d the birth of internal consciousness
overwhelmed my childish soul with a dumb, ignorant ecstasy, like that
which savages feel on first hearing the magic of music.

How long I remained thus I know not. I was aroused, by feeling myself
violently shaken. "John!" exclaimed my mother, who had grasped my arm
with a determined hand,--"bless the boy! what ails him? Why, his face
is as white as a sheet!" Slowly I recovered my consciousness, saw the
church and the departing congregation, and mechanically followed my
parents. I could give no explanation of what had happened, except to say
that I had fallen asleep. As I ate my dinner with a good appetite, my
mother's fears were quieted. I was left at home the following Sunday,
and afterwards only ventured to indulge sparingly in the exercise of my
newly discovered faculty. My mother, I was conscious, took more note of
my presence than formerly, and I feared a repetition of the same
catastrophe. As I grew older and my mind became interested in a wider
range of themes, I finally lost the habit, which I classed among the
many follies of childhood.

I retained, nevertheless, and still retain, something of that subtile
instinct which mocks and yet surpasses reason. My feelings with regard
to the persons whom I met were quite independent of their behavior
towards me, or the estimation in which they were held by the world.
Things which puzzled my brain in waking hours were made clear to me in
sleep, and I frequently felt myself blindly impelled to do or to avoid
doing certain things. The members of my family, who found it impossible
to understand my motives of action,--because, in fact, there were no
_motives_,--complacently solved the difficulty by calling me "queer." I
presume there are few persons who are not occasionally visited by the
instinct, or impulse, or faculty, or whatever it may be called, to which
I refer. I possessed it in a more than ordinary degree, and was
generally able to distinguish between its suggestions and the mere
humors of my imagination. It is scarcely necessary to say that I assume
the existence of such a power, at the outset. I recognize it as a normal
faculty of the human mind,--not therefore universal, any more than the
genius which makes a poet, a painter, or a composer.

My education was neither general nor thorough; hence I groped darkly
with the psychological questions which were presented to me. Tormented
by those doubts which at some period of life