14 Heredity, Variation and Genius 



cerebral tract of thought and feeling, as in the 

 religious ecstatic. Has it then more spiritual 

 value in the one case than in the other ? Can 

 the mortal by fit use of wine become temporarily 

 divine ? Strange it would be to think that a 

 suitable drug can thus be the chemical means of 

 opening and making straight a path to the 

 infinite. And yet the drug and the nervous 

 molecule on which it acts are equally divine ; 

 they reveal their kinship by their affinities ; and 

 their joyful elective intercourse when they em- 

 brace betokens a note of harmonious unity in 

 the vast and mysterious complexity of things. 



However that be, putting aside the futile con- 

 sideration of the primary cause and first principle 

 of things, which is the eternally reiterated ab- 

 surdity of human vanity, and confining attention 

 to secondary causes, it is certain that the ecstatic 

 transport of being marks a diffusive stimulation 

 of the individual organic life and an accompany- 

 ing dissolution of the cerebral life of relation 

 with the external world. So far there may be 

 said to be a sort of approximation to, if not 

 mingling with or melting into, universal being ; 

 for the organic life is nearer in nature to and in 

 more intimate sympathy with the organic life of 

 nature, on which it depends for the matter and 

 force necessary to maintain its being and serve 

 its functions, and with which in the rapturous 

 outbursts of spring it shows so intimate and 

 remarkable a sympathy. Never does nature 

 seem so divine to its creatures as then. 



