321. Once more. If this point of view be steadily maintained, we shall gain further light on some of those strangenesses and irregularities of genius which have led to its paradoxical juxtaposition with insanity as a divergence from the accepted human type. The distinctive characteristic of genius is the large infusion of the subliminal in its mental output; and one characteristic of the subliminal in my view is that it is in closer relation than the supraliminal to the spiritual world, and is thus nearer to the primitive source and extra-terrene initiation of life. And earthly Life itself - embodied as it is in psycho-physically individualised forms - is, on the theory advanced in these pages, a product or characteristic of the etherial or metetherial and not of the gross material world. Thence in some unknown fashion it came; there in some unknown fashion it subsists even throughout its earthly manifestation; thither in some unknown fashion it must after earthly death return. If indeed the inspirations of genius spring from a source one step nearer to primitive reality than is that specialised consensus of faculties which natural selection has lifted above the threshold for the purposes of working-day existence, then surely we need not wonder if the mind and frame of man should not always suffice for smooth and complete amalgamation; if some prefiguration of faculties adapted to a later stage of being should mar the symmetry of the life of earth.

An often-quoted analogy has here a closer application than is often apprehended. The grub comes from the egg laid by a winged insect, and a winged insect it must itself become; but meantime it must for the sake of its own nurture and preservation acquire certain larval characters - characters sometimes so complex that the observer may be excused for mistaking that larva for a perfect insect destined for no further change save death. Such larval characters, acquired to meet the risks of a temporary environment, I seem to see in man's earthly strength and glory. I see the human analogues of the poisonous tufts which choke the captor - the attitudes of mimicry which suggest an absent sting - the " death's head " coloration which disconcerts a stronger foe.

But meantime the adaptation to aerial life is going on; something of the imago or perfect insect is preformed within the grub; and in some species, even before they sink into their transitional slumber, the rudiments of wings still helpless protrude awkwardly beneath the larval skin. Those who call Shelley, for instance, "a beautiful but ineffectual angel beating his wings in the void," may adopt, if they choose, this homelier but exacter parallel. Shelley's special gifts were no more by-products of Shelley's digestive system than the wings are by-products of the grub.

Or at any rate this new use of a well-worn simile may serve to suggest that for a long time yet it must be on the future as much as on the past, on what is now in process of evolution as much as on what has already been evolved, that the attention of psychologists should be fixed. We are watching the emergence of unguessed potentialities from the primal germ. The mind is no walled plot which a diagram will figure; it is a landscape with lines which stretch out of view, and an ever-changing horizon.

322. And thus there may really be something at times incommensurable between the inspirations of genius and the results of conscious logical thought. Just as the calculating boy solves his problems by methods which differ from the methods of the trained mathematician, so in artistic matters also that "something of strangeness " which is in "all excellent beauty," may be the expression of a real difference between subliminal and supraliminal modes of perception. I cannot help thinking that such a difference is perceptible in subliminal relations to speech; that the subliminal self will sometimes surpass conscious effort, if it is treating speech as a branch of Art, in Poetry; - or else in some sense will fall short of conscious effort, when it is merely using words as an unavoidable medium to express ideas which common speech was hardly designed to convey.

Thus, on the one hand, when in presence of one of the great verbal achievements of the race - say the Agamemnon of Æschylus - it is hard to resist the obscure impression that some form of intelligence other than supraliminal reason or conscious selection has been at work. The result less resembles the perfection of rational choice among known data than the imperfect presentation of some scheme based on perceptions which we cannot entirely follow.

But, on the other hand, even though words may thus be used by genius with something of the mysterious remoteness of music itself, it seems to me that our subliminal mentation is less closely bound, to the faculty of speech than is our supraliminal. There is a phrase in common use which involves perhaps more of psychological significance than has yet been brought out. Of all which we can call genius, or which we can ally with genius - of art, of love, of religious emotion - it is common to hear men say that they transcend the scope of speech.

Now, to many persons this seems a mere vague sentimental expression. They hold, perhaps, that language - in however inward and abbreviated a form - is the absolutely necessary instrument of all definite thinking. Or even if they do not insist upon this view à priori, they consider that just as at the opera, ce qui ne vaut as la peine d'être dit, on le chante, so in a more general way the assertion that an idea is not expressible in words, can but mean that it in some way falls short of the standard implied in articulate speech.

From the point of view of this work no such presumption can be formed. On the contrary, the relation to language of the subliminal self is a question which obviously stands in need of special inquiry.