ths he "fasted much, walked around in solitary places, and sate in
hollow trees and lonesome places, and frequently in the night walked
mournfully about." When the word of truth came to him it was of a
sudden, "through the immediate opening of the invisible spirit." Then a
new life commenced for him: "Now was I come up in Spirit through the
flaming sword into the Paradise of God. All things were new: all the
creation gave another smell unto me than before." The healing virtues of
all herbs were straightway made known to him, and the needful truths
about the kingdom of God.[147-2]

These are portraitures of the condition of _entheasm_. Its lineaments
are the same, find it where we may.

How is this similarity to be explained? Is it that this alleged
inspiration is always but the dream of a half-crazed brain? The deep and
real truths it has now and then revealed, the noble results it has
occasionally achieved, do not allow this view. A more worthy explanation
is at hand.

These preliminaries of inspiration are in fact but a parody, sometimes a
caricature, of the most intense intellectual action as shown in the
efforts of creative thought. The physiological characteristics of such
mental episodes indicate a lowering of the animal life, the respiration
is faint and slow, the pulse loses in force and frequency, the nerves of
special sense are almost inhibited, the eye is fixed and records no
impression, the ear registers no sound, necessary motions are performed
unconsciously, the condition approaches that of trance. There is also an
alarming similarity at times between the action of genius and of
madness, as is well known to alienists.

When the creative thought appears, it does so suddenly; it breaks upon
the mind when partly engaged with something else as an instantaneous
flash, apparently out of connection with previous efforts. This is the
history of all great discoveries, and it has been abundantly illustrated
from the lives of inventors, artists, poets and mathematicians. The
links of such a mental procedure we do not know. "The product of
inspiration, genius, is incomprehensible to itself. Its activity
proceeds on no beaten track, and we seek in vain to trace its footsteps.
There is no warrant for the value of its efforts. This it can alone
secure through voluntary submission to law. All its powers are centred
in the energy of production, and none is left for idle watching of the
process."[149-1]

The prevalent