most being like a second self more
powerful than we are. It invades religion. It incarnates itself in
lust. It obsesses taste. It masquerades as intuition. It triumphs over
reason. With an irrationality, that seems at the same time terrible
and beautiful, instinct moves straight to its goal. It follows its
purpose with demonic tenacity, heedless of logic, contemptuous of
consequences. It cares nothing for contradictions. It forces
contradictions to lose themselves in one another according to some
secret law of its own, unknown to the law of reason.

Such, then, is instinct, the sub-conscious fatality of Nature so
difficult to control; whose unrestrained activity is capable of
completely destroying the rhythm of the complex vision. Nothing
but the power of the apex-thought of man's whole concentrated
being is able to dominate this thing. It may be detected lurking in
the droop of the Sphinx's eyelids and in the cruel smile upon her
mouth. But the answer given to the challenge of this subterranean
force is not, after all, any logical judgment of the pure reason. It
is the answer of the vision of the artist, holding its treacherous
material under his creative hand.

Let us turn now to the attribute of "intuition." Intuition is a thing
more clearly definable and more easily analysed than almost any
other of the aspects of the soul. Intuition is the feminine counterpart
of imagination; and, as compared with instinct, it is a power which
acts in clearly denned, isolated, intermittent movements, each one of
which has a definite beginning and a definite end. As compared
with imagination, intuition is passive and receptive; as compared
with instinct it does not fumble and grope forward, steadily and
tenaciously, among the roots of things; but it suspends itself,
mirror-like, upon the surface of the unfathomable waters, and
suspended there reflects in swift sudden glimpses the mysterious
movements of the great deep. In this process of reflecting, or
apprehending in sudden, intermittent glimpses, the mysterious depths
of the life of the soul, intuition is less affected by the reason
or by the will than any other aspect of the complex vision.

Instinct, in secret sub-conscious alliance with the will, is a
permanent automatic energy, working in the hidden darkness of the
roots of things like an ever-flowing subterranean stream. The
revelations of intuition, on the other hand, are not flowing and
constant, but separate, isolated,