Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/352

 336 CRITICAL STUDIES loss of power, and with the loss of logical consistency loss of insight and lucidity. If, as he so forcibly lays down, we must do all that industry can do to prepare the human materials for the operation of the Spirit, say the altar and the fuel and the incense for the kindling by the spark from heaven, why should our co-operation cease with the first kindling ? why should we not still give all our powers to the fanning of the spark into broad clear flame? Descended into the world of flesh, the spirit is so far subject to worldly conditions that its work can be furthered or hindered, its manifestation be made more or less clear, by the human being through which it works and shines.* Abdicating voluntarily his crown of humanity. Dr. Wilkinson reduces himself to a mere registering machine, with no overseer to keep it in order ; to a mere dead channel for the waters of life, with no one to clear away impediments and impurities; a mere dead conduit for the metal fused by the fire of the arguing on the doctor's own premises ; but not implying my accept ance of these. Divine inspiration, influx of the Spirit, and such phrases, are convenient for conveying a person's consciousness of being in ecstasy, lifted beyond his ordinary self, as they are conse- crated by long usage ; but I disavow any theological or mytholo- gical dogmas which others may conceive involved in them. To myself, ecstasy, trance, inspiration, vision, revelation, are no less simply human and natural, though so much less common, than sleep and waking ; are just as susceptible of scientific explanation^ though our science is not yet subtile and comprehensive enough to pervade them, as spring-tides or summer flowering and fruitage or the aurora borealis. If a man be eight feet high, or only four feet, he is of very uncommon stature, but in the one case he is not above, and in the other he is not below the limits of humanity. You must prove the insufficiency of nature for any effect, before you can fairly clnim our attention to assertions of the supernatural.
 * Of course in such passages as the above I am throughout