d or seemed
to stir me up again. The return to ordinary conditions of sentient
existence began by my first recovering the power of touch, and then by
the gradual though rapid influx of familiar impressions and diurnal
interests. At last I felt myself once more a human being; and though
the riddle of what is meant by life remained unsolved I was thankful
for this return from the abyss--this deliverance from so awful an
initiation into the mysteries of skepticism.

"This trance recurred with diminishing frequency until I reached the
age of twenty-eight. It served to impress upon my growing nature the
phantasmal unreality of all the circumstances which contribute to a
merely phenomenal consciousness. Often have I asked myself with
anguish, on waking from that formless state of denuded, keenly sentient
being, Which is the unreality--the trance of fiery, vacant,
apprehensive, skeptical Self from which I issue, or these surrounding
phenomena and habits which veil that inner Self and build a self of
flesh-and- blood conventionality? Again, are men the factors of some
dream, the dream-like unsubstantiality of which they comprehend at such
eventful moments? What would happen if the final stage of the trance
were reached?"[231]

[231] H. F. Brown: J. A. Symonds. a Biography, London, 1895, pp.
29-31, abridged.

In a recital like this there is certainly something suggestive of
pathology.[232] The next step into mystical states carries us into a
realm that public opinion and ethical philosophy have long since
branded as pathological, though private practice and certain lyric
strains of poetry seem still to bear witness to its ideality. I refer
to the consciousness produced by intoxicants and anaesthetics,
especially by alcohol. The sway of alcohol over mankind is
unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of
human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry
criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and
says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the
great exciter of the YES function in man. It brings its votary from
the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes him for
the moment one with truth. Not through mere perversity do men run
after it. To the poor and the unlettered it stands in the place of
symphony concerts and of literature; and it is part of the deeper
mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and glea