On Inspiration
I am asked a rather difficult question. It is not difficult because it is unclear, but, rather, it is difficult because so many modern assumptions about the nature of mind and body are unexamined, and, upon examination, are unsound.
A reader with the addictive yet intellectual name of Concept Junkie asks:
Are you suggesting the mechanisms of unconscious mental processes are not, or cannot be the source of these inspirations? Must such an inspiration (and yes, I suppose that term needs to be defined if we are going down this route) necessarily come from the action of an outside entity (such as an angel, or the Lord Himself)?
I’m just trying to understand what you have against the idea that we don’t have a perfect understanding or control of our thoughts and memories and that they can behave in a way in which they seem to have a life of their own, or that they somehow work without our direct and explicit supervision. It seems to me that such a flawed mastery and understanding of one’s own mental processes is wholly consistent with a fallen nature.
When I eat something, I have only a vague idea of how the food is digested, broken down, absorbed, and utilized by my body, but that doesn’t mean there is there is a “secret mind” in my gut turning Slim Jims and milkshakes into bone and muscle (and fat, lots of fat).
Similarly, there are some human minds that can perform feats of memory or skill that are far beyond the norm, and these symptoms often correlate with some form of dysfunction or even injury. If you read the story of the guy who had a brain injury and suddenly manifested an impressive level of musical ability that he had heretofore never displayed (and I’m afraid I don’t recall the details of the story), does that mean the man is now possessed of some foreign intelligence that is giving him this talent, or that whatever trauma caused the neural networks and other structures in the brain to reorganize allowed processes of which he is not consciously aware to work, or work better to allow him to perform these feats?
I’m just trying to understand how you see this kind of inspiration, the inspiration that allows someone to solve a problem when he “stops” thinking about it, or allows him wake up with a unique melody or story idea in his head or any of the other ways that our minds surprise us.
My remarks:
I am not suggesting the mechanisms of unconscious mental processes are not, or cannot be the source of these inspirations?
I am stating as a conclusion of a line of reasoning at the mechanism of unconscious mental processes, assuming such a thing exists at all, are not and cannot be the source of these inspirations.
This is for the same reason that I do not think a bunny or a dog could write a sonnet.
A sonnet can only come from a mind capable of sonnet-writing. If it did not come from my mind, if it comes into my thoughts full grown with all its internal rhymes in place and showing a structure and nuance more clever than I am capable of putting in a sonnet, either it is a coincidence on the order of an explosion in a toyblock factory throwing the letters together to spell out the preamble of the constitution, or there is a mind outside my mind which is the source of the sonnet.
Yes, the inspiration must of necessity come from a spirit, since it obviously does not come from another person made of matter. I am using the term ‘inspiration’ in its literal meaning, a spirit that is breathed in me.
I am further stating that if the unconscious mental processes do exist, by definition no one can ever be aware of them. You cannot become conscious of them, because they are in my mind and not yours, and I cannot become conscious of them, either by introspection or any other method, because they are unconscious. I cannot be conscious of things of which I am unconscious.
Science deals with empirical evidence. By definition there is not now, nor can there ever be, any empirical evidence of this so-called unconscious mental process of which you speak, not even whether it exists or not, or has a process or not. What you are saying is not even an hypothesis, not even guesswork. It is pasting a label on a box with no lid which can never be opened, and pretending you know what is inside.
“I’m just trying to understand what you have against the idea that we don’t have a perfect understanding or control of our thoughts and memories and that they can behave in a way in which they seem to have a life of their own…”
This is a different topic. I said nothing about perfect control nor perfect memory one way or the other. I did not even say unconsciousness does not exist; I merely said that nothing scientific could be said about it one way or the other. I am sure all my animal impulses and sudden slips of memory comes from somewhere. We could, if you like, and, unlike sonnet-writing, there is a correlation between drunkeness and lapses of judgment, fatigue and lapses of judgment, rapid eye movements and dream states, and so on.
If you read the story of the guy who had a brain injury and suddenly manifested an impressive level of musical ability that he had heretofore never displayed (and I’m afraid I don’t recall the details of the story)
No, I am afraid I have never heard anything even remotely like this story. All the reports of brain trauma I have heard indicate a lapse or loss of mental acuity.
When I eat something, I have only a vague idea of how the food is digested, broken down, absorbed, and utilized by my body
I am afraid I do not see the analogy. Since roughly the Middle Ages, scientists have been aware of the digestive process, because it is something physical we can examine physically. No particular thought or effort is required on your part of produce excretion, and, consequently, excretion has no art, no symmetry, no evidence that the bacteria in your colon think about things and come to conclusions and create beauty. Even the pearl produced by an oyster, an example of a physical process that has a beautiful outcome, does not show any art or genius on the part of the oyster.
But I have produced books that contain art which I wrote down but did not make up, as if I were taking dictation, or characters in my imagination came and spoke to me, and put on a stage play which it was my task to inscribe. Other part of the work, the laborious and tedious part, those I wrote without aid, and I think my readers can identify them.
I’m just trying to understand how you see this kind of inspiration, the inspiration that allows someone to solve a problem when he “stops” thinking about it, or allows him wake up with a unique melody or story idea in his head or any of the other ways that our minds surprise us.
And I cannot imagine what you find difficult to understand.
Everything happens for a cause. The cause must be sufficient to explain the outcome: a firecracker cannot blow up Hiroshima. A work of art cannot be created by a non-deliberate or natural or blind because art is deliberate, insightful, meaningful. If it comes into my mind from somewhere, that someone from whence it comes cannot be my mind, but it has to be something like a mind, something (or, rather, someone) who is conscious and capable of artistic creative thought. The unconscious mind does not think since thought is consciousness: the two words mean the same thing.
The only two possibilities are that these inspired thoughts arise in me from a human mind or a divine one. If it were a human mind, there would be a physical cable or channel physically carrying the nerve impulses into my brain. Which is absurd. Therefore, etc., QED.
The nine immortal goddesses who dance on stormy midnights with shining feet on Mount Ida or Mount Helicon, or who drink from the Hippocrene springs, breathe ideas for poems into the minds of poets, and often, for poets who are particularly blessed, not just ideas but partly or wholly completed works. Their names are Thalia, Calliope, Melpomene, Urania, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Polyhymnia, and Terpsichore.
Now it is entirely possible that it is an angel of the Lord who does this for Christian poets rather than these pagan goddesses, but I am willing to entertain the opinion that at least some of these fallen angels worshipped as divine by ignorant heathens converted and were baptized when their votaries were.
For a discovery of how poet’s minds work, I suggest you talk to a poet rather than a notorious fraud like Freud. Milton has this to say, in the opening lines of Book 7 of PARADISE LOST:
DESCEND from Heaven, Urania, by that name
If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine
Following, above the Olympian hill I soar,
Above the flight of Pegasean wing!
The meaning, not the name, I call; for thou
Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top
Of old Olympus dwell’st; but, heavenly—born,
Before the hills appeared or fountain flowed,
Thou with Eternal Wisdom didst converse,
Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play
In presence of the Almighty Father, pleased
With thy celestial song.
In Book 9 he says this:
Of my celestial Patroness, who deigns
Her nightly visitation unimplored,
And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires
Easy my unpremeditated verse,
Since first this subject for heroic song
Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late,
Not sedulous by nature to indite
Wars, hitherto the only argument
Heroic deemed, chief maistrie to dissect
With long and tedious havoc fabled knights
In battles feigned (the better fortitude
Of patience and heroic martyrdom
Unsung), or to describe races and games,
Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields,
Impreses quaint, caparisons and steeds,
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights
At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast
Served up in hall with sewers and seneshals:
The skill of artifice or office mean;
Not that which justly gives heroic name
To person or to poem! Me, of these
Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument
Remains, sufficient of itself to raise
That name, unless an age too late, or cold
Climate, or years, damp my intended wing
Depressed; and much they may if all be mine,
Not Hers who brings it nightly to my ear.
Meanwhile, in the first book of this great poem, the poet calls on none other than the Holy Spirit itself to inform his work:
OF MAN’S first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know’st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast Abyss,
And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That, to the highth of this great argument,
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
Who, praytell, is this heavenly muse Milton wishes to sing to him? Who brings these higher arguments nightly to his ear? He answers that is was the same who instructed Moses in the tale of the origin of the world from chaos, that same spirit who brooded on the abyss and made it pregnant: the spirit of the Lord who rested on the waters in the gloom before creation.
Finally, Milton calls on Light itself to inspire him and give him inward sight. I cannot read this passage with a tear:
HAIL, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born!
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam
May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity-dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
Or hear’st thou rather pure Ethereal Stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the Sun,
Before the Heavens, thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
The rising World of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless Infinite!
Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,
Escaped the Stygian Pool, though long detained
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight,
Through utter and through middle Darkness borne,
With other notes than to the Orphean lyre
I sung of Chaos and eternal Night,
Taught by the Heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to re-ascend,
Though hard and rare. Thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou
Revisit’st not these eyes, that rowl in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget
Those other two equalled with me in fate,
(So were I equalled with them in renown!)
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides,
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old:
Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid,
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead and ever—during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and, for the book of knowledge fair,
Presented with a universal blank
Of Nature’s works, to me expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou, Celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate; there plant eyes; all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.
Dante makes similar invocations at the opening of his cantos, as does Virgil and Homer. Here are four of the greatest names in all Western poetry.
I think you should take the poets at our word. No man can claim to know my mind better than I, since I have unique and intimate access to it, and no one else, until a telepath appears, has any direct experience of it at all.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
