(a) It makes a sudden eruption into consciousness, but one presupposing a latent, frequently long, labor. It has its analogues among other well-known psychic states; for example, a passion that is forgotten, which, after a long period of incubation, reveals itself through an act; or, better, a sudden resolve after endless deliberation which did not seem able to come to a head. Again, there may be absence of effort and of appearance of preparation. Beethoven would strike haphazard the keys of a piano or would listen to the songs of birds. "With Chopin," says George Sand, "creation was spontaneous, miraculous; he wrought without foreseeing. It would come complete, sudden, sublime." One might pile up like facts in abundance. Sometimes, indeed, inspiration bursts forth in deep sleep and awakens the sleeper, and lest we may suppose this suddenness to be especially characteristic of artists we see it in all forms of invention. "You feel a little electric shock striking you in the head, seizing your heart at the same time--that is the moment of genius" (Buffon). "In the course of my life I have had some happy thoughts," says Du Bois Reymond, "and I have often noted that they would come to me involuntarily, and when I was not thinking of the subject." Claude Bernard has voiced the same thought more than once. (b) Impersonality is a deeper character than the preceding. It reveals a power superior to the conscious individual, strange to him although acting through him: a state which many inventors have expressed in the words, "I counted for nothing in that." The best means of recognizing it would be to write down some observations taken from the inspired individuals themselves. We do not lack them, and some have the virtue of good observation.[18] But that would lead us too far afield. Let us only remark that this unconscious impulse acts variously according to the individual. Some submit to it painfully, striving against it just like the ancient pythoness at the time of giving her oracle. Others, especially in religious inspiration, submit themselves entirely with pleasure or else sustain it passively. Still others of a more analytic turn have noted the concentration of all their faculties and capacities on a single point. But whatever characteristics it takes on, remaining impersonal at bottom and unable to appear in a fully conscious individual, we must admit, unless we wish to give it a supernatural origin, that inspiration is derived from the unconscious activity of the mind. In order to make sure of its nature it would then be necessary to make sure first of the nature of the unconscious, which is one of the enigmas of psychology.