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