[6] And perhaps this is one of the commonest subjective
assurances of faith, namely, that our faith grows and declines with what
we know intuitively to be our better moods; that when lax we are
sceptical, and believing when conscientious.

Another species of will-guidance recognized by saints, is not so much by
way of a vague feeling seeking interpretation, as by way of a sort of
enforced decision with regard to some naturally suggested course of
conduct. And this, perhaps, is what is more technically understood by an
inspiration; as, for example, when the question of writing or not
writing something publicly useful, say, the records of the Kings of
Israel, rises in the mind, and it is decided for and in the subject, but
not by him. Of course this "inspiration" is a common but not essential
accompaniment of "revelation" or "mind-control,"--in those cases,
namely, where the communicated information is for the good of others;
as, also, where it is for the guidance of the practical conduct of the
recipient. Such "inspiration" at times seems to be no more than a strong
inclination compatible with liberty; at other times it amounts to such a
"fixing" of the practical judgment as would ordinarily result from a
determination of the power of choice--if that were not a contradiction.
Better to say, it is a taking of the matter out of the jurisdiction of
choice, by the creation of an _idee fixe_ [7] in the subject's mind.

Turning now to "revelation" in the stricter sense of a preternatural
enlightenment of the mind, it might conceivably be either by way of a
real accretion of knowledge--an addition to the contents of the mind--or
else by way of manipulating contents already there, as we ourselves do
by reminiscence, by rumination, comparison, analysis, inference. Thus we
can conceive the mind being consciously controlled in these operations,
as it were, by a foreign will; being reminded of this or that; being
shown new consequences, applications, and relations of truths already
possessed.

When, however, there is a preternatural addition to the sum total of the
mind's knowledge, we can conceive the communication to be effected
through the outer senses, as by visions seen (real or symbolic), or
words heard; or through the imagination--pictorial, symbolic, or verbal;
visual or auditory; or, finally, in the very reason and intelligence
itself, whose ideas are embodied in these images and signs, and to whose
apprehension they are