INSPIRATION. As it appears in the general history of religions, inspiration may be defined very broadly as a spiritual influence that occurs spontaneously and renders a person capable of thinking, speaking, or acting in ways that transcend ordinary human capacities. Taken in this general sense, the term refers to a form of religious experience that is widely distributed and found in a great variety of forms. Taken more narrowly, the actual term (which derives from the Latin inspirare, "to blow or breath upon") implies the existence of a spiritus, or "breath," that is breathed into the soul and enlivens it. Although inspiration may often be conceived in this way, its specificity as a religious phenomenon should not be located in an explicit notion of spiritual breath or divine spirit, because such a notion may be absent in cases where one would still wish to speak of inspiration. In...