“A strange light illuminated his heart and mind. All agitation was calmed, all doubt and perplexity resolved itself into a superior harmony, a serene and tranquil gaiety, which yet was completely rational. But these radiant moments were only a prelude to the last instant--that immediately succeeded by the attack. That instant was, in truth, ineffable. When, at a later time, after his recovery, the prince reflected on this subject, he said to himself, ‘Those fleeting moments, in which our highest consciousness of ourselves--and therefore our highest life--is manifested, are due only to disease, to the suspension of normal conditions; and, if so, it is not a higher life, but, on the contrary, one of a lower order.’ This, however, did not prevent his reaching a most paradoxical conclusion. ‘What matter, after all, though it be a disease--an abnormal tension--if the result, as I with recovered health remember and analyze it, includes the very highest degree of harmony and beauty; if at this moment I have an unspeakable, hitherto unsuspected feeling of harmony, of peace, of my whole nature being fused in the impetus of a prayer, with the highest synthesis of life?’ “This farrago of nonsense seemed to the prince perfectly comprehensible; and the only fault it had in his eyes was that of being too feeble a rendering of his thoughts. He could not doubt, or even admit the possibility of a doubt, of the real existence of this condition of ‘beauty and prayer,’ or of its constituting ‘the highest synthesis of life.’ “But did he not in these moments experience visions analogous to the fantastic and debasing dreams produced by the intoxication of opium, haschisch, or wine? He was able to form a sane judgment on this point when the morbid condition had ceased. These moments were only distinguished--to define them in a word--by the extraordinary heightening of the inward sense. If in that instant--that is to say, in the last moment of consciousness which precedes the attack--the patient was able to say clearly, and with full consciousness of the import of his words, ‘Yes, for this moment one would give a whole lifetime,’ there is no doubt that, as far as he alone was concerned, that moment was worth a lifetime. “No doubt, too, it is to this same instant that the epileptic Mahomet alluded, when he said that he used to visit all the abodes of Allah in less time than it would take to empty his water-jar.” I will add here some lines from the _Correspondance_ of Flaubert:-- “If sensitive nerves are enough to make a poet, I should be worth more than Shakespeare and Homer.... I who have heard through closed doors people talking in low tones thirty paces away, across whose abdomen one may see all the viscera throbbing, and who have sometimes felt in the space of a minute a million thoughts, images, and combinations of all kinds throwing themselves into my brain at once, as it were the lighted squibs of fireworks.”