Not only is there such a thing, then, as unconscious thought, but it is probable that the best thinking is rarely, if ever, done under the influence of consciousness. The poet creates his work when the inspiration is on him and he is forgetful of himself and the world. Consciousness may aid in pruning and polishing, but in creating it often interferes with, rather than helps, the cerebral action. I think any one of my readers who has done any literary or scientific writing will agree that his or her best work is performed when self and surrounding objects have disappeared from thought and consciousness scarcely exists more than it does in a dream. Sometimes the individual is conscious of the flow of an undercurrent of mental action, although this does not rise to the level of distinct recognition. Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks of a business-man of Boston who, whilst considering a very important question, was conscious of an action going on in his brain so unusual and painful as to excite his apprehension that he was threatened with palsy; but after some hours his perplexity was all at once cleared up by the natural solution of the problem which was troubling him, worked out, as he believed, in the obscure and restless interval. "Jumping to a conclusion," a process to which the female sex is said to be especially prone, is often due to unconscious cerebration, the reasoning being so rapid that the consciousness cannot follow the successive steps. It is related that Lord Mansfield once gave the advice to a younger friend newly appointed to a colonial judgeship, "Never give reasons for your decisions. Your judgments will very probably be right, but your reasons will almost certainly be wrong." The brain of the young judge evidently worked unconsciously with accuracy, but was unable to trace the steps along which it really travelled.