Their insight is largely what is called intuitive.

They have flashes of emotional experience which crystallize into single creations of art.
They depend upon "inspiration"-- a word which is responsible for much of the overrating of such men, and for a good many of their illusions.
Not that they do not perform great feats in the several spheres in which their several "inspirations" come; but with it all they often present the sort of unbalance and fragmentary intellectual endowment which allies them, in particular instances, to the classes of persons whom the theories we are noticing have in view.

It is only to be expected that the sharp jutting variation in the emotional and aesthetic realm which the great artist often shows should carry with it irregularities in heredity in other respects.

Moreover, the very habit of living by inspiration brings prominently into view any half-hidden peculiarities which he may have in the remark of his associates, and in the conduct of his own social duties.

But mark you, I do not discredit the superb art of many examples of the artistic "degenerate," so-called; that would be to brand some of the highest ministrations of genius, to us men, as random and illegitimate, and to consider impure some of our most exalting and intoxicating sources of inspiration.