(4) Close parallels to such a state are abundant in all phases and directions of the soul’s life. The happiest and most fruitful moments for our aesthetic sense, those in which our mind expands most and grows most, hence is most active in aesthetic “action” (though not “activity”) are those in which we are unforcedly and massively absorbed in drinking in, with a quiet intentness, the contrasts and harmonies, the grand unity in variety, the very presence and spirit of an alpine upland, or of a river’s flowing, or of the ocean’s outspread, or of the Parthenon sculptures or of Rafael’s madonnas. At such moments we altogether cease to be directly conscious of ourselves, of time or of the body’s whereabouts; and when we return to our ordinary psychical and mental condition, we do so with an undeniable sense of added strength and youthfulness,--somewhat as though our face, old and haggard, were, after gazing in utter self-oblivion upon some resplendent youthfulness, to feel, beyond all doubt, all its many wrinkles to have gone. And so too with the mind’s absorption in some great poem or philosophy or character.--In all these cases, the mind or soul energizes and develops, in precise proportion as it is so absorbed in the contemplation of these various over-againstnesses, these “countries” of the spirit, as to cease to notice its own overflowing action. It is only when the mind but partially attends that a part of it remains at leisure to note the attention of the other part; when the mind is fully engrossed, and hence most keenly active, there is no part of it sufficiently disengaged to note the fact of the engrossment and action of, now, the whole mind. And, with the direct consciousness of our mind’s action, we lose, for the time being, all clear consciousness of the mind’s very existence. And let it be carefully noted, this absence of the direct consciousness of the self is as truly characteristic of the deepest, most creative, moments of full external action: the degree of mind and will-force operating in Nelson at Trafalgar and in Napoleon at Waterloo, or again in St. Ignatius of Antioch in the Amphitheatre, and in Savonarola at the stake, was evidently in the precisely contrary ratio to their direct consciousness of it or of themselves at all.