There is no doubt that such a relief-bringing exhaustion was the ultimate aim of all those exalted manifestations to which the poor tarantuli and the Vitus dancers abandoned themselves. But the problem presented by the similarity between the pathological despair which constitutes the initial stage of such epidemic mental disorders, and the oppressive feeling of joy whose expression has been thwarted, is so difficult that we can hardly expect to obtain a decisive answer to such questions as whether, for example, the mænadic exaltation is to be considered as a melancholic or a cheerful state of mind. And in most cases it would probably be equally impossible to ascertain whether in a given manifestation we have to do with pleasure that seeks enhancement, or with pain that seeks relief in exhaustion. While every one is thus free to interpret the facts according to his optimistic or pessimistic bias, it must nevertheless be considered as a confusion of ideas to make the quest of unconsciousness a universal and fundamental impulse in man. It is impossible for us to assign any psychological importance to commonplaces on the enviable state of the insensible and the happiness to be found in unconsciousness. It is only when it delivers us from pain that a state of partial insensibility and cessation of function may be perceived as relatively agreeable. That an absolute absence of feeling could afford us any pleasure is a psychological contradiction in terms. This illusion of unconsciousness can, however, be easily explained by the fact that intense emotional states are generally dominated by a single preoccupation. A strong feeling, by reason of the limitations of our consciousness, annihilates external sensations and ideas. Ecstasy, that “over-conscious” state of highly concentrated activity, rises above space and time to a state in which we feel liberated from all forms of perception. But the highest pleasure which we may thus experience is not, as Wagner in his pessimistic period would have it, a sinking and drowning of ourselves in unconsciousness; it is far rather— “endlos ewig einbewuszt.”