FINAL CAUSES ^ 141 



Still we have not reached the primary activity yet ; 

 the source, perhaps common, both of instinct in animals 

 and intelligence in man. M. Janet says that what is 

 called Inspiration perhaps comes nearest to our conception 

 of a creative intelligence, or the inventing at once both 

 the means and the end, by a single thought, in which 

 foresight may be regarded as identical with immediate 

 conception ; as, for example, the entire air dominates the 

 very first notes of a musical composition. M. Janet 

 considers the products of a genius as vastly superior to 

 the unconscious products of instinct. He says, " The 

 soul inspired by sentiment is not a blind activity. It is 

 conscious of itself ; it has a vivid and profound intuition 

 of its end ; it is quite full of it ; and it is precisely this 

 vivid sentiment of the end that evokes in it its own 

 realisation. Instinct, on the other hand, not only is 

 ignorant of the means, but of the end." ^ 



Is not our author here adducing what is accidental to 

 man as grounds for regarding genius as essentially and 

 per se intelligent ? I cannot help thinking that M. 

 Janet does not attribute enough to the wonderful powers 

 of the automatic properties of the brain. " Calculating 

 boys " can give no rationale of the marvellous feats per- 

 formed by their own brains. A half-idiotic person may 

 be an extraordinary musical performer, like the negro, 

 " Blind Tom," who used to play in public some fifty 

 years ago. Remarkable powers of improvisation are 

 perfectly spontaneous and automatic, often enkindled by 

 artificial means, which specially excite the automatic 

 action of the brain. It would seem very difficult to 

 separate flights of genius from automatism, when we 

 put aside the consciousness of man and his powers, and 



^ P. 394- 



