APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 33 



Demoniac possession is mythical ; but the faculty of 

 being- possessed, more or less completely, by an idea is 

 probably the fundamental condition of what is called 

 genius, whether it show itself in the saint, the artist, 

 or the man of science. One calls it faith, another 

 calls it inspiration, a third calls it insight ; but the 

 " intending of the mind," to borrow Newton's well- 

 known phrase, the concentration of all the rays of 

 intellectual energy on some one point, until it glows 

 and colours the whole cast of thought with its 

 peculiar light, is common to all. 



Whatever happens, science may bide her time in 

 patience and in confidence. 



The only people, scientific or other, who never 

 make mistakes are those who do nothing. 



The most considerable difference I note among 

 men is not in their readiness to fall into error, but 

 in their readiness to acknowledge these inevitable 

 lapses. 



Quite apart from deliberate and conscious fraud 

 (which is a rarer thing than is often supposed), people 

 whose mythopceic faculty is once stirred are capable 

 of saying the thing that is not, and of acting as they 

 should not, to an extent which is hardly imaginable 



