phenomenon as this, that some men write and write eloquently, we
should at once study the antecedents and the conditions under which
this occurs; we should try, by experiment if possible, to see what
variations in the result follow upon variations in the situation. At
once we should begin to perceive how casual and superficial are those
data of introspection which M. Bergson's account reproduces. Does that
painful effort, for instance, occur always? Is it the moral source, as
he seems to suggest, of the good and miraculous fruits that follow?
Not at all: such an effort is required only when the writer is
overworked, or driven to express himself under pressure; in the
spontaneous talker or singer, in the orator surpassing himself and
overflowing with eloquence, there is no effort at all; only facility,
and joyous undirected abundance. We should further ask whether _all_
the facts previously gathered are recovered, and all correctly, and
what relation the "thousand other details" have to them; and we should
find that everything was controlled and supplied by the sensuous
endowment of the literary man, his moral complexion, and his general
circumstances. And we should perceive at the same time that the
momentum which to introspection was so mysterious was in fact the
discharge of many automatisms long imprinted on the system, a system
(as growth and disease show) that has its internal vegetation and
crises of maturity, to which facility and error in the recovery of the
past, and creation also, are closely attached. Thus we should utterly
refuse to say that this momentum was capable of being extended
indefinitely or was simplicity itself. It may be a good piece of
literary psychology to say that simplicity precedes complexity, for it
precedes complexity in consciousness. Consciousness dwindles and
flares up most irresponsibly, so long as its own flow alone is
regarded, and it continually arises out of nothing, which indeed is
simplicity itself. But it does not arise without real conditions