FLYING THOUGHTS 39 



in the right place, since owing to one's long and close 

 intimacy with the horse, one manages him auto- 

 matically without thinking anything about it, the 

 mind being left quite free, just as a man in walking 

 manages his legs. The effect was not then that which 

 is produced by merely being on horseback and the 

 swift motion, but almost exclusively of the wind. 



Undoubtedly, one gets more air into one's lungs 

 in a gallop than on foot, and the oxygenation of the 

 blood is more rapid, but the greater exhilaration thus 

 produced is experienced whether there is wind or not. 



My experience in a high wind was as if, blowing 

 through me, it had blown away some obstruction, 

 some bar to a perfect freedom of mind; or as if the 

 two minds in us, the conscious, slow, laborious mind, 

 and the mind that works easily and swiftly in the 

 dark, and only from time to time gives us a result, 

 a glimpse, of its secret doings, had become merged 

 in one, the thoughts coming and going so rapidly 

 that it was like the flight of a bird, every wing-beat 

 a thought, spontaneously clothed in an appropriate 

 expression, coming and vanishing, to be instantly 

 succeeded by others and still others. The poet says: 



For what are thoughts 



But birds that fly ? 

 And what are words 



But traps to catch them by ? 



Many are dead 



And lost in Lethe's river; 

 But some survive 



As joys encaged forever. 



They would perhaps have been a joy for ever to me 



