feeling is that they are given to him; that from the vast unknown, where
time and space are not, they suddenly appear in luminous writing upon
the wall of his consciousness. Can it be correct, then, to say that he
created them? Nothing less so, as it seems to us. But can we not say
that they are the creation of the unconscious portion of his nature?
Yes, provided we can understand that that which is the individual, the
man, can know, and not know that it knows, can create and yet be
ignorant that virtue has gone out of it. From that unknown region we
grant they come, but not by its own blind working. Nor, even were it so,
could any amount of such production, where no will was concerned, be
dignified with the name of creation. But God sits in that chamber of our
being in which the candle of our consciousness goes out in darkness, and
sends forth from thence wonderful gifts into the light of that
understanding which is His candle. Our hope lies in no most perfect
mechanism even of the spirit, but in the wisdom wherein we live and move
and have our being. Thence we hope for endless forms of beauty informed
of truth. If the dark portion of our own being were the origin of our
imaginations, we might well fear the apparition of such monsters as
would be generated in the sickness of a decay which could never
feel--only declare--a slow return towards primeval chaos. But the Maker
is our Light.

One word more, ere we turn to consider the culture of this noblest
faculty, which we might well call the creative, did we not see a
something in God for which we would humbly keep our mighty word:--the
fact that there is always more in a work of art--which is the highest
human result of the embodying imagination--than the producer himself
perceived while he produced it, seems to us a strong reason for
attributing to it a larger origin than the man alone--for saying at the
last, that the inspiration of the Almighty shaped its ends.