Once more. If this point of view be steadily maintained, we shall gain further light on some of those strangenesses and irregularities of genius which have led to its paradoxical juxtaposition with insanity as a divergence from the accepted human type. The distinctive characteristic of genius is the large infusion of the subliminal in its mental output; and one characteristic of the subliminal in my view is that it is in closer relation than the supraliminal to the spiritual world, and is thus nearer to the primitive source and extra-terrene initiation of life. And earthly Life itself--embodied as it is in psycho-physically individualised forms--is, on the theory advanced in these pages, a product or characteristic of the etherial or metetherial and not of the gross material world. Thence in some unknown fashion it came; there in some unknown fashion it subsists even throughout its earthly manifestation; thither in some unknown fashion it must after earthly death return. If indeed the inspirations of genius spring from a source one step nearer to primitive reality than is that specialised consensus of faculties which natural selection has lifted above the threshold for the purposes of working-day existence, then surely we need not wonder if the mind and frame of man should not always suffice for smooth and complete amalgamation; if some prefiguration of faculties adapted to a later stage of being should mar the symmetry of the life of earth. And thus there may really be something at times _incommensurable_ between the inspirations of genius and the results of conscious logical thought. Just as the calculating boy solves his problems by methods which differ from the methods of the trained mathematician, so in artistic matters also that "something of strangeness" which is in "all excellent beauty," may be the expression of a real difference between subliminal and supraliminal modes of perception. I cannot help thinking that such a difference is perceptible in subliminal relations to speech; that the subliminal self will sometimes surpass conscious effort, if it is treating speech as a branch of Art, in Poetry;--or else in some sense will fall short of conscious effort, when it is merely using words as an unavoidable medium to express ideas which common speech was hardly designed to convey. Thus, on the one hand, when in presence of one of the great verbal achievements of the race--say the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus--it is hard to resist the obscure impression that some form of intelligence other than supraliminal reason or conscious selection has been at work. The result less resembles the perfection of rational choice among known data than the imperfect presentation of some scheme based on perceptions which we cannot entirely follow.