(whatever may be its
origin) demands a wider meaning for the term. A nearer
approach to what he wants is found in the feats of certain
calculating prodigies, who often seem to reach their astounding
results rather by insights than operations. The celebrated
mathematician, Euler, is said to have possessed, in addition to
his extraordinary memory for numbers, "a kind of _divining
power_," by which he perceived almost at a glance, the most
complicated relations of factors and the best modes of
manipulating them. As regards the calculating prodigies, a
thought suggests itself. It has been almost invariably found that
as they learnt more, their special power decreased. Has this any
bearing on the loss of imaginative power and aesthetic insight
which often accompanies the spread of civilisation?--or on the
materialisms and the "brute matter" doctrines which so often
afflict scientists?

But even this expansion of meaning does not satisfy the
nature-mystic. Perhaps the case of musical intuition comes still
nearer to what he is looking for, inasmuch as cognition, in the
sense of definite knowledge, is here reduced to a minimum. On
the other hand there is more at work than mere feeling. The soul
of the music-lover moves about in a world which is at once
realised and yet unrealised--his perceptions are vivid and yet
indefinable. And it is important to note that the basis is
sense-perception.

And thus we say of mystical intuition that it is a passing of the
mind, without reasoned process, behind the world of phenomena
into a more central sphere of reality--an insight into a
world beyond the reach of sense--a direct beholding of
spiritual facts, guided by a logic which is implicit, though it
does not emerge into consciousness. It is intuition of this fuller
and deeper kind which in all likelihood forms the core of what
some would call the aesthetic and the moral senses.

And here an interesting question presents itself. The older
mystics, and the more orthodox of modern mystics, would have
us believe that the intuition for which they contend is purely
passive. The mind must be quieted, the will negated, until a
state of simple receptivity is attained. Is this contention valid? It
is difficult to break away from venerable traditions, but the
nature-mystic who would be abreast of the knowledge of his
day must at times be prepared to submit even intuition itself to
critical analysis. And in this instance, criticism is all the