously acquire by decades of study and practice, these boy-prodigies achieved by way of native faculty. Such have not the slightest notion how they arrive at their results. These are obtained automatically--are products of unconscious cerebration.

Maeterlinck observes of this, that the resultant "appears to rise, infallible and ready-done, from a sort of eternal and cosmic reservoir wherein the answer to every question lies dormant."

What is this "eternal and cosmic reservoir" if it be not Mind, or Supra-consciousness, as distinguished from conscious intellection--a native intuitive, but undifferentiate, or potential, consciousness which holds the answer, "infallible and ready-done," to every question.

Truth _Is_. There is but one solution--the true one--of a mathematical or any other problem of exact science.

A significant fact is that such prodigy boys generally lose their mysterious faculty "_at the moment when the possessor begins to go to school_." So soon, that is, as he develops the power of conscious brain-processes--the power to work out his problems by concrete methods--his native supra-conscious gift of solving them spontaneously fails.

Intuition, the woman-mode of arriving at conclusions, lightning quick and true without reason or reflection, is a kindred potency of Mind.

"When a man," says a French writer, "has laboriously climbed a staircase, he is sure to find a woman at the top--although she will be unable to say how she came there!"

He did not add the further truth, that--as with the prodigy boys--the more you educate her to come at her conclusions by processes of intellection, the more you rob her of her native woman-gift of divination.

With the rising level of Faculty engendered by progressive evolution, woman's powers of intellection have developed too.

While her own mental attributes are themselves of a very high order, and give to her mentality an inductive subtlety and illumination lacking in that of the male. And this high quality of brain it is that is now being extinguished in her by straining her to masculine standards.

Progress awaits, indeed, the new and quickening impulse Life and Faculty should derive from the Woman-mind fostered along its own inherent lines--to supplement the mind of man. For as Bergson says, "it is to the very inwardness of Life that Intuition leads us."

And Intuition is the woman-mode of Mind.

The women intellectuals who have done great work have been women who inherited talents so far above the average, as spontaneously to have reached high mental levels, without need to have sacrificed those womanly traits which gave the n.o.blest values to such work.

The woman of average brain, however, attains the intellectual standards of the man of average brain only at cost of her health, of her emotions, or of her morale.

V

Herbert Spencer said profoundly, "_Mind is as deep as the viscera_."

Indicating it as being vital and intrinsic, at one with the occulted sources of Life.