Heredity, Variation and Genius 1 1 



It might be curious to enquire exactly what is 

 the real value of the ecstasy of feeling by which 

 the mortal, strangely transported out of himself, 

 imagines he is translated into divine communion. 

 Is it an actual mingling of his being with the 

 primal energy of things ? Ecstasies of love and 

 religion and the like are real conditions of mind 

 which plainly ought to be taken account of by 

 a positive science apt to ignore or despise them. 

 Physically they no doubt mark an exaltation of 

 the nervous system by which feeling is raptur- 

 ously inflated, thought diffused into vague and 

 spacious feeling, and the outer, world dislimned 

 into almost shadowy unreality : the customary 

 organized forms of adaptations to the environ- 

 ment dissolved for the time and the self ex- 

 panded into a sort of formless being. Is the 

 rapture then really an entrance into a higher 

 sphere of transcendent being ? Or is it, like the 

 extraordinary rapture of feeling and wonderful 

 illumination of an occasional dream when, their 

 proper paths of association suspended, the waves 

 of flickering ideas usually scatter to meet at 



" Till warned or by experience taught, she learn 



" That not to know at large things remote 



"From use, obscure and subtle, but to know 



" That which before us lies in daily life 



" Is the prime wisdom ; what is more is fume, 



" Or emptiness or fond impertinence, 



" And renders us in things that most concern 



" Unpractised, unprepared, and still to seek. 



Paradise Lost, B. VIII. 190. 



