olly; to misuse it, disaster. For it is safe to
utilize this god-energy only in its own proper sphere. Enthusiasm
moves the human vessel. To let it move the rudder, too, is criminal
negligence. Brahms once made a remark somewhat to this effect: The
reason why there is so much bad music in the world is that composers
are in too much of a hurry. When an inspiration comes to them, what do
they do? Instead of taking it out for a long, cool walk, they sit down
at once to work it up, but let it work _them_ up instead into an
absolutely uncritical enthusiasm in which every splutter of the
goose-quill looks to them like part of a swan-song.

Love is blind, they say. This is an exaggeration. But it is based on
the fact that enthusiasm, whether it appears as love, or in any other
form, always has trouble with its eyes. In its own place it is
incomparably efficient; only keep it away from the pilot-house!

Since this god-energy is the most precious and important thing that we
have, why should our word for its possessor have sunk almost to the
level of a contemptuous epithet? Nine times in ten we apply it to the
man who allows his enthusiasm to steer his vessel. It would be full as
logical to employ the word "writer" for one who misuses his literary
gift in writing dishonest advertisements. When we speak of an
"enthusiast" to-day, we usually mean a person who has all the
ill-judging impulsiveness of a child without its compensating charm,
and is therefore not to be taken seriously. "He's only an enthusiast!"
This has been said about Columbus and Christ and every other great man
who ever lived.

But besides its poor sense of distance and direction, men have another
complaint against enthusiasm. They think it insincere on account of
its capacity for frequent and violent fluctuation in temperature. In
his "Creative Evolution," Bergson shows how "our most ardent
enthusiasm, as soon as it is externalized into action, is so naturally
congealed into the cold calculation of interest or vanity, the one so
easily takes the shape of the other, that we might confuse them
together, doubt our own sincerity, deny goodness and love, if we did
not know that the dead retain for a time the features of the living."

The philosopher then goes on to show how, when we fall into this
confusion, we are unjust to enthusiasm, which is the materialization
of the invisible breath of life itself. It is "the spirit." The action
it induces is "the letter." Th