ntechamber 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 susp