iction, gained from reading and
reflection, that something the same has come to all who have found God.
I am aware that it may justly be called mystical. I am not enough
acquainted with philosophy to defend it from that or any other charge.
I feel that in writing of it I have overlaid it with words rather than
put it clearly to your thought. But, such as it is, I have described
it as carefully as I now am able to do."

Here is another document, even more definite in character, which, the
writer being a Swiss, I translate from the French original.[28]

[28] I borrow it, with Professor Flournoy's permission, from his rich
collection of psychological documents.

"I was in perfect health: we were on our sixth day of tramping, and in
good training. We had come the day before from Sixt to Trient by Buet.
I felt neither fatigue, hunger, nor thirst, and my state of mind was
equally healthy. I had had at Forlaz good news from home; I was
subject to no anxiety, either near or remote, for we had a good guide,
and there was not a shadow of uncertainty about the road we should
follow. I can best describe the condition in which I was by calling it
a state of equilibrium. When all at once I experienced a feeling of
being raised above myself, I felt the presence of God--I tell of the
thing just as I was conscious of it--as if his goodness and his power
were penetrating me altogether. The throb of emotion was so violent
that I could barely tell the boys to pass on and not wait for me. I
then sat down on a stone, unable to stand any longer, and my eyes
overflowed with tears. I thanked God that in the course of my life he
had taught me to know him, that he sustained my life and took pity both
on the insignificant creature and on the sinner that I was. I begged
him ardently that my life might be consecrated to the doing of his
will. I felt his reply, which was that I should do his will from day
to day in humility and poverty, leaving him, the Almighty God, to be
judge of whether I should some time be called to bear witness more
conspicuously. Then, slowly, the ecstasy left my heart; that is, I
felt that God had withdrawn the communion which he had granted, and I
was able to walk on, but very slowly, so strongly was I still possessed
by the interior emotion. Besides, I had wept uninterruptedly for
several minutes, my eyes were swollen, and I did not wish my companions
to see me. The state of ecstasy may have lasted four