It is only necessary that the heart be purified, to have science like poetry its spontaneous growth. Self-love has given rise to many false theories, because a selfish man is disposed to make things differently from what God has made them. But in nature both the sciences and the arts exist embodied. The olive and the vine had rather live with God, than crown the head of him whose love for them is a lust for glory. The man is cursed who would rob nature of her graces, that he may use them to allure the innocent virgin to destruction.
Men say there is an inspiration in genius.
The genius of the ancients was the good or evil spirit that attended the man. But this inspiration has been esteemed so unlike religion, that the existence of the one almost supposes the absence of the other. The spirit of God is thought to be a very different thing when poetry is written, from what it is when the heart is sanctified. Yet there has been learning, and even poetry, under ground. Religion and death have in the human mind been connected with the same train of associations.