(a) The work of religious "inspiration" or genius, in the sense
in which rationalists use the word, levelling the idea down to the same
plane as that of artistic inspiration.

(b) Or else it might be "inspired" as mystic philosophy or
ontologism uses the expression, when it ascribes all natural insight to
a more or less directly divine enlightenment.

(c) Or, taking the word more strictly as implying the influence
of a distinct personal agency over the soul of the writer, it might be
that the record simply expresses an attempted interpretation, an
imaginary embodiment, of some blind preternatural stirring of the
writer's affections--analogous to the romances and dreams created in the
imagination at the first awakening of the amatory affections.

(d) Or, the matter being in no way from preternatural sources,
the strong and perhaps irresistible impulse to record and publish it,
might be preternatural.

(e) Or (in addition to or apart from such an impulse), it might
be a record of certain truths already contained implicitly in the
writer's mind, but brought to remembrance or into clear recognition, not
by the ordinary free activity of reason, but, as it were, by an alien
will controlling the mind.

(f) Or, if really new truths or facts are communicated to the mind
from without, this may be effected in various ways: (i) By the way of
verbal "inspiration," as when the very words are received apparently
through the outer senses; or else put together in the imagination.
(ii) Or, the matter is presented pictorially (be it fact or symbol)