464 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The notion of producing a work of high imaginative power in a state 

 of perfect cold blood is, as Plato long ago pointed out, absurd. 

 Spiritual generation only takes place when the soul burns and throbs 

 as with a fever. At the moment of productive inspiration the whole 

 being is agitated to its depths, and the latent deposits of years of 

 experience come to the surface. This full spring-tide of imagination, 

 this cerebral turmoil and clash of currents, makes the severest demands 

 on the controlling and guiding forces of volition. And it is only 

 when the mind is capable of the highest effort of sustained concen- 

 tration that the process of selecting and organizing can keep pace with 

 the rapid inflow of material. Hence, though the excitement may in 

 certain cases be intensely j>leasurable, it is nearly always fatiguing and 

 wearing. 



But great artistic works are not always flashed into the world by 

 this swift electric process. Some books that men will not let die have 

 been the result of lengthened toil troubled by many a miserable check 

 and delay. The record of Carlyle's experience sufficiently illustrates 

 the truth that there is no necessary relation between rapidity of in- 

 vention and execution and artistic value of result,* Much depends on 

 the passing mood, more still on the temperament of the individual 

 artist. There are others besides Carlyle to whom spiritual parturition 

 has been largely an experience of suffering, the pangs being but rarely 

 submerged in the large, joyous consciousness that a new idea is born 

 into the world. And when this is so there is another kind of strain 

 on the mental machine. The struggle with intellectual obstacle, the 

 fierce passionate resolve to come iris Heine which every student ex- 

 periences in a humble way, becomes something for the spectator to 

 tremble at. 



Is it surprising that such states of mental stress and storm should 

 afterward leave the subject exhausted and prostrate ? The wild 

 excitement of production is apt to dull the sense still further to the 

 prosaic enjoyments with which ordinary mortals have to content them- 

 selves. More than this, the long and intense preoccupation with the 

 things of the imagination is apt to induce a certain lethargy and 

 stupor of the senses, in which the sharp outlines of reality are effaced 

 in a misty, dream-like phantasmagoria. The reader of Carlyle's " Mem- 

 oirs " need not be reminded how plainly all this appears in his expe- 

 rience. Even the warm and gladdening ray of dawning prosperity 

 failed to cheer him in these hours of spiritual collapse. And he ex- 

 claims in one place that there is no other pleasure and possession for 

 him but that of feeling himself working and alive, f 



* M. Joly illustrates the same fact by the experience of Voltaire, " Revue Philoso- 

 phiquc," November, 1882, pp. 496, 497. 



f "Thomas Carlyle," vol. ii, p. 129. Probably one reason why painters so rarely 

 show morbid mental traits is that in their case the function of the senses can never be so 

 completely overborne by the weight of imagination. 



