In preparing to write or speak upon a subject of which the details have been mastered, I gather, after some inquiry, that the usual method among persons who have the gift of fluency is to think cursorily on topics connected with it, until what I have called the antechamber is well filled with cognate ideas.  Then, to allow the ideas to link themselves in their own way, breaking the linkage continually and recommencing afresh until some line of thought has suggested itself that appears from a rapid and light glance to thread the chief topics together.  After this the connections are brought step by step fully into consciousness, they are short-circuited here and extended there, as found advisable until a firm connection is found to be established between all parts of the subject.  After this is done the mental effort is over, and the composition may proceed fluently in an automatic way.  Though this, I believe, is a usual way, it is by no means universal, for there are very great differences in the conditions under which different persons compose most readily.  They seem to afford as good evidence of the variety of mental and bodily constitutions as can be met with in any other line of inquiry.

It is very reasonable to think that part at least of the inward response to spiritual yearnings is of similar origin to the visions, thoughts, and phrases that arise automatically when the mind has prepared itself to receive them.  The devout man attunes his mind to holy ideas, he excludes alien thoughts, and he waits and watches in stillness.  Gradually the darkness is lifted, the silence of the mind is broken, and the spiritual responses are heard in the way so often described by devout men of all religions.  This seems to me precisely analogous to the automatic presentation of ordinary ideas to orators and literary men, and to the visions of which I spoke in the chapter on that subject.  Dividuality replaces individuality, and one portion of the mind communicates with another portion as with a different person.

Some persons and races are naturally more imaginative than others, and show their visionary tendency in every one of the respects named.  They are fanciful, oratorical, poetical, and credulous.  The “enthusiastic” faculties all seem to hang together; I shall recur to this in the chapter on enthusiasm.

I have already pointed out the existence of a morbid form of piety:  there is also a morbid condition of apparent inspiration to which imaginative women are subject, especially those who suffer more or less from hysteria.  It is accompanied in a very curious way, familiar to medical men, by almost incredible acts of deceit.  It is found even in ladies of position apparently above the suspicion of vulgar fraud, and seems associated with a strange secret desire to attract notice.  Ecstatics, seers of visions, and devout fasting girls who eat on the sly, often belong to this category.

EARLY SENTIMENTS.