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The important activities of the mind which are grouped under

the head of Auto-Suggestion, and which we have described in
another volume of this series, have for their active principle this
subconscious Will. That is to say, the Auto-Suggestion impressed
upon one s mind arouses the subconscious Will, which then
holds the mind to its allotted tasks just as the conscious Will
so holds it ordinarily. So far is this true that not only may the
subconscious Will be aroused to exert a pressure to bear in
the direction of character-building, establishing or neutralizing
of habits, etc., but by practice the knack may be acquired
whereby the intellectual processes may be urged to work along
subconscious lines, to later present the field of consciousness
with the finished product. The mind may be charged to work
out certain perplexing problems, while its owner is engaged in
other mental work, or during sleep. In fact, many of us do this
without realizing it. We evince a strong desire to know or solve
certain things, and then lay the matter aside, only to find that,
later on, the answer will flash into our minds unannounced. Or,
else, when we return to a consideration of the task, we find
that the matter has been threshed out and rearranged in our
minds along subconscious lines. In all of these subconscious
activities, the subconscious Will plays the same important part
that is performed by the conscious Will in the corresponding
conscious mental activities.
Any mention of the subconscious Will would be incomplete
without a reference to and quotations from the work of Charles
Godfrey Leland who devoted much thought to this subject,
which he had embodied in his well-known work entitled Have
You a Strong Will, which has been republished in America
under the title of The Mystic Will. Mr. Leland conducted a line
of experiments tending to establish the fact that the Will could
be set to work along subconscious lines by auto-suggestions
given to oneself just before going to sleep. He seemed to be
of the opinion that the ante-sleep auto-suggestion was an
important feature of the process, but later investigators have
The Subconscious Will