ECSTASY (Gr. eksticsis, a transposition, a change of situation or condition; applied to the mind in the sense of a state in which it is altered or fundamentally changed in char acter by. some absorbing emotion), a word applied to those states of mind, which, without amounting to insanity (q.v.), in respect of the temporary character of the affec tion, are marked by mental alienation, and altered or diminished consciousness. A person in ecstasy may be violently moved, or completely passive; convulsed, or rigid, or flaccid in all the limbs; silent, or uttering unmeaning or excited language, or assum ing the character of a prophet or inspired person; having, or not having intelligence of what is going on around him. The varieties are infinite, because this morbid state of the mind .is nothing more in reality than the fixing pf it in a particular attitude, as it were, in connection with an overmastering idea, emotion, or sensation, which causes all other external phenomena to be disregarded. Perhaps the most common form, or, at all events, that which is best known, is religious ecstasy closely allied to monomania and reli gious delusion of every kind; often simulated, hut also occurring as a real disease, as in the case of those " struck" in revival meetings, mid in the older histories of the conver sions of Cambuslang, the convuldonnaires of St. Medard, and the epidemics of religious
excitement men tioned under dancing mania (q. v.). It is also common to speak of the ecstasy of terror, and the expression is correct in exaggerated cases, where fear com pletely paralyzes both the consciousness and the power of motion and expression; so also there is an ecstasy of joy, of love of hate, of meditation ; and in some physical states as catalepsy (q.v.), hysteria (q.v.), mesmerism (q.v.), a true ecstasy is one of the pheno mena, inasmuch as the proper consciousness of the individual is temporarily abolished, or so much changed in character as to lead almost to the loss of the sense of personal iden tity. Some of the cases of presumed double consciousness (q.v.) are no doubt of this kind; and generally the same may be said of the state of the mind in many dreams and visions, and also in somnambulism (q.v.). A striking picture of this form of ecstasy is the well-known sleep-walking scene in Macbeth, where the lady's mind is so completely preoccupied with the supposed blood stain on her hands, that though her eyes are open, we are told that "their sense is shut," and the mind is also excluded from all the ordi nary avenues of communication.