Like Hartmann, but instinctively, and not, in his case, by philosophic preconception, Alfred de Vigny entrusted to the subconscious the nurture of his ideas. When they were ripe, he recovered them. They came back of their own accord to offer themselves rich with all the consequences of their secret burgeoning. It may be supposed that, like Goethe, he was a subconscious whose promissory notes were on very long time, since Vigny left, between certain of his works, unusually long intervals. It is highly probable that, if there are individuals whose subconsciousness is inactive, there are others who, after a period of activity, cease suddenly to produce, either as a result of premature exhaustion, or through a modification in the relations of the brain cells. Racine offers the singular example of a twenty years' silence broken just halfway by two works which have only a formal resemblance to those of his first phase. Can it be supposed that it was through religious scruple that he so long refused to listen to the suggestions of the subconscious? Can it be supposed that religion, which had modified the nature of his perception, had, at the same time, diminished the physiological power of his brain? Such a supposition would run counter to all other observations, which go to show, on the contrary, that a new belief is a new excitant. It seems, then, probable that Racine became silent simply because he had almost nothing more to say. It is a common adventure, and he found in religion the common consolation. A distinction should then be made between two sorts of subconscious individuals--those whose energy is short-lived and strong, and those whose force is less ardent but more sustained. The two extremes are exemplified by the man who produces a remarkable work in his early youth, then ceases, and by the man who offers for sixty years the spectacle of a mediocre, useless and continuous effort. I am speaking, of course, of those works in which the imaginative intelligence plays the major part--works in which the subconscious is always the master-collaborator.