ms of something that we
immediately recognize as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many of
us only in the fleeting earlier phases of what in its totality is so
degrading a poisoning. The drunken consciousness is one bit of the
mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place
in our opinion of that larger whole.

[232] Crichton-Browne expressly says that Symonds's "highest nerve
centres were in some degree enfeebled or damaged by these dreamy mental
states which afflicted him so grievously." Symonds was, however, a
perfect monster of many-sided cerebral efficiency, and his critic gives
no objective grounds whatever for his strange opinion, save that
Symonds complained occasionally, as all susceptible and ambitious men
complain, of lassitude and uncertainty as to his life's mission.

Nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide, when sufficiently
diluted with air, stimulate the mystical consciousness in an
extraordinary degree. Depth beyond depth of truth seems revealed to
the inhaler. This truth fades out, however, or escapes, at the moment
of coming to; and if any words remain over in which it seemed to clothe
itself, they prove to be the veriest nonsense. Nevertheless, the sense
of a profound meaning having been there persists; and I know more than
one person who is persuaded that in the nitrous oxide trance we have a
genuine metaphysical revelation.

Some years ago I myself made some observations on this aspect of
nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported them in print. One conclusion
was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth
has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking
consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special
type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the
filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness
entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their
existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are
there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which
probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No
account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these
other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is
the question--for they are so discontinuous with ordinary
consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot
furnish formulas, and open a re