The third and most important division, from the standpoint of practical living, is that which deals with the mechanisms by means of which the mind adapts itself to its environment. We should make it our aim to achieve adaptation in the conscious mind by absorbing and assimilating all experience, realising that we can learn our lessons from that which is evil as well as from that which is good, and that any experience, however evil, from which we learn a lesson is converted from poison into food. While it is necessary that certain types of ideas should be repressed lest they should translate themselves into action, let us never forget that repression need not necessarily imply dissociation, which is an unmixed evil. Dissociation would never occur if we were honest with ourselves. When we refuse to admit, even to ourselves, that our nature possesses certain primitive aspects, we prevent the ideas connected with these aspects from being affiliated to our personality and taking their place in our mental life; they therefore become foreign bodies in the mind, technically termed dissociated complexes, which function independently of the main ego complex. Instead of taking this attitude, let us recognise the existence of these primitive impulses in ourselves; and when we find their manifestations obtruding themselves, let us gently but firmly put them in their place, and see to it that they do not obtain the upper hand. Let us never forget the enormous power of autosuggestion, for the subconscious mind will tend to translate into action any image that is presented to it sufficiently vividly, especially if that image be charged with emotion. Let us therefore be very careful what mental pictures we permit ourselves to dwell upon persistently, whether with fear or desire, for they will mould our lives and even our circumstances to an extent we little realise. Our whole aim should be to maintain the integrity of the personality, to prevent any splitting off of complexes of ideas, and to see that the instincts, welling up in the deeper levels of our nature, should find their channels clear and unobstructed, so that they may flow out into action on the higher levels of our life. CHAPTER XXIV CONCLUSION It has been said that there is no scrap of knowledge concerning the remotest star which will not, sooner or later, be found to have its bearing upon the problems of human life, and we may well ask what the science of human nature itself has to contribute to the solution of our daily problems.