[20] Dr. Chabaneix, Le subconscient sur les artistes, les savants, et les écrivains, Paris, 1897, p. 87.
[21] The recent case, studied with so much ability by M. Flournoy in his book, "Des Indes à la planète Mars" (1900), is an example of the subliminal creative imagination, and of the work it is capable of doing by itself.
[22] We shall return to this point in another part of this work. See Part II, [chapter iv].
[23] Thus Howe (American Journal of Psychology, vi, 239 ff.), has published some investigations in the negative. One series of 557 experiments gave him eight apparently mediate associations; after examination, he reduced them to a single one, which seemed to him doubtful. Another series of 961 experiments gives 72 cases, for which he offers an explanation other than mediate association. On the other hand, Aschaffenburg admits them to the extent of four per cent.; the association-time is longer than for average associations (Psychologische Arbeiten, I and II). Consult especially Scripture, The New Psychology, chapter xiii, with experiments in support of his conclusion.
[24] Ziehen, Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie, 4th edition, 1898, pp. 164, 174. Also, Sully, Human Mind, I, 343.
CHAPTER IV
THE ORGANIC CONDITIONS OF THE IMAGINATION
Whatever opinion we may hold concerning the nature of the unconscious, since that form of activity is related more than any other to the physiological conditions of the mental life, the present time is suitable for an exposition of the hypotheses that it is permissible to express concerning the organic bases of the imagination. What we may regard as positive, or even as probable, is very little.