“Of something felt, like something here; Of something done, I know not where; Such as no knowledge may declare.” {149} “Ah!” says the medical man, with a wise shake of the head, “this mental condition is a common enough phenomenon, though only on rare occasions does it express itself in literature. It is simple hysteria.” The transcendentalist who has regarded this state of mind as a spiritual revelation, and looked upon its possessor as one endowed with special powers of intuition, is indignant with this physiological explanation. He is more indignant when the medical man proceeds to explain the ecstatic trances of saints, those whom one may call professional mystics. “Brutal materialism,” says the transcendentalist. Now although hysteria is commonly regarded as a foolish exhibition of weakness on the part of some excitable men and women, there is absolutely no scientific reason why any stigma should attach to this phenomenon. Nor is there any reason why the explanation should be considered as derogatory and necessarily connected with a materialistic view of the Universe. For what is hysteria? It is an abnormal condition of the nervous system giving rise to certain physiological and psychical manifestations. With the physiological ones we are not concerned, but the psychical manifestation should be of the greatest interest to all students of literature who are also presumably students of life. The artistic temperament is always associated with a measure of nervous instability. And where there is nervous instability there will always be a tendency to hysteria. This tendency may be kept in check by other faculties. But it is latent—ready to manifest itself in certain conditions of health or under special stress of excitement. It does not follow that every hysterical person has the artistic temperament; for nervous instability may be the outcome of nervous disease, epilepsy, insanity, or even simple neuroticism in the parents. But so powerful is the influence of the imagination over the body, that the vivid imagination connoted by the artistic temperament controls the nervous system, and when it reaches a certain intensity expresses itself in some abnormal way. And it is the abnormal psychical condition that is of so much significance in literature and philosophy. This psychical condition is far commoner in the East than in the West. Indeed in India, training in mystical insight goes by the name of Yoga. {151a} The passive, contemplative temperament of the Oriental favours this ecstatic condition.