It will be seen, then, what we understand by inspiration, in this general sense. It is a mental sight, corresponding as nearly as anything can to physical sight. It seems, in the inspired moment, as if we looked into another world, and saw new truths and facts there. We do not bring them up out of our memory; we see them in all their own fresh life and reality. We do not think them out by an effort of the will; we stand still and see them. All that our will has to do with it is negative rather than positive. It is to keep off disturbing influences of memory and sense, to hold the mind still, attentive, receptive, and ready. If we believe in these inspirations, we can thus prepare the way for them, but nothing more. We can wait and look, till the vision is presented, and then we shall see it; but this is all. The man of genius is he who believes in these inspirations, and so looks for them. _What_ he shall see will depend on what he looks for. The man whose taste is in the world of imagination looks for forms of poetic or artistic beauty, and so sees these. Every man looks for that which he is most interested in, whether he be metaphysician or mechanic. The world of ideal beauty and truth, which overhangs ours, has a thousand portals, and we can pass in through one or another, and see that which suits our various tastes and desires. Memory, reflection, and sight,—these are the three sources of our thoughts. The inspired man is a seer—he has insight and foresight; and these objects of mental sight are to him more real and certain than any others. But he is unable to prove their reality or justify them to the sceptic. And hence his fate is often that of Cassandra,—to be a true prophet, but not to be believed, until by and by the strength of his own conviction wins its way, and produces faith in others. There are, therefore, two principal intellectual states of the mind—the one receptive, the other plastic; the one by which it takes in truth, the other by which it works it up into shape. By the one it obtains the substance of thought, by the other the form of thought. The one may be called the perceptive state, the other the reflective state. Thus, too, we see that the perceptive faculty may be exercised in two directions, outwardly and inwardly. It is the same intellectual faculty which, through the senses, looks at and perceives the outward material universe, and through the mind itself, the inward world of thought. It is this power of looking inward which gives us all that we call inspiration. We have, thus, outsight and insight.