THE NATURAL 



or sanction of a possible neighbouring health beneath the 

 skull. 



Creative thought has manifested itself in images, in 

 music, which is to sound what the concrete image is to 

 sight. And the thought of genius, even of the mathemati- 

 cal genius, the mathematical prodigy, is really the same 

 sort of thing, it is a sudden out-spurt of mind which takes 

 the form demanded by the problem; which creates the 

 answer, and baffles the man counting on the abacus. 



I query the remarks about the sphex in Chapter XIX, 

 "que le sphex s'est forme lentement," I query this with a 

 conviction for which anyone is at liberty to call me 

 lunatic, and for which I offer no better ground than 

 simple introspection. I believe, and on no better ground 

 than that of a sudden emotion, that the change of species 

 is not a slow matter, managed by cross-breeding, of 

 nature's leporides and bardots, I believe that the species 

 changes as suddenly as a man makes a song or a poem, 

 or as suddenly as he starts making them, more suddenly 

 than he can cut a statue in stone, at most as slowly as 

 a locust or long-tailed Sirmione false mosquito emerges 

 from its outgrown skin. It is not even proved that man 

 is at the end of his physical changes. Say that the di- 

 versification of species has passed its most sensational 

 phases, say that it had once a great stimulus from the 

 rapidity of the earth's cooling, if one accepts the geolo- 

 gists' interpretation of that thermometric cyclone. 



The cooling planet contracts, it is as if one had some 

 mud in a tin pail, and forced down the lid with such pres- 

 sure that the can sprung a dozen leaks, or it is as if one 

 had the mud in a linen bag and squeezed; merely as 

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