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It may safely be said that every one who has had to do with technical Arabic has had difficulty with wahm and its cognates. Some recent investigations have led me to examine the meanings of these in detail and I endeavour in this paper to give my results. It will be understood that this is not a complete lexicographical handling of the whole root, but only an attempt to discover the more technical uses of some of its phases. In the arrangement of the material I fear that I have not always avoided logical cross-division; but the subject is complicated and will call for reading backward as well as forward. Also I make no attempt to trace the origin of these Arabic psychological conceptions, whether in Greek, Syriac, or elsewhere, or to compare them with any parallel conceptions in modern psychology. Such few references as I may make, of the one kind or the other, are simply to illumine wahm itself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We have now given the rule of the first stage concerning understanding what is heard and applying it; and also the rule of the second stage concerning the ecstasy which is encountered in the heart; so let us now give what of it oozes to the outside, consisting of cries and weeping and movements and rending of clothes, etc. So we say [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Know that the first step in Hearing is understanding what is heard, and applying it to an idea which occurs to the hearer. Then this understanding has as fruit ecstasy, and ecstasy moving of the members. Let there be a consideration, then, of these three stages. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

“ Whosoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all Church-Musick. For my own part, not only from my obedience but my particular Genius, I do embrace it: for even that vulgar and Tavern-Musick, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion and a profound contemplation of the First Composer.” This is the confession of Sir Thomas Browne, and in that confession races the farthest apart join. The influence of music on the soul, the emotions it stirs, the fears and hopes it excites, all peoples, all climates, all ages have known. The negro at his camp-meeting, the darwīsh at his dhikr, are here kin with the English scholar and physician. For him it may not have been such a cataleptic ecstasy as befalls the negro or the darwīsh, but the cause was one and the essential nature. All religions have drawn strength and exaltation from this which lies at the root of all religion; it has ever kindled and fed the flame of devotion. The one could picture it to himself as “ a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of God” ; the other can but ignorantly feel it working on his heart and soul, and sweeping him far from all the bonds of mind and thought. The unknown opens before him and clothes itself with his fancy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]