“There are moments,” writes the latter (in _Besi_)--“and it is only a matter of five or six seconds--when you suddenly feel the presence of the eternal harmony. This phenomenon is neither terrestrial nor celestial, but it is an indescribable something, which man, in his mortal body, can scarcely endure--he must either undergo a physical transformation or die. It is a clear and indisputable feeling: all at once, you feel as though you were placed in contact with the whole of nature, and you say, ‘Yes! this is true.’ When God created the world, He said, at the end of every day of creation, ‘Yes! this is true! this is good!’ ... And it is not tenderness, nor yet joy. You do not forgive anything, because there is nothing to forgive. Neither do you love--oh! this feeling is higher than love! The terrible thing is the frightful clearness with which it manifests itself, and the rapture with which it fills you. If this state were to last more than five seconds, the soul could not endure it, and would have to disappear. During those five seconds, I live a whole human existence, and for that I would give my whole life and not think I was paying it too dearly.’ “‘You are not epileptic?’ “‘No.’ “‘You will become so. I have heard that it begins just in that way. A man subject to this malady[467] has minutely described to me the sensation which precedes the attack; and in listening to you, I thought I heard him speaking. He, too, spoke of a period of five seconds, and said it was impossible to endure this condition longer. Remember Mahomet’s water-jar; for the space of time it took to empty it, the prophet was rapt into Paradise. Your five seconds are the jar--Paradise is your harmony--and Mahomet was epileptic! Take care you do not become so also, Kiriloff!’”[468] And in the _Idiot_ (vol. i. p. 296):-- “ ... I remember, among other things, a phenomenon which used to precede his epileptic attacks, when they came on in a waking state. In the midst of the dejection, the mental marasmus, the anxiety, which the madman experienced, there were moments in which, all of a sudden, his brain became inflamed, and all his vital forces suddenly rose to a prodigious degree of intensity. The sensation of life, of conscious existence, was multiplied almost tenfold in these swiftly-passing moments.