The genius, I say, knows that he must speak or sing or paint because, and only because, he has no other alternative whatsoever. One man may look his hardest and honestest to find truth, so that, having found it, he may give it to others. But the genius, without looking, without being conscious of intent, sees things beyond the vision of men. The honest searcher may look deeply and laboriously into the mind of Blake, and, for all his honesty, may see but a reed shaken in the wind; but those who have in them, as every one has to greater or less degree, the possibility of singing, will let the voice of the king nightingale awaken their own piping and make them too sing with great or faltering note, to the glory of the heavens. Though the genius may fail for lack of faith, though he may so prostitute his gifts that they breed iniquity, they are yet of the Holy Spirit; and no study of man and nature by observation, no devotion even of the life to the service of man, will find the great gift of seeing visions and telling to men the truth of them. Nevertheless, Blake at least declared in most emphatic word that the seeing of visions was not a special gift
