Man's Supreme Inheritance Author:F. Matthias Alexander Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill SUBCONSCIOUSNESS AND INHIBITION "You can have neither a greater nor a less dominion than that over yourself."—Leonardo Da V1nc1. Within the last thi... more »rty years we have evolved a new science, the science of psychology. A generation ago psychology was subject-matter only for the philosopher, the metaphysician, the poet, or the ecclesiastic; now it is being investigated in the laboratory by tests of sensibility, reaction-times, and other responses to stimulation too technical to be explained here, tests carried out by means of elaborate and intricate instruments and machinery designed to weigh the hidden springs of life in the balance. The phrase I have italicised is purposely vague, for I have no wish to fall foul of a terminology or to make any a priori assumption which might involve me in controversial matters completely outside my province. At the same time I see clearly that some convenient phrase will become necessary, and I will therefore adopt one which is at least familiar and within certain limits descriptive enough, namely, the "subconscious self." It may seem strange that one should look to any such formally organised science as modern psychology, to a science that is working in a laboratory with mechanical appliances, for any elucidation of a question which has for so long been regarded as strictly within the domain of the priest. But science, as Tyndall said, is only another name for common- sense, and a little consideration will show that the postulate I have insisted upon, namely, the growth and progress of intellectual control, demands that this admirable quality of common-sense or reason, should be applied to the elucidation of this all-important problem. Unhappily, psychology, from which we hope so much, is as yet in its infancy, and the few attempts ...« less