Another illustration of the persistent way in which the unconscious mind will reason and act can be given from my own experience. I had to attend a lecture given by a man, with whose views I totally disagreed. I had no wish to attend the lecture, but felt compelled to do so in an official capacity. Consciously, I determined to go; unconsciously when I made the note of the lecture, I wrote down the time of it in my engagement-book a week late. On discovering this, I consciously endeavoured to rectify the matter, but my unconscious mind wrote Tuesday instead of Thursday in my engagement-book, so it went down wrong once again. Later, having been forced to see my mistake by a friend mentioning the matter, I omitted for a short time to rectify it in my engagement-book, feeling sure that I should remember to do so a little later. But alas! for the determination of my conscious mind. I forthwith made an appointment for a patient at the real time appointed for the lecture, and so could not in the end attend it. Now, these lectures were held regularly on a particular day of the week, and I had generally looked forward to them, and attended them without any difficulty. It was only in this one case that I did not wish to go. My conscious mind decided to attend; but my unconscious mind played trick after trick in order that my real desires should be satisfied. Such examples could be multiplied indefinitely. It is possible that many would say that they do not actually prove unconscious reasoning nor power of thought. Let me, therefore, give one or two simple examples of a different nature. A friend of mine once told me that he had spent several days in trying to work out a chess problem without success. One morning, he woke up with a picture in his mind of the exact moves that he must make. The problem had been solved in his sleep unconsciously, and with no recollection on waking of any conscious effort at reaching the solution. In my own experience, as a school-boy, I failed to solve a problem in Euclid during an examination. On the morning afterwards, the solution flashed through my brain suddenly, as I lay in bed. Whether I had solved it in my sleep, or whether it was solved in bed as I lay awake, I am not prepared to say. Of this much, however, I am certain. I made no conscious effort; my mind merely wandered lazily in the direction of the previous day’s failure, and almost instantaneously the right solution appeared without effort.