"I rest not from my great task To open the eternal worlds, to open the immortal eyes Of man inwards; into the worlds of thought; into Eternity Ever expanding in the bosom of God, the human Imagination. The method of genius is always artistic, as opposed to scientific. The nature of genius consists in a surpassing capacity for the pure contemplation of Ideas. {55} It is the faculty of continuing in the state of pure perception, of losing the personality in perception, and of enlisting in this service the knowledge which existed originally only for the service of the will. Genius, then, is the power of leaving one's own interests, wishes, and aims entirely out of sight, of renouncing entirely one's own personality for a time, so as to remain pure knowing subject, clear vision of the world. This state must be achieved, not merely at moments, but for a sufficient length of time, and with sufficient consciousness, to enable the artist to reproduce by deliberate art what has thus been seized by his inner vision. He must fix in lasting thoughts the wavering images that float before the mind: "But from these create he can Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality." It is as if, says Schopenhauer, when genius appears in an individual, a far greater measure of the power of knowledge falls to his lot than is necessary for ordinary men. This excess of knowledge, being free, now becomes subject purified from will, a clear mirror of the inner nature of the world. Imagination is an essential element in genius, and it is a necessary condition that it should be possessed in an extraordinary degree. Imagination extends the horizon far beyond the limits of actual personal experience, and so enables the artist to construct the whole dream, the complete vision, out of the little that comes into his own actual apperception. The actual objects are almost always but imperfect copies of the ideas expressed in them. Therefore the artist requires imagination in order to see in things, not that which nature has actually made, but that which {56} she endeavoured to make, but could not, because of the never-ceasing conflict between the various forms of will. Through the penetrating vision of this imagination, the artist recognises the Idea. He understands the half-uttered speech of nature, and is able to articulate clearly what she only stammered forth.