300. Our study, in the last chapter, of the disintegrations of personality will teach us to seek our type of normal manhood in some example of strongly centralised control over as many elements of the personality as possible.

301. It has been suggested that the nervous development of our race tends rather to degeneracy; and Professor Lombroso, for instance, regards " the man of genius " as an aberrant and almost a morbid type.

302. I hold, on the other hand, that Genius may be best defined as a capacity of utilising powers which lie too deep for the ordinary man's control; so that an inspiration of genius is in truth a subliminal uprush of helpful faculty.

303. But before proceeding further we must clearly realise that by no means all that is subliminal in us is potentially "inspiration"; but that what lies beneath the threshold is at least as mixed in quality as what lies above.

304. The descriptive metaphor of highest-level, middle-level, and lowest-level centres, useful in distinguishing great classes of nervous activities, may be extended to different forms of automatic or subliminal manifestation.

305. I explain these inequalities by the assumption of a soul which exercises an imperfect and fluctuating control over the organism, along two main channels, only partly coincident; and I claim the title of genius for states in which some rivulet is drawn into supraliminal life from the undercurrent stream. And as psychologists we are bound to define genius by the mode of its operation; - not by the pleasure-giving properties of the result achieved; - by the source, not the quality, of the output.

306. Now as to normality, I urge that in a constantly evolving species the norm is best represented by the farthest evolutionary stage yet reached.

307. Comparison of genius to an intensification of the glow of a banded spectrum.

308. The form of genius, or of subliminal uprush, most easily measurable is the gift of the " calculating boy." This gift is usually first observed in childhood, and often disappears in a few years.

309. Table of principal Arithmetical Prodigies.

310. These " prodigies " - who are not "degenerates" - are generally unable to explain their own methods, which remain purely subliminal. Case of Mr. Blyth. Details of some other cases.

311. Further cases of similar definiteness of subliminal co-operation. Experiences of Mr. W. Higton.

312. Sir John Herschel's "Geometrical Spectres," which he regarded as "evidence of an intelligence distinct from that of our ordinary personality".

313. Vaguer impressions of subliminal mentation. Case quoted from Dr. Paul Chabaneix.

314. Co-ordination of the sleeping and waking phases of existence. R. L. Stevenson's elaboration of stories in his dreams.

315. On the other hand, Lombroso's collection of anecdotes of the degeneracy of men of genius is on several grounds very weak evidentially.

316. Nervous diseases are no doubt relatively more prominent in modern life, mainly on account of the diminution of diseases due to hunger, filth, and exposure.

317. Rapid nervous development also induces perturbation which masks evolution, as more advanced forms of faculty come into play.

318. The planetary scheme of man's evolution regards as mere by-products such joys and powers as are not due to that survival of the fittest which adapts man for success in the material world.

319. But, in fact, the history of life on earth has been a history not merely of adaptation to an environment known once for all, but of gradual discovery of the environment. The dawn of new faculty has again and again manifested a wider Cosmos to which life must react.

320. And thus the higher gifts of genius are no by-products, but are fresh perceptions of truth, and lie in the main stream of human evolution.

321. Yet since the output of genius is largely subliminal, and thus nearer to the extra-terrene source of life, it may sometimes be out of harmony with terrene existence; just as imaginal characteristics in the larva may be out of harmony with larval existence.

322. Thus, for example, subliminal mentation, while capable, with great poets, of using words much after the manner of music, does not, on the other hand, seem to be so closely and inevitably linked with speech as is mental action above the conscious threshold.

323. Speech and writing are summarisations of certain forms of complex gesture, inevitably inadequate to symbolise our whole psychical being.

324. Certain other forms of symbolism, - as observation and experiment seem to show, - are often more natural than speech for subliminal self-expression.

325. In this fact, indeed, one may roughly say, lies the need and the genesis of Art, which abandons logical definiteness of statement for the sake of a nearer approach to truth hidden in the ideal world.

326. The internal audition which externalises itself in poetry or music; the internal visualisation which externalises itself as plastic art; - these represent for us something truer and more permanent than the products of supraliminal thought.

327. We are here in danger of transcending our definition of genius as the crystallisation by subliminal uprushes of the content of supraliminal thought. But genius is inevitably linked both with trance and with automatism.

328. The flash of genius is a brief automatism, and certain prolonged efforts of genius remind us of the complexity of cerebral re-growth, - the "substitution of function " which takes place beneath the conscious level.

329. The talent of improvisation also, as with George Sand, may reach a point almost indistinguishable from automatism.

330. In some cases, as with M. de Curel, the act of invention merges into a quasi-hallucinatory perception of the imagined personages.

331. We may then naturally ask what is the relation of the man of genius to the sensitive ? Do his inspirations bring with them any supernormal knowledge ? He may get true impressions, although not definite impressions, of a supersensory world.

332. For evidence on this point we must consult the utterances of philosophers or poets.

333. In Wordsworth's Prelude we find an honest and deliberate attempt to answer this very question.

334. The subliminal uprush may bring to the poet a vague but genuine consciousness of the spiritual environment.

335. And similarly to the lover it may bring a consciousness of that universal link of spirit with spirit which is the generalisation of telepathy. The controversy as to the planetary or cosmical scope of the passion of Love is, in fact, central to our whole subject.

336. The planetary view, eloquently illustrated by Professor Pierre Janet, regards the sexual instinct as the nucleus of reality around which baseless fancies gather.

337. On the other hand, the Platonic view (as expressed in the Symposium and elsewhere) regards earthly passion as the initiation and introduction into cosmic sanctity and joy.

338. Platonic Love represents in effect what would now be rather termed Religion; an attitude of devotion and worship towards an Eternal Goodness and Beauty.

339. The psychical type to which we have applied the name of genius may thus be recognised in every region of thought and emotion, and appears essential to the evolution of the race.

340. But whence comes this wisdom of the subliminal Self? Within what limits can these favourable "sports" occur ?

341. My own argument, while not insisting on Platonic reminiscences, yet assumes a Soul in man and in the Universe an answering Spirit. These are familiar religious postulates, but we must extend the idea of indrawal from the spiritual world to the whole range of our psychical phenomena.

342. That process of indrawal appears healthy and joyous; it is to the child, not to the madman, that genius is near akin.

343. And men of genius, among whom we must reckon the group of saints, have made a palmary experiment on the development of our race, - a sane and fruitful effort to absorb strength and grace from an accessible and inexhaustible source.