reference
to "touch" in the quotation just made will remind the reader of the
important part played by the tactile sense in Jefferies' aesthetic
appreciations.

We are not concerned here with any of the philosophical speculations
involved in these "trance conditions." All that concerns us is the
remarkable literature that has resulted from this well-ascertained
psychical condition. How far the condition is the outcome of forces
beyond our immediate ken which compel recognition from certain
imaginative minds, how far it is a question of physical disturbance; or,
in other words, how far these visions are objective realities, how far
subjective, are questions that he beyond the scope of the present paper.
One thing, however, is indisputable; they have exercised a great
fascination over men of sensitive, nervous temperaments, and are often
remarkable for the wider significance they have given to our ideals of
beauty.

The fact that mysticism may arise out of morbid conditions of health does
not justify us, I think, in looking upon it with Max Nordau as "the fruit
of a degenerate brain." Such a criticism is at one with the linking of
genius with insanity--an argument already broached in the paper dealing
with Hazlitt.

Professor William James--who certainly holds no brief for the
mystic--makes the interesting suggestion that "these mystical flights are
inroads from the subconscious life of the cerebral activity, correlative
to which we as yet know nothing." {153a}

"As a rule," he says elsewhere, "mystical states merely add a
super-sensuous meaning to the ordinary outward data of consciousness.
They are excitements like the emotions of love or ambition, gifts to
our spirit by means of which facts already objectively before us fall
into a new expressiveness, and make a new connection with our active
life. They do not contradict these facts as such, or deny anything
that our senses have immediately seized."

The connection between mysticism and hysteria, and the psychological
importance of hysteria, merits the fullest consideration in dealing with
the writings of these literary Vagabonds. Stevenson's mysticism is more
speculative than that of Jefferies; the intellectual life played a
greater share in his case, but it is none the less marked; and quite
apart from, perhaps even transcending, their literary interest is the
psychological significance of stories like _Markheim_ and _The Strang