"No doubt, too, it is to this same instant that the
epileptic Mahomet alluded, when he said that he used to
visit all the abodes of Allah in less time than it would
take to empty his water-jar."

I will add here some lines from the Correspondance of
Flaubert : —

"If sensitive nerves are enough to make a poet, I
should be worth more than Shakespeare and Homer. . ..
I who have heard through closed doors people talking in
low tones thirty paces away, across whose abdomen one
may see all the viscera throbbing, and who have some-
times felt in the space of a minute a million thoughts,
images, and combinations of all kinds throwing them-
selves into my brain at once, as it were the lighted squibs
of fireworks."

Let us now compare these descriptions of an attack,
which might be called one of psychic epilepsy (and which
corresponds exactly to the physiological idea of epilepsy —



342 THE MAN OF GENIUS.
f>., cortical irritation), with all the descriptions given
us by authors themselves of the inspiration of genius.
We shall then see how perfect is the correspondence
between the two sets of phenomena.
