[289] I should perhaps allow for the happiness that may be experienced in moments of supernormal consciousness—something quite distinct from emotional or other intoxication. Fairly consistent testimony as to moments of this kind is found in the records of the past from the early Buddhists down to Tennyson.
[290] I scarcely need say that I am speaking of the man of science only in so far as he is purely naturalistic in his point of view. There may enter into the total personality of Edison or any particular man of science other and very different elements.
[291] M. René Berthelot has written a book on pragmatism and similar tendencies in contemporary philosophy entitled Un Romantisme utilitaire. I have not read it but the title alone is worth more than most books on the subject I have read.
[292] Dedication of the Æneis (1697).
[293] Adventure of one Hans Pfaal.
[294] His attempt to rewrite Hyperion from a humanitarian point of view is a dismal failure.
[295] There is also a strong idyllic element in Paradise Lost as Rousseau (Emile, V) and Schiller (Essay on Naïve and Sentimental Poetry) were among the first to point out. Critics may be found even to-day who, like Tennyson, prefer the passages which show a richly pastoral imagination to the passages where the ethical imagination is required but where it does not seem to prevail sufficiently over theology.
[296] XII, 74.
[297] Three Philosophical Poets, 188.
[298] After telling of the days when “il n’y avait pour moi ni passé ni avenir et je goûtais à la fois les délices de mille siècles,” Saint-Preux concludes: “Hélas! vous avez disparu comme un éclair. Cette éternité de bonheur ne fut qu’un instant de ma vie. Le temps a repris sa lenteur dans les moments de mon désespoir, et l’ennui mesure par longues années le reste infortuné de mes jours” (Nouvelle Héloïse, Pt. III, Lettre VI).