n I have it I know that any man can have it. It is
necessary to my selfishness that he shall have it. If a great wonder of
a world like this is given to a man, and he is told to live on it and it
is not furnished with men to live with, with men that go with it, what
is it all for? If one could have one's choice in being damned there
would be no way that would be quite so quick and effective as having
inspirations that were so little inspired as to make one suppose they
were merely for one's self or for a few others. The only way to save
one's soul or to keep a corner for God in it is to believe that He is a
kind of God who has put inspiration in every man. All that has to be
done with it, is to get him to stop smothering it.

Inspiration, instead of being an act of going to work in a minute,
living a few hundred years at once, an act of making up and creating a
new and wonderful soul for one's self, consists in the act of lifting
off the lid from the one one has. The mere fact that the man exists who
has had both experiences, not having inspiration and having it, gives a
basis for knowledge of what inspiration is. A man who has never had
anything except inspiration cannot tell us what it is, and a man who has
never had it cannot tell us what it is; but a man who has had both of
these experiences (which is the case with most of us) constitutes a
cross-section of the subject, a symbol of hope for every one. All who
have had not-inspirations and inspirations both know that the origin and
control and habit of inspiration, are all of such a character as to
suggest that it is the common property of all men. All that is necessary
is to have true educators or promoters, men who furnish the conditions
in which the common property can be got at.

The only difference between men of genius--men of genius who know
it--and other men--men of genius who don't know it--is that the men of
genius who know it have discovered themselves, have such a headlong
habit of self-joy in them, have tasted their self-joys so deeply, that
they are bound to get at them whether the conditions are favourable or
not. The great fact about the ordinary man's genius, which the
educational world has next to reckon with, is that there are not so many
places to uncover it. The ordinary man at first, or until he gets the
appetite started, is more particular about the conditions.

It is because a man of genius is more thorough with the genius he has,
more spiri