Or again, let us examine our own personal likes and dislikes. Frequently one can assign no reason whatsoever for these. They may exist, in fact, against what we call our better judgment. We may love a person in spite of certain faults, or dislike him in spite of his virtues. If the matter be examined further, however, we not infrequently find the reasons for our emotions towards him. Either his manner, dress, or tone of voice, or some other trivial feature may resemble someone we have liked before, or on the contrary, some mannerism may call to mind a similar mannerism which we associate either in ourselves or in some other person, with unpleasant characteristics. Our unconscious mind has rapidly sized up all these points, appraised them, and presented our conscious mind with the resulting emotions alone. So-called intuition is, to a large extent, merely rapid unconscious reasoning, in which minute details are taken into consideration by the unconscious, and only the final opinion presented to consciousness. One should beware of trusting intuition too much, however, in spite of popular prejudice to the contrary, for unconscious reasoning is just as liable to be wrong in its conclusions as is conscious reasoning; and it is just as liable to reach the conclusion which best serves its immediate purpose, and to suppress truth where it is unpleasant.[1] Some psychologists think that the unconscious mind is _infallible_ in purely _deductive_ reasoning from the _premises_ from which it starts. But it provides its own premises from a secret store and also accepts any suggested premises which are not repugnant. The premises may therefore be wrong but the deductive reasoning is accurate. In this case the conclusions will only be wrong because the premises are wrong. FOOTNOTE: [1] Unconscious reasoning or intuition is found chiefly in those who have not been trained in subjects which induce and train logical conscious reasoning. It is not a prerogative of sex, but on the whole is found more amongst women, merely because of their method of training from childhood upwards. In children and savages intuition is found equally present in both sexes. The loss of intuition merely means that the training of the conscious mind has caused us to mistrust conclusions for which we cannot consciously see the reasons. CHAPTER II REPRESSION §1