manifest itself in a power of assimilating very various
experiences, so as to have manifold relations familiar to it, or in a
power of assimilating very special relations, so as to constitute a
distinctive aptitude for one branch of art or science. The experience
which is thus organised must of course have been originally a direct
object of consciousness, either as an impressive fact or impressive
inference. Unless the paper had been seen to burn, no one could know
that contact with flame would consume it. By a vivid remembrance the
experience of the past is made available to the present, so that we do
not need actually to burn paper once more,--we see the relation
mentally. In like manner Newton did not need to go through the
demonstrations of many complex problems, they flashed upon him as he
read the propositions; they were seen by him in that rapid glance, as
they would have been made visible through the slower process of
demonstration. A good chemist does not need to test many a proposition
by bringing actual gases or acids into operation, and seeing the
result; he FORESEES the result: his mental vision of the objects and
their properties is so keen, his experience is so organised, that the
result which would be visible in an experiment, is visible to him in an
intuition. A fine poet has no need of the actual presence of men and
women under the fluctuating impatience of emotion, or under the
steadfast hopelessness of grief; he needs no setting sun before his
window, under it no sullen sea. These are all visible, and their
fluctuations are visible. He sees the quivering lip, the agitated soul;
he hears the aching cry, and the dreary wash of waves upon the beach.

The writer who pretends to instruct us should first assure himself that
he has clearer vision of the things he speaks of,--knows them and their
qualities, if not better than we, at least with some distinctive
knowledge. Otherwise he should announce himself as a mere echo,
a middleman, a distributor. Our need is for more light. This can be
given only by an independent seer who

"Lends a precious seeing to the eye."

All great authors are seers. "Perhaps if we should meet Shakspeare,"
says Emerson, "we should not be conscious of any steep inferiority: no,
but of great equality; only he possessed a strange skill of using, of
classifying his facts, which we lacked. For, notwithstanding our utter
incapacity to preduce anything like HAMLET or OTHELLO, we see t