The successful progress of thought appears to depend--first, on a large attendance in the antechamber; secondly, on the presence there of no ideas except such as are strictly germane to the topic under consideration; thirdly, on the justness of the logical mechanism that issues the summons. The thronging of the antechamber is, I am convinced, altogether beyond my control; if the ideas do not appear, I cannot create them, nor compel them to come. The exclusion of alien ideas is accompanied by a sense of mental effort and volition whenever the topic under consideration is unattractive, otherwise it proceeds automatically, for if an intruding idea finds nothing to cling to, it is unable to hold its place in the antechamber, and slides back again. An animal absorbed in a favourite occupation shows no sign of painful effort of attention; on the contrary, he resents interruption that solicits his attention elsewhere. The consequence of all this is that the mind frequently does good work without the slightest exertion. In composition it will often produce a better effect than if it acted with effort, because the essence of good composition is that the ideas should be connected by the easiest possible transitions. When a man has been thinking hard and long upon a subject, he becomes temporarily familiar with certain steps of thought, certain short cuts, and certain far-fetched associations, that do not commend themselves to the minds of other persons, nor indeed to his own at other times; therefore, it is better that his transitory familiarity with them should have come to an end before he begins to write or speak. When he returns to the work after a sufficient pause he is conscious that his ideas have settled; that is, they have lost their adventitious relations to one another, and stand in those in which they are likely to reside permanently in his own mind, and to exist in the minds of others.
Although the brain is able to do very fair work fluently in an automatic way, and though it will of its own accord strike out sudden and happy ideas, it is questionable if it is capable of working thoroughly and profoundly without past or present effort. The character of this effort seems to me chiefly to lie in bringing the contents of the antechamber more nearly within the ken of consciousness, which then takes comprehensive note of all its contents, and compels the logical faculty to test them seriatim before selecting the fittest for a summons to the presence-chamber.
Extreme fluency and a vivid and rapid imagination are gifts naturally and healthfully possessed by those who rise to be great orators or literary men, for they could not have become successful in those careers without it. The curious fact already alluded to of five editors of newspapers being known to me as having phantasmagoria, points to a connection between two forms of fluency, the literary and the visual. Fluency may be also a morbid faculty, being markedly increased by alcohol (as poets are never tired of telling us), and by various drugs; and it exists in delirium, insanity, and states of high emotions. The fluency of a vulgar scold is extraordinary.
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]
The child is passionately attached to his home, then to his school, his country, and religion; yet how entirely the particular home, school, country, and religion are a matter of accident! He is born prepared to attach himself as a climbing plant is naturally disposed to climb, the kind of stick being of little importance. The models upon whom the child or boy forms himself are the boys or men whom he has been thrown amongst, and whom from some incidental cause he may have learned to love and respect. The every-day utterances, the likes and dislikes of his parents, their social and caste feelings, their religious persuasions are absorbed by him; their views or those of his teachers become assimilated and made his own. If a mixed marriage should have taken place, and the father should die while the children are yet young, and if a question arise between the executors of his will and the mother as to the religious education of the children, application is made as a matter of course to the Court of Chancery, who decide that the children shall be brought up as Protestants or as Catholics as the case may be, or the sons one way and the daughters the other; and they are, and usually remain so afterwards when free to act for themselves.
It is worthy of note that many of the deaf-mutes who are first taught to communicate freely with others after they had passed the period of boyhood, and are asked about their religious feelings up to that time, are reported to tell the same story. They say that the meaning of the church service whither they had accompanied their parents, and of the kneeling to pray, had been absolutely unintelligible, and a standing puzzle to them. The ritual touched no chord in their untaught natures that responded in unison. Very much of what we fondly look upon as a natural religious sentiment is purely traditional.