for the object precedes the distinct
cognition of it; that the object is only ascertained when, after various
tentative gropings, it is stumbled upon, almost, it might seem, by
chance. And this seems true, also, of some of our fundamental spiritual
instincts; for example, that craving of the mind for an unified
experience, which is at the root of all mental activity, and whose
object is ever approached yet never attained; or, again, there is the
social and political instinct, which has not yet formed a distinct and
satisfying conception of what it would be at. Or nearer still to our
theme, is the natural religious instinct which seeks interpretations and
explanatory hypotheses in the various man-made religions of the race,
and which finds itself satisfied and transcended by the Christian
revelation.

In these and like instances, we find will-movements not caused by the
subjects' own cognitions and perceptions, but contrariwise, giving birth
to cognitions, setting the mind to work to interpret the said movements,
and to seek out their satisfying objects.

This is quite analogous to certain phenomena of the order of grace. St.
Ignatius almost invariably speaks, not, as we should, of thoughts that
give rise to will-states of "consolation" or "desolation," but
conversely, of these will-states giving rise to congruous thoughts.
Indeed, nothing is more familiar to us than the way in which the mind is
magnetized by even our physical states of elation or depression, to
select the more cheerful or the gloomier aspects of life, according as
we are under one influence or the other; and in practice, we recognize
the effect of people's humours on their opinions and decisions, and
would neither sue mercy nor ask a favour of a man in a temper. In short,
it is hardly too much to say, that our thoughts are more dependent on
our feelings than our feelings on our thoughts. This, then, is one
possible method of supernatural guidance which we shall call "blind
inspiration"--for though the feeling or impulse is from God, the
interpretation is from the subject's own mind. It is curious how St.
Ignatius applies this method to the determining of the Divine will in
certain cases--as it were, by the inductive principle of "concomitant
variation." A suggestion that always comes and grows with a state of
"consolation," and whose negative is in like manner associated with
"desolation," is presumably the right interpretation of the blind
impulse.