TRANCE, is unknown to the
children of the Northern world; and few but would recoil to indulge it,
regarding its peopled calm as maya and delusion of the mind. Instead of
ripening and culturing that airy soil, from which Nature, duly known,
can evoke fruits so rich and flowers so fair, they strive but to exclude
it from their gaze; they esteem that struggle of the intellect from
men's narrow world to the spirit's infinite home, as a disease which the
leech must extirpate with pharmacy and drugs, and know not even that it
is from this condition of their being, in its most imperfect and infant
form, that poetry, music, art--all that belong to an Idea of Beauty
to which neither SLEEPING nor WAKING can furnish archetype and actual
semblance--take their immortal birth. When we, O Mejnour in the far
time, were ourselves the neophytes and aspirants, we were of a class
to which the actual world was shut and barred. Our forefathers had no
object in life but knowledge. From the cradle we were predestined and
reared to wisdom as to a priesthood. We commenced research where modern
Conjecture closes its faithless wings. And with us, those were common
elements of science which the sages of to-day disdain as wild
chimeras, or despair of as unfathomable mysteries. Even the fundamental
principles, the large yet simple theories of electricity and magnetism,
rest obscure and dim in the disputes of their blinded schools; yet,
even in our youth, how few ever attained to the first circle of the
brotherhood, and, after wearily enjoying the sublime privileges they
sought, they voluntarily abandoned the light of the sun, and sunk,
without effort, to the grave, like pilgrims in a trackless desert,
overawed by the stillness of their solitude, and appalled by the absence
of a goal. Thou, in whom nothing seems to live BUT THE DESIRE TO KNOW;
thou, who, indifferent whether it leads to weal or to woe, lendest
thyself to all who would tread the path of mysterious science, a human
book, insensate to the precepts it enounces,--thou hast ever sought,
and often made additions to our number. But to these have only been
vouchsafed partial secrets; vanity and passion unfitted them for the
rest; and now, without other interest than that of an experiment in
science, without love, and without pity, thou exposest this new soul
to the hazards of the tremendous ordeal! Thou thinkest that a zeal
so inquisitive, a courage so absolute and dauntless, may suffice to
con