This is, however, not the only possible form of the disappearance of our "twoness," and the resulting loss of the self-feeling. When the sequence of objects in consciousness is so rapid that the feeling of transition, expressed in motor terms, drops below the threshold of sensation, the feeling of self again fades. Think, for instance, of the Bacchanal orgies. The votary of Dionysus, dancing, shrieking, tearing at his hair and at his garments, lost in the lightning change of his sensations all power of relating them. His mind was ringed in a whirling circle, every point of which merged into the next without possibility of differentiation. And since he could feel no transition periods, he could feel HIMSELF no longer; he was one with the content of his consciousness, which consciousness was no less a unit than our bright light aforesaid, just as a circle is as truly a unit as a point. The priest of Dionysus must have felt himself only a dancing, shouting thing, one with the world without, "whirled round in earth's diurnal course with rocks and stones and trees." And how perfectly the ancient belief fits our psychophysical analysis! The Bacchic enthusiast believed himself possessed with the very ecstasy of the spirit of nature. His inspired madness was the presence of the god who descended upon him,--the god of the vine, of spring; the rising sap, the rushing stream, the bursting leaf, the rippling song, all the life of flowing things, they were he! "Autika ga pasa zoreusei," was the cry,--"soon the whole earth will dance and sing!" Yes, this breaking down of barriers, this melting of the personality into its surroundings, this strange and sweet self- abandonment must have its source in just the disappearance of the sensation of adjustment, on which the feeling of personality is based. But how can it be, we have to ask, that a principle so barren of emotional significance should account for the ecstasy of religious emotion, of aesthetic delight, of creative inspiration? It is not, however, religion or beauty or genius that is the object of our inquiry at this moment, but simply the common element in the experience of each of these which we know as the disappearance of self-feeling. How the circumstances peculiar to religious worship, aesthetic appreciation, and intellectual creation bring about the formal conditions of the loss of personal feeling must be sought in a more detailed analysis, and we shall then be able to trace the source of the intensity of emotion in these experiences. What, then, first of all, are the steps by which priest and poet and thinker have passed into the exaltation of selfless emotion? Fortunately, the passionate pilgrims of all three realms of deep experience have been ever prodigal of their confessions. The religious ecstasy, however, embodies the most complete case, and allows the clearest insight into the nature of the experience; and will therefore be dealt with at greatest length.