imagination without having gone through the long and painful stages of
preparatory education; but genius is not only inexplicable, it is also
so rare that for the immense majority of men any effort to comprehend
it must be purely academic. It is enough to know that if we are in any
degree to share with men and women of genius the faculty of vision,
insight, and creative energy, we must master the conditions which
favor the development of those supreme gifts. There is laid,
therefore, upon the student who wishes to get the vital quality of
literature the necessity of repeating, by deliberate and intelligent
design, the process which in so many of the masters of the arts has
been, apparently, accomplished instinctively. To make observation,
study, and experience part of one's spiritual and intellectual
capital, it is, in the first place, necessary to saturate one's self
with that which one is studying; to possess it by constant familiarity;
to let the imagination play upon it; to meditate upon it. And
it is necessary, in the second place, to make this practice habitual;
when it becomes habitual, it will become largely unconscious: one does
it by instinct rather than by deliberation. This process is
illustrated in every successful attempt to master any art. In the art
of speaking, for instance, the beginner is hampered by an embarrassing
consciousness of his hands, feet, speech; he cannot forget himself and
surrender himself to his thought or his emotion; he dare not trust
himself. He must, therefore, train himself through mind, voice, and
body; he must submit to constant and long-sustained practice, thinking
out point by point what he shall say and how he shall say it. This
process is, at the start, partly mechanical; in the nature of things
it must be entirely within the view and control of a vigilant
consciousness. But as the training progresses, the element of
self-consciousness steadily diminishes, until, in great moments, the
true orator, become one harmonious instrument of expression,