The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular PhilosophyJames, William
Religion
The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
James, William
Belief and doubt; Essays; Philosophy
A subconscious something may also preserve experiences to which we do
not openly attend. A lady taking her lunch in town finds herself
without her purse. Instantly a sense comes over her of rising from the
breakfast-table and hearing her purse drop upon the floor. On reaching
home she finds {322} nothing under the table, but summons the servant
to say where she has put the purse. The servant produces it, saying;
"How did you know where it was? You rose and left the room as if you
did n't know you 'd dropped it." The same subconscious something may
recollect what we have forgotten. A lady accustomed to taking
salicylate of soda for muscular rheumatism wakes one early winter
morning with an aching neck. In the twilight she takes what she
supposes to be her customary powder from a drawer, dissolves it in a
glass of water, and is about to drink it down, when she feels a sharp
slap on her shoulder and hears a voice in her ear saying, "Taste it!"
On examination, she finds she has got a morphine powder by mistake.
The natural interpretation is that a sleeping memory of the morphine
powders awoke in this quasi-explosive way. A like explanation offers
itself as most plausible for the following case: A lady, with little
time to catch the train, and the expressman about to call, is excitedly
looking for the lost key of a packed trunk. Hurrying upstairs with a
bunch of keys, proved useless, in her hand, she hears an 'objective'
voice distinctly say, "Try the key of the cake-box." Being tried, it
fits. This also may well have been the effect of forgotten experience.
Now, the effect is doubtless due to the same hallucinatory mechanism;
but the source is less easily assigned as we ascend the scale of cases.
A lady, for instance, goes after breakfast to see about one of her
servants who has become ill over night. She is startled at distinctly
reading over the bedroom door in gilt letters the word 'small-pox.'
The doctor is sent for, and ere long pronounces small-pox to be the
disease, although the lady says, "The thought of {323} the girl's
having small-pox never entered my mind till I saw the apparent
inscription." Then come other cases of warning; for example, that of a
youth sitting in a wagon under a shed, who suddenly hears his dead
mother's voice say, "Stephen, get away from here quick!" and jumps out
just in time to see the shed-roof fall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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