Charles Baudelaire is ecstatic. Poe and Heine knew ecstasy. . . .
William Blake and his figures, rushing down the secret pathway of the
mystic, which zigzags from the Fourth Dimension to the bottomless pit of
materialism, was a creator of the darker nuances of pain and ecstasy." Ecstasy is derived from the Greek word which means _to make stand out_;
the mind makes sensible things stand out because it is concentrated on
particular emotions, and on the ideas associated with and springing from
these emotions. We must not make the mistake of thinking that ecstasy
has nothing to do with thought. On the contrary, it is too much occupied
with thought. It in fact represents a form of monomania connected with a
certain idea. It is a rapturous state in which the person is governed by
preoccupation with a definite viewpoint. The poetic condition of
ecstasy to which I refer is that mentioned by the poet Gray, in his
famous _Elegy_, when he speaks of one of the dead who might have "waked
to ecstasy the living lyre." He again uses the word in his _Progress of
Poesie_, when he speaks of Milton, who rode "upon the seraph wings of
ecstasy." Undoubtedly Gray understood by ecstasy the poetic emotion
primarily. In fact, any emotion that grips a man strongly may be called
ecstasy. Great grief or joy, pleasure or pain, passion or tragedy,
enthusiasm for an idea or a cause, are all ecstatic conditions. The
passion for social justice, an intense love for humanity, devotion to
art, beauty, knowledge, the emotions of a happy or an unhappy lover, all
constitute important subjects in the literature of ecstasy. But the ecstasy must be a universal and secular ecstasy. There are two
kinds of ecstasies which though universal may manifest themselves in
such primitive forms as to appear only to limited circles. I refer to
the ecstasy of chauvinism, or fanatical, local, unjust patriotism, and
to the ecstasy of the pathologically religious victim whose views border
on hallucination. For example, if a man goes into extreme rhapsodies
about his particular race or country, and vituperates the people of
other races or countries, and justifies tyrannical measures towards
them; if, furthermore, he writes under the assumption that all the
intellectual and moral virtues reside in his people,--in short, if he is
purely clannish one can scarcely expect his literary product to appeal
to other people than his own. Again, if we hear or read the outburst of
a devotee of a particular religious sect, and we find that we can agree
with him in none of the views or dogmas he entertains; if, moreover, we
observe there is something also anti-human in the attitude that he takes
towards life, we are revolted by his passionate outpourings. Though 

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