And in Schopenhauer we read that he who contemplates the
beautiful "forgets even his individuality, his will, and only
continues to exist as the pure subject, the clear mirror of
the object."

But not only the religious enthusiast and the worshiper of
beauty "lose themselves" in ecstasy. The "fine frenzy" of the
thinker is typical. From Archimedes, whose life paid the
forfeit of his impersonal absorption; from Socrates, musing in
one spot from dawn to dawn, to Newton and Goethe, there is but
one form of the highest effort to penetrate and to create.
Emerson is right in saying of the genius, "His greatness
consists in the fullness in which an ecstatic state is realized
in him."

The temporary evaporation of the consciousness of one's own
Personality is then decidedly not a pathological experience.
It seems the condition, indeed, and recognized as such in
popular judgment, of the deepest feeling and the highest
achievement. Perhaps it is the very assumption of this condition
in our daily thoughts that has veiled the psychological problem
it presents. We opine, easily enough, that great deeds are done
in forgetfulness of self. But why should we forget ourselves
in doing great deeds? Why not as well feel in every act its
reverberation on the self,--the renewed assurance that it is
I who can? Why not, in each aesthetic thrill, awake anew to
the consciousness of myself as ruler in a realm of beauty? Why
not, in the rush of intellectual production, glory that "my
mind to me a kingdom is"? And yet the facts are otherwise:
in proportion to the intensity and value of the experience is