d
gathered together, and a thousand other details besides. The momentum
develops and breaks up of itself into particulars that might be
retailed _ad infinitum._ The more he advances the more he finds; he
will never have exhausted the subject; and nevertheless if he turns
round suddenly to face the momentum he feels at his back and see what
it is, it eludes him; for it is not a thing but a direction of
movement, and though capable of being extended indefinitely, it is
simplicity itself."

[Footnote 3: "Introduction a la Metaphysique." _Revue de Metaphysique
et de Morale_, Janvier, 1903.]

This is evidently well observed: heighten the tone a little, and you
might have a poem on those joyful pangs of gestation and parturition
which are not denied to a male animal. It is a description of the
_sensation_ of literary composition, of the _immediate experience_ of
a writer as words and images rise into his mind. He cannot summon his
memories explicitly, for he would first have to remember them to do
so; his consciousness of inspiration, of literary creation, is nothing
but a consciousness of pregnancy and of a certain "direction of
movement," as if he were being wafted in a balloon; and just in its
moments of highest tension his mind is filled with mere expectancy and
mere excitement, without images, plans, or motives; and what guides it
is inwardly, as M. Bergson says, simplicity itself. Yet excellent as
such a description is psychologically, it is a literary confession
rather than a piece of science; for scientific psychology is a part of
natural history, and when in nature we come upon such a notable
phenomenon as this, that some men write and write eloquently, we
should at once study the antecedents and the conditions under which
this occurs; we should try, by experiment if possible, to see what
variations in the result follow upon variations in the situation. At
once we should begin to perceive how casual and superficial are those
data of introspection which M. Bergson's account reproduces. Does that
painful effort, for instance, occur always? Is it the moral source, as
he seems to suggest, of the good and miraculous fruits that follow?
Not at all: such an effort is required only when the writer is
overworked, or driven to express himself under pressure; in the
spontaneous talker or singer, in the orator surpassing himself and
overflowing with eloquence, there is no effort at all; only facility,
and joyous undirected ab