In Newton's case (as a result of constant attention) the work of the subconscious is continuous, but connects itself periodically with voluntary activity. Now conscious, now unconscious, his thought explores all the possibilities. With Goethe, the sub-conscious is almost always active and ready to deliver to the will the multiple works which it elaborates without its aid and far from it. Goethe himself has explained this in a marvellously lucid and instructive page:[5] "Every faculty of action, and consequently every talent, implies an instinctive force at work unconsciously and in ignorance of the rules whose principle is, however, implicit. The sooner a man becomes educated, the sooner he learns that there is a technique, an art, which will furnish him the means of attaining the regular development of his natural faculties. It would be impossible for what he acquires to injure in any way his original individuality. The supreme genius is he who assimilates and appropriates everything without prejudice to his innate character. Here we are confronted with the divers relations between consciousness and unconsciousness. Through an effort of exercise, of apprenticeship, of persistent and continuous reflection, through results obtained, whether good or bad, through the movements of resistance and attraction, the human organs amalgamate, combine unconsciously the instinctive and the acquired, and from this amalgam--from this chemistry at once conscious and unconscious--there issues at last a harmonious whole which fills the world with words. It is nearly sixty years since, in the full flush of my youth, the conception of _Faust_ came to me perfectly clear and distinct, all its scenes unfolding before my eyes in the order of their succession. From that day the plan never left me, and living with it in view, I took it up in detail and composed, one after the other, those bits which, at the moment, interested me most, with the result that, when this interest has failed me, there have occurred gaps, as in the second part. The difficulty, at such points, was to obtain, by sheer force of will, what, in reality, is obtainable only by a spontaneous act of nature." It also happens conversely that a work conceived in advance and deferred in execution, comes at last to impose itself upon the will. The subconscious then seems to overflow and submerge the conscious, dictating things that are written only with repugnance. This is the obsession which nothing discourages, and which triumphs over even the most lackadaisical laziness, the most violent aversion. Later, once the work is completed, there is often experienced a sort of satisfaction. The idea of duty, which, ill understood, causes so many ravages in timid consciences, is no doubt an elaboration of the subconscious. Obsession is perhaps the force which impels to sacrifice, just as it is that which incites to suicide.