with the stars. He is let out to the boundaries of heaven and the
night-sky bears him up in the heat of the day.

In the presence of a great work of art--a work of inspiration or faith,
there is no such thing as appreciation, without letting one's self go.

II

The Subconscious Self

The criticism of Carlyle's remark, "Editors are not here to say
'How,'"--that it is "ungracious and tantalisingly elusive," is a fair
illustration of the mood to which the habit of analysis leads its
victims. The explainer cannot let himself go. The puttering love of
explaining and the need of explaining dog his soul at every turn of
thought or thought of having a thought. He not only puts a microscope to
his eyes to know with, but his eyes have ingrown microscopes. The
microscope has become a part of his eyes. He cannot see anything without
putting it on a slide, and when his microscope will not focus it, and it
cannot be reduced and explained, he explains that it is not there.

The man of genius, on the other hand, with whom truth is an experience
instead of a specimen, has learned that the probabilities are that the
more impossible it is to explain a truth the more truth there is in it.
In so far as the truth is an experience to him, he is not looking for
slides. He will not mount it as a specimen and he is not interested in
seeing it explained or focussed. He lives with it in his own heart in so
far as he possesses it, and he looks at it with a telescope for that
greater part which he cannot possess. The microscope is perpetually
mislaid. He has the experience itself and the one thing he wants to do
with it is to convey it to others. He does this by giving himself up to
it. The truth having become a part of him by his thus giving himself up,
it becomes a part of his reader, by his reader's giving himself up.

Reading a work of genius is one man's unconsciousness greeting another
man's. No author of the higher class can possibly be read without this
mutual exchange of unconsciousness. He cannot be explained. He cannot
explain himself. And he cannot be enjoyed, appreciated, or criticised by
those who expect him to. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned,
that is, experienced things are discerned by experience. They are
"ungracious and tantalisingly elusive."

When the man who has a little talent tells a truth he tells the truth so
ill that he is obliged to tell how to do it. The artist, on the other
hand, having given himsel