If impulses adopt the same character for every one, common sense adapts itself to the mind, to the sensitiveness, to the worth of him who practises it; it is a garment which is adjusted to the proportions of its owner, and, according to his taste, is elaborate or simple. Certain people have a tendency to confound intuition and impulse. These two things, really very different in essence, are only related by spontaneity of thought which gives them birth. But whereas intuition, a sensation altogether moral, concisely stated, is composed of mental speculations, impulses always resolve themselves into acts and resolutions to act. Intuition is a sort of obscure revelation, which reason controls only after its formation. Impulse never engages common sense in the achievements which it realizes. It never decides upon them in advance, and almost always engenders regrets. It is the result of a defeat in self-control, which will-power and the power of reasoning alone can correct. Intuition is less spontaneous than impulse. It is a very brief mental operation, but, nevertheless, very real, which, very indistinctly, touches lightly all the phases of reasoning, in order to reach a conclusion so rapidly that he who conceives it has difficulty in making the transformations of the initial thought intelligible. It is none the less true that intuition is always inspired by a predicted reflection, but, in spite of this fact, an existing reflection. Impulse, on the contrary, only admits instinct as its source of existence. It is the avowed enemy of common sense, which counsels the escape from exterior insinuations that one may concentrate, in order to listen to the voice which dictates to us the abstinence from doing anything until after making a complete analysis of the cause which agitates us. Some philosophers have sought to rank inspiration under the flag of impulse, which they thought to defend; yes, even to recover esteem under this new form. "We should know how to stand on guard," says Yoritomo, "against this fatal error." "Inspiration," says he, "is rarely immobilized under the traits which characterized its first appearance. "Before expressing itself in a work of art or of utility, it was the embryo of that which it must afterward personify. "The ancients when relating that a certain divinity sprang, fully armed, from the head of a god, accredited this belief to instantaneous creation. "If musicians, painters, poets, and inventors want to be sincere, they will agree that, between the thought which they qualify as inspiration, and its tangible realization, a ladder of transformations has been constructed, and that it is only by progressive steps that they have attained what seemed to them the nearest to perfection." Impulse, then, is only distantly related to inspiration and intuition.