To say that men of genius owe their achievements chiefly to the extent to which they supplement conscious effort by subconscious mental action, is by no means to say that a man of genius is essentially of different constitution from the ordinary man. Every man, as a matter of fact, has some degree of access to his subconscious, in his waking as in his sleeping moments.

Take your own case as an illustration. Over and over again, it is safe to say, you have had ideas unexpectedly occur to you, ideas of some value if only to the extent of enabling you to earn a little more money or to save a little more. The common experience of spontaneous recollection of a forgotten name is itself an instance of an upsurging from the subconscious. You have perhaps cudgelled your mind for hours to bring back the name of an acquaintance with whom you wish to get into touch.

All your efforts are in vain. But later, possibly at a dinner party, when your thoughts are concerned with something of altogether different character, the desired name suddenly presents itself to you - coming seemingly from nowhere, but actually from a corner of your subconscious, where it has been faithfully preserved together with all other facts gleaned in the course of your life.

To be sure, its recall means less to you than would a subconscious upsurging that made you the fortunate possessor of some highly original idea. The principle, however, is the same. You have been able to recall the forgotten name because you have had access to your subconscious. And the name is in your subconscious to be recalled because it is an acquisition you have gained by previous conscious mental action.

May it not be, then, that the reason your subconscious upsurgings are inferior to those of people more successful than you have yet been, is that you have not been at equal pains to provide your subconscious with the raw material for superior upsurgings?

Obviously, however potent the subconscious may be, it can not obtain superlatively fine results with scanty or inferior working material. And if the eminently successful owe much to ease of access to their subconscious, it is certain that they labor with prodigious diligence to give their subconscious an abundance of excellent material for its creative activities.

"All men of genius have been great workers. Even when, as has been observed in certain cases, they indulge in more or less protracted periods of idleness, they later make amends by an unusual industry; and, for that matter, their idleness after all is more seeming than real Ardent, whole-souled, absorption in the thing he has set himself to do that, unquestionably, is a distinguishing characteristic of the man of genius.

It is almost as if by instinct he labors hard to provide his subconsciousness with the data it must have in order to afford him, by way of recompense, those flashes of insight, those moments of inspiration, that mean acknowledged leadership among his fellow men."