d to end in a paradox,
and lead to the further consideration:--"What matter though it be only
disease, an abnormal tension of the brain, if when I recall and analyze
the moment, it seems to have been one of harmony and beauty in the
highest degree--an instant of deepest sensation, overflowing with
unbounded joy and rapture, ecstatic devotion, and completest life?"
Vague though this sounds, it was perfectly comprehensible to Muishkin,
though he knew that it was but a feeble expression of his sensations.

That there was, indeed, beauty and harmony in those abnormal moments,
that they really contained the highest synthesis of life, he could not
doubt, nor even admit the possibility of doubt. He felt that they were
not analogous to the fantastic and unreal dreams due to intoxication
by hashish, opium or wine. Of that he could judge, when the attack was
over. These instants were characterized--to define it in a word--by
an intense quickening of the sense of personality. Since, in the last
conscious moment preceding the attack, he could say to himself, with
full understanding of his words: "I would give my whole life for this
one instant," then doubtless to him it really was worth a lifetime.
For the rest, he thought the dialectical part of his argument of little
worth; he saw only too clearly that the result of these ecstatic moments
was stupefaction, mental darkness, idiocy. No argument was possible
on that point. His conclusion, his estimate of the "moment," doubtless
contained some error, yet the reality of the sensation troubled him.
What's more unanswerable than a fact? And this fact had occurred. The
prince had confessed unreservedly to himself that the feeling of intense
beatitude in that crowded moment made the moment worth a lifetime. "I
feel then," he said one day to Rogojin in Moscow, "I feel then as if I
understood those amazing words--'There shall be no more time.'" And he
added with a smile: "No doubt the epileptic Mahomet refers to that same
moment when he says that he visited all the dwellings of Allah, in less
time than was needed to empty his pitcher of water." Yes, he had often
met Rogojin in Moscow, and many were the subjects they discussed. "He
told me I had been a brother to him," thought the prince. "He said so
today, for the first time."

He was sitting in the Summer Garden on a seat under a tree, and his
mind dwelt on the matter. It was about seven o'clock, and the place was
empty. The stifling atmo