114 What is Inspiration? [vn. 



personality of the foreign spirit which has come to 

 dwell in his body. This is the theory of oracle- 

 possession, and from this to the theory of inspiration, 

 as generally current in antiquity, it is evidently but 

 a short step. Instead of supplanting the personality 

 of the prophet, the foreign spirit has but to be con- 

 ceived as swaying or influencing the prophet's mind 

 from without, and this step is taken ; instead of 

 possession we have inspiration. 



Thus in its origin the word " inspiration " is im- 

 plicated with a whole theory of the universe — or, to 

 speak more appropriately, with a general way of 

 looking at natural phenomena. In the lower stages 

 of culture men know nothing of a universe, but they 

 contemplate natural phenomena as under the capri- 

 cious direction of innumerable ghostly beings simi- 

 lar to men. In most cases, indeed, these demons 

 or deities are supposed to be the ghosts of ancestral 

 chieftains. The philosophy which interprets Nature 

 in this way is extremely crude, but it is quite in- 

 telligible and consistent with itself; and, when a 

 barbarian speaks of his prophet as " inspired " by the 

 tutelary deity of the tribe, we know exactly what 

 he means. He means that the words are whispered 

 or otherwise suggested to the prophet by the ghost 

 of some old chief of the tribe ; and, when he himself 



