I can imagine that the oceanic feeling could become connected with religion later on. That feeling of oneness with the universe which is its ideational content sounds very like a first attempt at the consolations of religion, like another way taken by the ego of denying the dangers it sees threatening it in the external world. I must again confess that I find it very difficult to work with these intangible quantities. Another friend of mine, whose insatiable scientific curiosity has impelled him to the most out-of-the-way researches and to the acquisition of encyclopaedic knowledge, has assured me that the Yogi by their practices of withdrawal from the world, concentrating attention on bodily functions, peculiar methods of breathing, actually are able to produce new sensations and diffused feelings in themselves which he regards as regressions to primordial, deeply buried mental states. He sees in them a physiological foundation, so to speak, of much of the wisdom of mysticism. There would be connections to be made here with many obscure modifications of mental life, such as trance and ecstasy. But I am moved to exclaim, in the words of Schiller’s diver: Who breathes overhead in the rose-tinted light may be glad! FOOTNOTES: [1] Christian Grabbe, _Hannibal_: ‘Ja, aus der Welt werden wir nicht fallen. Wir sind einmal darin.’ [2] Cf. the considerable volume of work on this topic dating from that of Ferenczi (‘Stages in the Development of the Sense of Reality’, 1913) up to Federn’s contributions, 1926, 1927 and later. [3] According to _The Cambridge Ancient History_, vol. vii., 1928, ‘The Founding of Rome’, by Hugh Last. II