saw the thing whole, from some kind of inner bird's-eye view, while the
ten saw only limited aspects of it from various angles. He was accused
of adding details, therefore, because he had divined their presence while
still below the horizon. Before they emerged the others had already left.

By which I mean that he saw in commonplace events the movement of greater
tides than others saw. At one remove of time or distance--a minute or a
mile--he perceived _all_. While the ten chattered volubly about the name
of the snake, he was caught beyond by the beauty of the path, the glory
of the running glide, the nature of the forces that drove, hindered,
modified.

The others reasoned where the snake was going, its length in inches and
its speed per second, while he, ignoring such superficial details,
plunged as it were into the very nature of the creature's being. And in
this idiosyncrasy, which he shared with all persons of mystical
temperament, is exemplified a certain curious contempt for Reason that he
had. For him mere intellectuality, by which the modern world sets such
store, was a valley of dry bones. Its worship was a worship of the form.
It missed the essential inner truth because such inner truth could be
known only by being it, feeling it. The intellectual attitude of mind, in
a word, was critical, not creative, and to be unimaginative seemed to
him, therefore, the worst form of unintelligence.

"The arid, sterile minds!" he would cry in a burst of his Celtic
enthusiasm. "Where, I ask ye, did the philosophies and sciences of the
world assist the progress of any single soul a blessed inch?"

Any little Dreamer in his top-floor back, spinning by rushlight his
web of beauty, was greater than the finest critical intelligence that