To be sane was either to be sedated by melancholy or activated by hysteria, two responses which were always and equally warranted for those of sound insight. All others were irrational, merely symptoms of imaginations left idle, of memories out of work. And above these mundane responses, the only elevation allowable was a sardonic one: a bliss that annihilated the universe with jeers of dark joy, a mindful ecstasy. Anything else in the way of 'mysticism' was a sign of deviation and a heresy to the obvious.