t comes into mind, and immediately the mind
of the genius, by contrast, comparison, analogy, inference, and
imagination, weaves around it a wealth of possibility: the dull-witted
man sees the same, but his mind travels no farther than the actual
vision. The quick mind supplies the apt repartee, while the dullard
thinks of the appropriate reply next morning--if at all. The
disadvantage of the latter mind is that it does not work easily, the
danger of the former is that it may work too easily and get out of
control. Where the central control does not suffice to keep a strong
hand upon this easy-running mental machinery, it may quickly merge into
eccentricity and possibly into madness. The insane show this same
tendency to rapid, but irrelevant, association which lands them in
incoherency: they make, or indulge in, associations which no normal
person would allow. A genius is only a genius while the necessary
selection and control over these associations is retained, when this is
lost the genius passes into that insanity to which it is so closely
associated. The same conditions and remarks apply to the artistic
temperament, which itself is a mark of possible genius.

The artistic impulse is essentially creative, and in this it
demonstrates its relationship to the question of sex. It is well
recognised that many of the inspirations of genius in the various forms
of Art have come at a time when the artist was in the throes of the
gentle passion. This "love neurosis," as the cold specialist dubs it, is
in essence a condition of exaltation, and therefore of exceptional
sensitiveness. Need we wonder, then, that our artist-friend makes
perhaps more frequent excursions than the humdrum individual into the
realms of amorous exuberance? By nature he is more susceptible to the
influence of the finer emotions, and he will find a thousand graces in
the curve of an arm or the turn of an ankle, where, were you to appraise
such in cold blood, there might be after all little enough to rave
about.

It seems probable that the inspiration of the opposite sex in the
artistic direction lies more in this mood of exaltation than in any
specific influence. In the exalted condition there is the greater
capacity of response to inspiration from outside ourselves, and also
from within. Under all circumstances we are being played upon by the
waves of the sea of thoughts in which we daily live, and therefore
inspiration from this outside source is som