VASTNESS AND ISOLATION.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")
Sza,—Might I dare to suggest, as a Philister incurable, that the disturbing sensations so vividly described by your various correspondents are nothing but the common lot of poor humanity when it is just going to sleep or just waking, and that these esoteric psychological phenomena—to describe them respectfully and at full length—are the universal, if reprehensible, result of being half asleep? I have experienced them all in the vastest of isolation, and many far wilder than any yet described. Sweet Kathleen Mavourneen in singing to her lover:
"Dermot &store, between waking and sleeping,"— summed it all up in a stanza or two. So did one Campbell, in his verse about the wounded soldier. It is the border of Dream-land, and that's all; something within the province of Prospero ; natural to the last degree, not supernatural in any sense. I am sorry to be so material, but so much psychology can be reduced to that.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Felt ham.
MEEHAN MERIVALE.
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