No; Coleridge, speaking of Columbus and the discovery of America, ascribes the origin of great inventions and discoveries to the fact that “certain ideas of the natural world are presented to minds, already prepared to receive them, by a higher Power than Nature herself.”
Is there any teaching in the Bible to support this view?
Yes; very much. Isaiah, for example, says that the ploughman knows how to carry on the successive operations of husbandry, “for his God doth instruct him and doth teach him.”
Are all ideas which have a purely spiritual origin ideas of good?
Unhappily, no; it is the sad experience of mankind that suggestions of evil also are spiritually conveyed.
What is the part of the man?
To choose the good and refuse the evil.
Does this doctrine of ideas as the spiritual food needful to sustain the immaterial life throw any light on the doctrines of the Christian religion?
Yes; the Bread of Life, the Water of Life, the Word by which man lives, the “meat to eat which ye know not of,” and much more, cease to be figurative expressions, except that we must use the same words to name the corporeal and the incorporeal sustenance of man. We understand, moreover, how suggestions emanating from our Lord and Saviour, which are of His essence, are the spiritual meat and drink of His believing people. We find it no longer a “hard saying,” nor a dark saying, that we must sustain our spiritual selves upon Him, even as our bodies upon bread.
What practical bearing upon the educator has this doctrine of ideas?