Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind

have: Hi ludi, tuiti sibi, Fr. Bacono nati (these plays entrusted to themselves proceeded from Fr. Bacon). It is a perfect anagram. Each letter is used once and once only. The form of the long word is Latin and it is read in Latin. The sense of the infolded words correspond with the sense, so far as it has any [compare honorificare, honorifico ; see Century Dictionary], of the infolding word. The infolded Latin is grammatical. The intention is fully declared and plain. There is no flaw. “But where, now, does the long word come from, and can a connection be traced between it and the actual man, Francis Bacon ? To answer this, turn back to the Northumberland House MS. mentioned above. That MS. belonged to Bacon, and could never have been seen by the actor, Shakespeare. On the outer leaf is written the word : Honorificabilitudino. This also is an anagram. It infolds the words: Initio hi ludi Fr. Bacono (in the beginning these plays from Fr. Bacon). It seems to have been a first thought. The Latin words do not form a complete sentence ; they suggest a meaning, but do not actually contain one. The anagram in this form was not considered satisfactory, and was amended into the form found in ‘ Love’s Labor’s Lost.’

“ Thus we have before us the making of the word by Bacon. The sense of the word and its history correspond. The case seems to be complete.” o. But arguments such as above, though cogent and indeed of themselves sufficient if frankly considered, are no longer necessary to establish, although they may be allowed to suggest, the Baconian authorship of the plays and poems, since the writer within the last two years has discovered that these are all or nearly all signed by Francis Bacon, by means of a cipher invented by himself and kept to himself for forty odd years. The evidence upon which this statement rests, if not already published by the time this volume is issued, will very soon thereafter be given to the world. But the present volume has nothing to do with the Bacon-Shakespeare question except incidentally, by the way, and perforce. Somebody wrote the plays and “Sonnets,” and that person, whoever he might be, had, it is believed, Cosmic Consciousness. And just as there is found in nearly all these cases two classes of writing — that, namely, which flows from the Cosmic Sense and that which, springing up in the self conscious mind, treats directly of the Cosmic Sense as an (to it) objective reality — so these two classes of writing are found here : (i) The plays, treating of the world of men and

flowing directly from the Cosmic Sense, and (2) the “Sonnets,” treating (from the point of view of the self conscious man) in a subtle, hidden manner, as is usual and indeed inevitable, of the Cosmic Sense itself. It remains (all that can be done here) to give as many of the “Sonnets” as there is space for, accompanied by the necessary explanatory remarks. The first seventeen “ Sonnets ” urge the Cosmic Sense to produce. The theory is that they were written, as they stand, earliest, and that they were the first writings of their author after illumination. If it be thought singular that a man should so write, then compare this with an undoubted case of precisely the same thing as is here supposed. The 1855 edition of “Leaves of Grass ” was written by Whitman immediately after illumination. On the third page of the “ Leaves ” (the preface was written afterwards) stand these words, addressed to the Cosmic Sense : “ Loose the stop from your throat — not words, not music or rhyme I want ; not custom or lecture, not even the best, only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.” In the case of Whitman, as in the case of Buddha and Jesus, the special urge of the Cosmic Sense was towards an exalted life. In the case of Bacon, as in that of Balzac, it was especially towards literary expression. In accordance with this distinction. Whitman writes, in a long life, two small volumes ; Bacon, in a shorter life, ten or twenty times as much. Whitman’s invocation occupies three lines ; Bacon’s, two hundred lines.

From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty’s rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory : But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel. Making a famine where abundance lies. Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament. And only* herald to the gaudy spring. Within thy own bud buriest thy content. And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding. Pity the world, or else this glutton be. To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee. to represent thee as thou didst appear there where in harmony the open*air thou didst thyself disclose ” [71 : 201]. *Only — i. e., incomparable herald of the gaudy spring. In forty-three cases of Cosmic Consciousness the time of year of first illumination is known with more or less certainty in twenty, and in fifteen of these it took place in the first half of the year — January to June. Did perhaps Bacon’s illumination take place in the spring ? And is that the meaning of the line ? The fairest of all things is what Plotinus calls “this sublime condition,” and of which Dante said : “ Oh splendor of living light eternal ! Who hath become so pallid under the shadow of Parnassus, or hath so drunk at its cistern, that he would not seem to have his mind encumbered, trying the heaven overshadows thee when in

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, When the Cosmic Sense would be And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field, years old Bacon would be sev- Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now, enty. Will be a tattered weed, of small worth held : Then being ask’d where all thy beauty lies. Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, — To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes. Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise. How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use. If thou could’st answer — “ This fair child of mine Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse, — ” Proving his beauty by succession thine ! This were to be new made when thou art old. And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold. Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest. Now is the time that face should form another ; Whose fresh repair if not thou renewest. Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.* For where is she so fairf whose unear’d womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry ? Or who is he so fond will be the tomb Of his self-love, to stop posterity ?

Thou art thy mother’s glass, J and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime : So thou through windows of thine age shalt see. Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time. But if thou live, remembered not to be. Die single, and thine image dies with thee. * Unbless some mother ; deprive some art of the offspring it might (should) have had from the generative influence of the “ lovely boy ” — the Cosmic Sense. •f Where is she so fair f What art is there so fair, etc. J Thou art thy mother's glass — that is, nature’s mirror. “Hold the mirror up to nature” (Hamlet). In the Cosmic Sense all nature, including the human heart, is reflected. In this connection consider (besides the ‘‘ Shakespeare” plays) the “ Com^die Humaine ” of Balzac; the ‘‘Divine Comedy ” of Dante ; the “ Leaves of Grass ” of Whitman. When I consider everything that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment. That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows. Whereon the stars in secret influence comment ; When I perceive that men as plants increase. Cheered and check’d even by the selfsame sky. Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease. And wear their brave state out of memory ;

Then the conceit of this inconstant stay Sets you most rich in youth before my sight. Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay, To change your day of youth to sullied night; And, all in war with Time, for love of you. As he takes from you, I engraft you new. All things, after a momentary period of maturity, fade and lapse. The Cosmic Sense itself is subject to the same universal law. In order that it may not die absolutely with the death of its possessor he (the self conscious Bacon) engrafts it anew in the “Sonnets.” Sonnet XVI. u ■ t> \ -n He (the self conscious Bacon) will (he says) engraft the Cosmic Sense in the “Sonnets.” But (he says to the Cosmic Sense) why do not you (yourself) adopt a mightier way to ensure your earthly immortality ? You are now in your young prime, and many maiden gardens (art, poetiy, the drama, etc.) would be glad to bear your children — your living flowers. And these would be much more like you than would a description of you made from without (as in the case of the “Sonnets”). For the “Sonnets” are a description of the Cosmic Sense from the point of view of self consciousness, whereas the really desirable thing was that the Cosmic Sense should itself speak. “Only the lull I like,” says Whitman, “the hum of your valved voice.” If you would put yourself out. Bacon says to the Cosmic Sense, you would make yourself immortal. You would “keep yourself still.”

But wherefore do not you a mightier way Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time ? And fortify yourself in your decay With means more blessed than my barren rhyme ? Now stand you on the top of happy hours ; And many maiden gardens, yet unset, With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers. Much liker than your painted counterfeit : So should the lines of life that life repair. Which this, Time’s pencil, or my pupil pen. Neither in inward worth, or outward fair. Can make you live yourself in eyes of men. To give away yourself keeps yourself still ; And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill. Who will believe my verse in time to come. If it were fill’d with your most high deserts ? Though yet. Heaven knows, it is but as a tomb Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts. If I could write the beauty of your eyes, And in fresh numbers number all your graces. The age to come would say, “this poet lies ; Such heavenly touches ne’er touch’d earthly faces.’’ So should my papers, yellow’d with their age. Be scorn’d, like old men of less truth than tongue ; And your true rights be term’d a poet’s rage.

And stretched metre of an antique song : But were some child of yours alive that time. You should live twice — in it, and in my rhyme. Let me say \vhat I may (as in the “ Sonnets ”) about you, no one could realize from my words what you really are. Let me tell how you appear to me and it will be said I have exaggerated, lied. But produce — leave behind you children like yourself — worthy of yourself— as they must be — then you cannot be denied. You will live, unmistakably, twice : (i) your own off- spring, whose divinity none will be able to question, and (2) In my description of you, in the “Sonnets,” which description will be seen, from a comparison with your own offspring, to be truthful. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day ? Thou art more lovely and more temperate : Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date : Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines. And often in his gold complexion dimm’d ; And every fair from fair sometimes declines. By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d ; But thy eternal summer shall not fade.

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest ; Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade. When in eternal lines to time thou growest : So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see. So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. The first part of the sonnet is a eulogy of the Cosmic Sense. It would seem that at the time this sonnet was composed Bacon had settled in his own mind how the Cosmic Sense was to express itself, and some of the work seems to have been done — that is, some of the plays written. He speaks of the Cosmic Sense as having grown to time in eternal lines. Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy ; Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide. Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace : Even so my son one early morn did shine With all triumphant splendor on my brow ; But, out alack ! he was but one hour mine.

The region cloud hath mask’d him from me now. Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth ; Suns of the world may stain, when heaven’s sun staineth. “ When these visions occur, it is as if a door were opened into a most marvellous light, whereby the soul sees, as men do when the lightning flashes in a dark night. The lightning makes surrounding objects visible for an instant, and then leaves them in darkness, though the forms of them remain in the fancy. But in the case of the soul the vision is much more perfect ; for those things it saw in spirit in that light are so impressed upon it, that whenever God enlightens it again, it beholds them as distinctly as it did at first, precisely as in a mirror, in which we see objects reflected whenever we look upon it. These visions once granted to the soul never afterward leave it altogether ; for the forms remain, though they become somewhat indistinct in the course of time. The effects of these visions in the soul are quietness, enlightenment, joy-like glory, sweetness, pureness, love, humility, inclination or elevation of the mind to God, sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes more of one, sometimes m.ore of another, according to the disposition of the soul and the will of God” [203 : 200-1]. With the last words of Yepes compare Paul: "The fruit of the spirit [Christ, the Cosmic Sense] is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance” [22 : 5 ; 22].

Sonnet XXXIII refers to the intermittent character of illumination, which holds true in all cases of Cosmic Consciousness, in which there is more than one flash of the divine radiance. It treats of the cheerlessness and barrenness of the intervals as compared with those periods when the Cosmic Sense is actually present. So Behmen, referring to the intermittent character of his illumination, says [40 : 16] : “The sun shone on me a good while but not constantly, for the sun hid itself, and then I knew not nor well understood my own labor” {his own writings'). Note the use of the same figure by both writers. So also Yepes tells us : Let me confess that we two must be twain, Although our undivided loves are one : So shall those blots that do with me remain, Without thy help, by me be borne alone. In our two loves there is but one respect. Though in our lives a separate spite. Which though it alter not love’s sole effect. Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love’s delight. I may not evermore acknowledge thee. Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame ; Nor thou with public kindness honor me.

Unless thou take that honor from thy name : But do not so ; I love thee in such sort As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report. It is reasonable to suppose that this sonnet represents a later date than those above quoted. It is fair to imagine, therefore, that when it was written quite a body of the plays was in existence. For some years Bacon has been leading a dual life : on the one hand the life of a lawyer, courtier, politician — his self conscious life : on the other the life of the seer, poet — the life lit by that “ light rare, untenable, lighting the very light” — the “ light that never was on land or sea ” — the life, in a word, of Cosmic Consciousness. He had kept these two lives entirely apart. None or few (Anthony, perhaps, and Mathews) knew that he was living any other life than the first. It had for many strong reasons, and feelings stronger than reasons, become with him a settled policy that the two lives were to be kept apart. The frank duality of this and some other of the “Sonnets” will be almost or quite incomprehensible to many as applied to two parts of the same person or two personalities in the same individual. But we know that (supposing the interpretation here adopted to be correct) the language of the “Sonnets” is not more extreme in this respect than is language in other of these cases in which there can be no doubt as to its meaning.

Thus Whitman writes : “ With laugh and many a kiss O soul thou pleasest me, I thee” [193 : 321]. And again : “I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual me ” [ib ]. The writer of the sonnet says, or seems to say, that should he acknowledge his other self, the Cosmic Sense, and its offspring, the plays, any good that could do him (the self conscious person) would be taken from this higher self, and that he will not consent to. O, how thy worth with manners may I sing, When thou art all the better part of me ? What can mine own praise to mine own self bring ? And what is’t but mine own, when I praise thee? Even for this let us divided live. And our dear love lose name of single one. That by this separation I may give That due to thee which thou deserv’t alone. O absence, what a torment wouldst thou prove. Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave To entertain the time with thoughts of love, — Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive, — And that thou teachest how to make one twain. By praising him here, who doth hence remain !

The meaning of this sonnet seems unmistakable. It scarcely needs a commentary. The author says that the Cosmic Sense is the best part of him (as, of course, it was), and being part of himself, it is scarcely mannerly in him to praise it. But (he says) for this very reason let us live as two. His absence from the Cosmic Sense is, of course, the time he is occupied with law, politics, business, worldly affairs — all that time, in fact, between the periods of illumination, when his time and mind were not occupied with the things of the Cosmic Sense. That absence is made happy by the knowledge that at any time he can turn to thoughts of the Cosmic Sense and of the things belonging to it. The most striking expression in this sonnet is : “Thou [the Cosmic Sense] teachest how to make one twain.” This is, as pointed out many times in this volume, a prime characteristic of the cases in question. “The attainment of Arahatship ” (Cosmic Consciousness), says Gautama, will cause a man, “ being one, to become multiform” [161 : 214]. “I live,” says Paul, “yet no longer I but Christ [the Cosmic Sense] liveth in me” [22 : 2 : 20]. And again : " If any man be in Christ [if any man live the life of the Cosmic Sense] he is a new creature ” [21 : 5 :

17] ; and Paul says that the man Jesus “made both [that is, (i) the Cosmic Sense — Christ, and (2) the self conscious man — Jesus] one,” ..." that he might create of the twain one new man ” [23 : 2 : 14-15], and in many other places he bears testimony to his own dual personality. Mohammed called the Cosmic Sense “Gabriel ; ” the Koran was dictated by him (or it) ; the ostensible Mohammed was a second individuality. Balzac, speaking of Louis Lambert (i. e., himself), after giving his life down to the period of illumination, says ; “ The events I have still to relate form the second existence of this creature destined to be exceptional in all things ” [5 ; 100]. He then goes on to describe the oncoming of the Cosmic Conscious condition, and, in the aphorisms. Cosmic Consciousness itself. Whitman constantly refers to the Cosmic Sense as his soul, and calls the every day, visible, Walt Whitman, “The other I am ” [193 : 32], and so on.

So am I as the rich, whose blessed key Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure, The which he will not every hour survey. For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure. Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare, Since, seldom coming, in the long year set. Like stones of worth they thinly placed are. Or captain jewels in the carkanet. So is the time that keeps you, as my chest. Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide. To make some special instant special blest. By new unfolding his imprison’d pride. Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope, Being had to triumph, being lack’d to hope. Compare Plotinus : “ This sublime condition is not of permanent duration. It is only now and then that we can enjoy the elevation (mercifully made possible for us) above the limits of the body and the world. I myself have realized it but three times as yet” [188 ; 81]. Bacon’s periods of illumination were probably longer and more frequent than th' se of Plotinus. Neither Plotinus nor Bacon, apparently, could control the periods of illumination. It seems likely that Jesus refers to this apparently causeless and arbitrary coming and going of the divine light when he said [17:3:8]: “ The wind bloweth

where it listest and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh and whither it goeth ; so is every one that is born of the spirit. ' ’ A description, from one point of view, of Cosmic Consciousness. Compare with it a description by Gautama from the same point of view. He says : ‘ ' Arahatship [Cosmic Con- sciousness] enables a man to comprehend by his own heart the hearts of other beings and of other men, to understand all minds, the passionate, the calm, the angry, the peaceable, the deluded, the wise, the concentrated, the ever varying, the lofty, the narrow, the sublime, the mean, the steadfast, the wavering, the free, and the enslaved ” [i6i : 215]. That is, it reveals all character, as is so well exemplified in the “Shakespeare” drama. Compare Dante’s world-wide vision ; Balzac’s insight into the structure and operation of the infinite human heart ; Whitman’s “ I am of old and of young, of the foolish as much as the wise, regardless of others, ever regardful of others, maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,” etc, [193 : 42], and the almost universal knowledge of man and his environment which his writings, especially the “ Leaves,” indicate.

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme ; But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry. Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory. ’Gainst death and all oblivious enmity Shall you pace forth ; your praise shall still find room Even in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out to the ending doom. So, till the judgment that yourself arise. You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes. By “this powerful rhyme,” in which the Cosmic Sense shall endure and shine in the far future, is probably not intended the “Sonnets” but the plays or some particular play, such as “Romeo and Juliet” (written 1596, printed 1597 and 1599). Until the judgment brought to birth by the elevation of human taste by the plays themselves, you (Cosmic Consciousness) shall live in this play and delight the eyes and hearts of lovers. What is your substance, whereof are you made. That millions of strange shadows on you tend ? Since every one hath, every one, one shade,

And you, but one, can every shadow lend. Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit Is poorly imitated after you ; On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set. And you in Grecian tires are painted new : Speak of the spring, and foison of the year ; The one doth shadow of your beauty show. The other as your bounty doth appear ; And you in every blessed shape we know. In all external grace you have some part. But you like none, none you, for constant heart. If there be nothing new, but that which is Hath been before, how are our brains beguil’d. Which, laboring for invention, bears amiss The second burden of a former child ! O that record could with a backward look, Even of five hundred courses of the sun. Show me your image in some antique book. Since mind at first in character was done ! That I might see what the old world could say The writer asks : “Is this illumi- nation of which I am. conscious a new phenomenon or did it exist in the old world? 1 wish,” he says, “I could find it or a description of it in literature. If it has existed it ought to be found in the records of the human mind, and if 1 could find such records 1 could judge whether the human mind was advancing, retreating, or standing still.” He seems to reach

the conclusion that few or none of the great writers of the past experienced it. Bacon was exceedingly familiar with the Bible, and therefore with the gospels and the Pauline epistles, but his reverence for these writings would probably prevent his comparing his experience to that of the sacred writers. It does not seem that he knew much of Dante ; and the Buddhistic literature, in which it is fully treated, was an absolutely sealed book to Englishmen of his time. It would never have occurred to him to examine the Koran and the life of Mohammed, if, indeed, they were accessible to him. Bacon was thus probably entirely cut off from any knowledge of other cases than his own. To this composed wonder of your frame ; Whether we are mended, or whether better they, Or whether revolution be the same. O, sure I am, the wits of former days To subjects worse have given admiring praise. Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye. And all my soul, and all my every part ; And for this sin there is no remedy. It is so grounded inward in my heart. Methinks no face so gracious is as mine. No shape so true, no truth of such account ; And for myself my own worth do define.

As I all other in all worth surmount. But when my glass shows me myself indeed, Beated and chopp’d with tann’d antiquity. Mine own self-love quite contrary I read ; Self so self-loving were iniquity. ’Tis thee (myself) that for myself I praise. Painting my age with beauty of thy days. In this sonnet the duality of the person writing is brought out very strongly — no doubt purposely. When he dwells on his Cosmic Conscious self he is, as it were, lost in admiration of himself. When he turns to the physical and self conscious self he is inclined, on the contrary, to despise himself. He is at the same time very much and very little of an egotist. Those who knew the man Walt Whitman know that this same seeming contradiction, resting on the same foundation, existed most markedly in him. Whitman’s admiration for the Cosmic Conscious Whitman and his works (the “Leaves”) was just such as pictured in this sonnet, while he was absolutely devoid of egotism in the ordinary way of the self conscious individual. It is believed that the above remarks would remain true if applied to Paul, Mohammed or Balzac. Reduced to last analysis, the matter seems to stand about as follows : The Cosmic Conscious self, from

all points of view, appears superb, divine. From the point of view of the Cosmic Conscious self, the body and the self conscious self appear equally divine. But from the point of view of the ordinary self consciousness, and so compared with the Cosmic Conscious self, the self conscious self and the body seem insignificant and even, as well shown in Paul’s case, contemptible. That thou art blam’d shall not be thy defect. For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair ; The ornament of beauty is suspect, A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air. So thou be good, slander doth but approve Thy worth the greater, being woo’d of time ; For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love. And thou present’st a pure unstained prime. Thou hast pass’d by the ambush of young days. Either not assail’d, or victor being charg’d ; Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise. To tie up envy, evermore enlarg’d : If some suspect of ill mask’d not thy show. Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe. Bacon says : That a Cosmic Sense (as seen in its offspring, the plays) should be blamed (as for license in language, contempt of received rules, etc.) shall be no proof of defect. Great original work, such as the “Shakespeare” drama, is never appreciated at first, is, in fact, always the object of grave suspicion and often of absolute condemnation. If, he says, the Cosmic Sense is really the divine thing it seems to be, evil speaking of it and its offspring only proves it the more divine, as showing it is over the heads and above the judgment of ordinary men. If it was not for this inevitable blindness all eyes and hearts would recognize and bow down before its supremacy.

So oft have I invok’d thee for my Muse, And found such fair assistance in my verse, As every alien pen hath got my use, And under thee their poesy disperse. Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing. And heavy ignorance aloft to fly, Have added feathers to the learned’s wing. And given grace a double majesty. Yet be most proud of that which I compile. Whose influence is thine, and born of thee : In others’ works thou dost but mend the style. And arts with thy sweet graces graced be ; But thou art all my art, and dost advance As high as learning my rude ignorance. At the time this sonnet was written many of the plays were composed, published, and doubtless imitated. The writer speaks of himself as "ignorant” because he has had no training or practice in verse writing. The Cosmic Sense had immediately upon its appearance "taught the hitherto dumb” man "on high to sing.” Becoming illumined at about the age of thirty, he not only began without any apprenticeship to write poetry, but to write a new and higher poetry than had hitherto been written in English. And he says that the divine light shining through his compositions (the plays) has been (to

some extent, at all events) absorbed and utilized by the verse writers of the day ; has added feathers to their wings, and given a double majesty to the grace of their lines. So Lang says of Scott that he "was being driven from post to pillar by his imitators, whom he had taught, like Captain Boabdil, to write nearly as well as himself” [169 : 9]. But he says to the Cosmic Sense, be most proud of what I produce, for the merits of that come not all from study, cleverness or practice, but entirely from yourself. Compare with the above statement the cases of Jesus, Paul, Mohammed, Balzac and Walt Whitman, who either had no practice or training, or (as in the case of Balzac) derived little or no benefit therefrom, but who in middle life, began immediately upon illumination, either to speak or to write undying words. Was it the proud full sail of his great verse. Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you. That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inherse. Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew ? Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?

No, neither he, nor his compeers by night Giving him aid, my verse astonished. He, nor that affable familiar ghost Which nightly gulls him with intelligence, As victors, of my silence cannot boast; I was not sick of any fear from thence : But when your countenance fill’d up his line Then lack’d I matter ; that enfeebled mine. In this sonnet reduplication of the individual. Bacon - Shakespeare, is carried to the farthest pitch. We are forcibly reminded (once more) of Gautama’s words in this connection, viz., that Cosmic Consciousness (or Arahatship, as he calls it, "will make a man, being one, to become multiform ” — not merely two, but multiform. Few or no sonnets (it would seem) have been written for some time by the " other I am.” But the Cosmic Conscious personality had been producing rapidly. Several or many plays had been written within a brief period. The Cosmic Conscious Bacon had been taught by the Cosmic Sense to write "above a mortal pitch.” It was not that, however, which struck dumb the self conscious Bacon. But it was the fact that the Cosmic Conscious individual had absorbed (for the time at least) into himself all the forces of the complex organism. As to the "compeers” of the Cosmic Sense, they are the spiritual entities spoken of by Balzac. "Mysterious beings armed with wondrous faculties, who combine with other beings and penetrate them as active agents, beings which overpower others with the scepter and glory of a superior nature” [7 :

50J. Then in line nine " He” is the Cosmic Conscious Bacon, while the " affable familiar ghost ” is Cosmic Consciousness. The expression, " Nightly gulls him with intelligence,” may be compared with Whitman’s " Message from the heavens whispering to me even in sleep” [193 ; 324]. It may be noted here (most readers will observe it for themselves) that when speaking of the same experience Whitman’s language is more moderate, lower toned, than Balzac's, Dante’s or perhaps any other of the Cosmic Conscious writers.

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame, Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose, Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name ! O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose ! That tongue that tells the story of thy days. Making lascivious comments on thy sport. Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise ; Naming thy name blesses an ill report. O, what a mansion have those vices got Which for their habitation chose out thee. Where beauty’s veil doth cover every blot, And all things turn to fair that eyes can see ! Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege ; The hardest knife ill-us’d doth lose his edge. “ How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame.” Helen Price says that in 1866 Walt Whitman (who wanted a publisher for “ Leaves of Grass” badly enough at that time) was offered by a prominent house good terms on condition that he would consent to the deletion of a few lines of “Children of Adam.” An hour or two after the offer was made he returned to her mother’s house in New York, where he was then staying, and, after telling her and her mother of the offer, said : “But I

dare not do it, I dare not leave out or alter what is so genuine, so indispensable, so lofty, so pure” [38 : 32]. So, as to an earlier episode in his life, he told the writer [38 : 26] ; “ When ‘Leaves of Grass,’ in 1855, roused such a tempest of anger and condemnation, I went off to the east end of Long Island and spent the late summer and all the fall — the happiest of my life — around Shelter Island and Peconic Bay. Then came back to New York with the confirmed resolution, from which I never afterwards wavered, to go on with my poetic enterprise in my own way and finish it as well as 1 could.” A corresponding incident in Balzac’s life occurred in connection with the publication of “ Le Medecin de Campagne.” In 1833 (shortly after illumination) he wrote to his much loved sister that that book would reach her next week : “It has cost me,” he said, “ten times the work ‘ Louis Lambert’ did. . . . That labor was frightful. I may now die in peace; I have done a great work for my country.” Two months afterwards he writes again : “ Do you know how ‘ Le Medecin ’ has been received ? By a torrent of insults ; . . . but I

have chosen my path ; nothing shall discourage me. . . . Never has the torrent which bears me onward been so rapid ; no more terribly majestic work has ever compelled the human brain” [4 : 142—3] . Line four, (“O in what sweets,” etc.) refers to the vices, crimes, meannesses in the plays (the acts of Regan, Goneril, Edmund, lago, etc.). And does not a veil of beauty cover them all? That tongue, he says, that tells the visions, the revelations, which proceed from the Cosmic Sense, " cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise.” (“And I say,” says Whitman, “that there is in fact no evil ”) [193 : 22]. Then he cautions the Cosmic Sense to take “heed of this large privilege.” And so we see Whitman “returning upon [his] poems, considering, lingering long,” and striking out words and expressions that seem to him too free. This sonnet is one of the most difficult to fully enter into the meaning of, but when this is realized it is perhaps the most exquisite passage ever written by its author. The most exquisite in expression and in metaphysical subtlety. No comment, perhaps, certainly no comment by the present editor, can do it even the most meager justice.

Some say, thy fault is youth, some wantonness ; Some say, thy grace is youth and gentle sport ; Both grace and faults are lov’d of more and less ; Thou mak’st faults graces that to thee resort. As on the finger of a throned queen The basest jewel will be well esteem’d, So are those errors that in thee are seen To truths translated, and for true things deem’d. How many lambs might the stern wolf betray, If like a lamb he could his looks translate ! How many gazers might’st thou lead away. If thou would’st use the strength of all thy state ! But do not so ; I love thee in such sort. As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report. The plays (the offspring of the Cosmic Sense) are variously judged. What, for instance, seems “wantonness” to one to another is “gentle sport.” Both faults and graces are commended ; for faults are made graces by the alchemy of the Cosmic Sense. “I am myself,” says Whitman, “just as much evil as good, and my nation is, and I say there is in fact no evil” [193: 22]. And Paul says: “I know and am per-

suaded in the Lord Jesus [that is, by the Cosmic Sense] that nothing is unclean of itself.” As a base jewel on the hand of a queen passes for a rich gem, so all things in you (the Cosmic Sense) are beautiful, true and good. If you should give free expression to this revelation (“using the strength of all your state ” ) you would lead many astray (for they would misunderstand you), and you yourself (in your progeny — such as Paul’s Epistles, the “Shakespeare” drama, the “Leaves of Grass,” etc.) would be condemned and would be so hindered doing your proper work in the world, therefore “ do not so.” How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen ! And yet this time removed was summer’s time ; The teeming autumn, big with rich increase. Bearing the wanton burden of the prime. Like widow’d wombs after their lord’s decease : Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me But hope of orphans, and unfather’d fruit ; For summer and his pleasures wait on thee. And, thou away, the very birds are mute ;

Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer. That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near. As to the absence of the Cosmic Sense — or, more properly speaking, its only occasional presence in even the greatest cases — see comment on Sonnet XXXIII. As elsewhere pointed out, even self consciousness, which has perhaps existed in the race for several hundred thousand years, and now appears in the individual at about three years of age, is liable to lapse. How very far from constant must then a new faculty like Cosmic Consciousness be ! The writer speaks of a time when the Cosmic Sense was absent. But (as he puts it) it was he that was absent from the Cosmic Sense — that being considered the real person. So Whitman speaks of the Cosmic Sense as himself, and of the self conscious Whitman as “the other I am.” And yet, he says, it was a period of very free production — as there is no reason it should not have been — for what is revealed by the Cosmic Sense remains clear and manifest even for months and years, supposing there should be no subsequent illumination. Compare Yepes, as quoted in comment on Sonnet XXXIII. But though a period of sufficient (reflected) light and of free production, it was joyless and bare as compared with periods during which the Cosmic Sense was actually present.

O thou my lovely boy, who in thy power Dost hold Time’s fickle glass, his sickle, hour ; Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st ; If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack. As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back. She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill May time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill. Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure I She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure : Her audit, though delay’d, answer’d must be. And her quietus is to render thee. This sonnet constitutes the close of the address to Cosmic Consciousness. It was probably written very shortly before publication (1609), after the writer had been “illumined with the Brahmic Splendor” [155:232] nearly twenty years and had produced, under its influence, nearly the whole “Shakespeare” drama. O lovely boy, he says, addressing for the last time the Cosmic Sense, who in the hollow of thy hand doth hold time and death — who waning (as age advances within me) has grown (in the plays, thy products), and thereby showest thyself constantly augmenting as thy mortal lovers wither and die. If Nature should desire (as her way is) to destroy thee (the plays — children of Cosmic Consciousness) she yet will not, but will keep thee to show that she is able to disgrace time by making what he cannot kill. Not only so, but also to show that this product of Nature can even kill time (destroy wretched minutes).

Yet do thou (Nature's favorite — the Cosmic .Sense — the plays) still fear Nature, who may keep thee for a time, but perhaps not forever. As to her (Nature), though her rule is so strong, she must one day give an account of herself to a stronger power. That power is thee (Cosmic Consciousness), whom when evolution (which is Nature) has produced (that is, made general — as self consciousness is to-day), she (Nature) will have received her quietus. For the full apparition of the Cosmic Sense will destroy death, the fear of death, sin and

space. “Then cometh the end, when he [Christ — Cosmic Consciousness] shall deliver up the kingdom to God even the Father, when he shall have abolished all rule, and all authority and power. For he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be abolished is death ” [20 : 15 : 24-26]. For Cosmic Consciousness will throw the things of sense (of self consciousness — of Nature, as we know her to-day, which now absorb men’s thoughts) so into the background as practically to abolish them. Nature, instead of being the Lord, as now, will be a slave — will effectually, in fact, receive her quietus. In this case the ordinary details of proof of illumination are largely wanting. If William Shakespeare wrote the plays and “Sonnets,” we have absolutely no external evidence to build upon. If Francis Bacon wrote them, we have the vague evidence of his seclusion at about the time his illumination (if at all) must have taken place, and Hawley’s and his own seeming allusion to the possession by him of some such unusual, very exalted, faculty. Over and above these circumstances, which to most will seem very slight, the argument that the man who wrote the plays and “ Sonnets” had Cosmic Consciousness must rest upon these writings themselves and would consist of two clauses, (i) The creator of the plays was perhaps the greatest intellect the world has seen.

His moral intuitions were as true as his intellect v/as great. He was from all points of view a transcendently great spiritual force. Being so, he ought (according to the thesis maintained in this volume) to have had Cosmic Consciousness. (2) The first one hundred and twenty-six sonnets seem to show beyond doubt that their author had the Cosmic Sense and that these sonnets were addressed to it. It does not seem to the present writer that they can be made sense of (intelligently read) from any other standpoint.

Jacob Behmen {called The Teutonic Theosopher). Born 1575 ; died 1624. His birthplace was at Alt Seidenberg, a place about two miles distant from Gorlitz, in Germany. He came of a well-to-do family, but his first employment was that of a herd-boy on the Lands-Krone, a hill in the neighborhood of Gorlitz. The only education he received was at the town school of Seidenberg, a mile from his home. Later he was apprenticed to a shoemaker in Seidenberg. By the year 1599' he was settled at Gorlitz as a master shoemaker and married to Katharina, a daughter of Hans Kuntzschmann, a thriving butcher in that town. Behmen had two distinct illuminations. The first, in 1600 (when he was twenty-five years old), is thus described by Martensen : Sitting one day in his room his eyes fell upon a burnished pewter dish, which reflected the sunshine with such marvellous splendor that he fell into an inward ecstasy, and it seemed to him as if he could now look into the principles and deepest foundation of things. He believed that it was only a fancy, and in order to banish it from his mind he went out upon the green. But here he remarked that he gazed into the very heart of things, the very herbs and grass, and that actual nature harmonized with what he had inwardly seen. He said nothing of this to any one, but praised and thanked God in silence. He continued in the honest practice of his craft, was attentive to his domestic affairs, and was on terms of good-will with all men [123].

Of this first illumination Hartmann says that by it or from it: “He learned to know the innermost foundation of nature, and acquired the capacity to see henceforth with the eyes of the soul into the heart of all things, a faculty which remained with him even in his normal condition ” [97 : 3]. And in the life prefixed to the works the same circumstance is mentioned in the words that follow : About the year 1600, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, he was again surrounded by the divine light and replenished with the heavenly knowledge ; insomuch as going abroad in the fields to a green before Neys Gate, at Gorlitz, he there sat down and, viewing the herbs and grass of the field in his inward light, he saw into their essences, use and properties, which were discovered to him by their lineaments, figures and signatures. In like manner he beheld the whole creation, and from that foundation of revelation he afterwards wrote his book, “ De Signatura Rerum.” In the unfolding of those mysteries before his understanding he had a great measure of joy, yet returned home and took care of his family and lived in great peace and silence, scarce intimating to any these wonderful things that had befallen him till in the year 1610, being again taken into this light, lest the mysteries revealed to him should pass through him as a stream, and rather for a memorial than intending any publication, he wrote his first book, called “Aurora, or the Morning Redness” [40 : 13-14].

The first illumination, in 1600, was not complete. He did not at that time really attain to Cosmic Consciousness ; he passed into the dawn but not into the perfect day. Of his complete illumination, in 1610 (when thirtyfive years old), Martensen says : Ten years later [1610] he had another remarkable inward experience. What he had previously seen only chaotically, fragmentarily, and in isolated glimpses, he now beheld as a coherent whole and in more definite outlines [123]. Hartmann says of this latter experience : Ten years afterwards, anno 1610, his third illumination took place, and that which in former visions had appeared to him chaotic and multifarious was now recognized by him as a unity, like a harp of many strings, of which each string is a separate instrument, while the whole is only one harp. He now recognized the divine order of nature, and how from the trunk of the tree of life spring different branches, bearing manifold leaves and flowers and fruits, and he became impressed with the necessity of writing down what he saw and preserving the record [97 : 3] . While he himself speaks of this hnal and complete illumination as follows: The gate was opened to me that in one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at a university, at which I exceedingly admired and thereupon turned my praise to God for it. For I saw and knew the being of all beings, the byss and abyss and the eternal generation of the Holy Trinity, the descent and original of the world and of all creatures through the divine wisdom : I knew and

saw in myself all the three worlds, namely, (l) the divine [angelical and paradisical] (2) and the dark [the original of the nature to the fire] and (3) then the external and visible world [being a procreation or external birth from both the internal and spiritual worlds]. And I saw and knew the whole working essence, in the evil and the good and the original and the existence of each of them; and likewise how the fruitful-bearing-womb of eternity brought forth. So that I did not only greatly wonder at it but did also exceedingly rejoice [40 : 15]. The expression above, “ He was again surrounded,” refers to certain other visions which preceded this first (imperfect) oncoming of the Cosmic Sense at the age of twenty-five years. Such visions (it may be said) as seem to be common in the lives of men who afterward become illumined. They belong, no doubt, to such sensitive and highly-wrought nervous organizations as would be possessed by persons who had within them the “ eligibility” (as Whitman would have expressed it) of rising to Cosmic Consciousness. Hartmann says of him : Jacob Behmen was in possession of remarkable occult powers. He is known to have spoken several languages, although no one ever knew where he had acquired them. They had probably been learned by him in a previous life. He also knew the language of nature, and could call plants and animals by their own proper names [97 : 19].

Behmen says, himself, on this point : I am not a master of literature nor of arts, such as belong to this world, but a foolish and simple minded man. I have never desired to learn any sciences, but from early youth I strove after the salvation of my soul, and thought how I might inherit or possess the kingdom of heaven. Finding within myself a powerful contrarium, namely, the desires that belong to the flesh and blood, I began to fight a hard battle against my corrupted nature, and with the aid of God I made up my mind to overcome the inherited evil will, to break it, and to enter wholly into the love of God in the Christ. I therefore then and there resolved to regard myself as one dead in my inherited form, until the spirit of God would take form in me, so that in and through Him I might conduct my life. This, however, was not possible for me to accomplish, but I stood firmly by my earnest resolution and fought a hard battle with myself Now while I was wrestling and battling, being aided by God, a wonderful light arose within my soul. It was a light entirely foreign to my unruly nature, but in it I recognized the true nature of God

and man, and the relation existing between them, a thing which heretofore I had never understood, and for which I would never have sought [97 : 50]. Frankenburg writes of him : His bodily appearance was somewhat mean ; he was tall of stature, had a low forehead but prominent temples, a rather aquile nose, a scanty beard, gray eyes sparkling into a heavenly blue, a feeble but genial voice. He was modest in his bearing, unassuming in conversation, lowly in conduct, patient in suffering, and gentle-hearted [123 : 15]. And Hartmann on the same subject says : In his exterior appearance Behmen was little, having a short thin beard, a feeble voice and eyes of a grayish tint. He was deficient in physical strength ; nevertheless there is nothing known of his having ever had any other disease than the one that caused his death [97 : 17] . His life may be read side by side with that of Gautama, Jesus, Paul, Las Casas, Yepes, or even Whitman, without fear that the gentle hearted Behmen should suffer by such comparison, while his death is worthy to stand on record with that of Yepes or Blake. It took place on Sunday, November 20th, 1624.

Before one A. M. Behmen called his son Tobias to his bedside and asked him whether he did not hear beautiful music, and then he requested him to open the door of the room so that the celestial song could be better heard. Later on he asked what time it was and when he was told that the clock struck two he said : “This is not yet time for me, in three hours will be my time.” After a pause he again spoke and said: “Thou powerful God, Zabaoth, save me according to thy will.” Again he said ; “ Thou crucified Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me and take me into thy kingdom.” He then gave to his wife certain directions regarding his books and other temporal matters, telling her also that she would not survive him very long (as indeed she did not), and, taking leave from his sons, he said : “Now I shall enter the Paradise.” He then asked his eldest son, whose loving looks seemed to keep Behmen’s soul from severing the bonds of the body, to turn him round, and, giving one deep sigh, his soul gave up the body to the earth to which it belonged and entered into that higher state which is known to none except those who have experienced it themselves [97 : 15].

As utterances of the Cosmic Sense all the writings of Behmen are wellnigh totally unintelligible to the merely self conscious mind. Nevertheless he who is willing to be at the necessary pains will find that like those of Paul, Dante, Balzac, Whitman and the rest, they are a veritable mine of wisdom, some of which may be found by every earnest seeker, though undoubtedly the whole may only be comprehended by those enlightened as he himself was. To show what has been thought of these books by competent men who have studied them it may be well to quote the words of the editor of “ The Three Principles” in the quarto [1764] edition : A man [he says] cannot conceive the wonderful knowledge, before he has read this book diligently through, which he will find to be contained in it. And he will find that The Threefold life is ten times deeper than this and the Forty Questions to be tenfold deeper than that, and that to be as deep as a spirit is in itself, as the author says ; than which there can be no greater depth, for God himself is a spirit [42 : 3] .

And those of Claude de Saint Martin, contained in his letters to Kirchberger : I am not young [he writes] , being now near my fiftieth year ; nevertheless I have begun to learn German in order that I may read this incomparable author in his own tongue. I have written some not unacceptable books myself, but I am not worthy to unloose the shoestrings of this wonderful man, whom I regard as the greatest light that has ever appeared upon the earth, second only to Him who was the light itself ... I advise you by all means to throw yourself into this abyss of knowledge of the profoundest of all truths [97 : 32 and 199 : 30]. The extracts which follow (as all others in this volume) are selected not so much for their intrinsic interest and excellence, nor for what they reveal to us of the nature of the Cosmos, as for the light they assist in throwing on the characteristics of the faculty called Cosmic Consciousness ; and for this purpose they are compared with like expressions of men whose spiritual position is similar to that of the inspired shoemaker of Gorlitz. If you will behold your own self and the outer world, and what is taking place therein, you will find that you, with regard to your external being, are that external world [97 : 137].

You are a little world formed out of the large one, and your external light is a chaos of the sun and the constellations of stars. If this were not so you would not be able to see by means of the light of the sun [97 : 137]. Not I, the I that I am, know these things : But God knows them in me “Strange and hard that paradox true I give, objects gross and the unseen soul are one ’’ [197 : 173], and Gautama, Plotinus and Carpenter are all equally definite upon the same point. “ Dazzling and tremendous, how quick the sunrise would kill me if I could not now and always send sunrise out of me” [193 ; 50]. “The other I am” [193:32] “’Tis thee [myself] that for myself I praise” [176:62]. The recognition of the duplex individuality of the Cosmic Conscious person — i. e. , the self conscious self and the Cosmic Conscious self. ■ ' Christ ’ ’ here was used as Paul constantly uses the word, as a name — that is, of Cosmic Consciousness. The “breaking through’’ into the Cosmic Sense and the intense feeling of joy and exaltation which thereto belongs. The realization of “heaven, which is pure light; light intellectual, full of love, love of true good, full of joy; joy which transcends every sweetness’’ [72 ; 193].

He alone, therefore, in whom Christ exists and lives, is a Christian, a man in whom Christ has been raised out of the wasted flesh of Adam [97 : 5]. Suddenly . . . my spirit did break through . . . even into the innermost birth of Geniture of the Deity, and there I was embraced with love, as a bridegroom embraces his dearly beloved bride. But the greatness of the triumphing that was in the spirit I cannot express either in speaking or writing ; neither can it be compared to anything, but with that wherein the life is generated in the midst of death, and it is like the resurrection from the dead. In this light my spirit suddenly saw through all, and in and by all the creatures, even in herbs and grass, it knew God, who he is, and how he is, and what his will is ; and suddenly in that light my will was set on, by a mighty impulse, to describe the being of God. But because I could not presently apprehend the deepest births of God in their being and comprehend them in my reason, there passed almost twelve years before the exact understanding thereof was given me. And it was with me as with a young tree which is planted in the ground, and at first is young and tender, and flourishing to the eye, especially if it comes on lustily in its growing. But it does not bear fruit presently ; and, though it blossoms, they fall off ; also many a cold wind, frost and snow, puff upon it, before it comes to any growth and bearing of fruit [41 : 184]

If thou climbest up this ladder on which I climb up into the deep of God, as I have done, then thou hast climbed well : I am not come to this meaning, or to this work and knowledge through my own reason, or through my own will and purpose ; neither have I sought this knowledge, nor so much as know anything concerning it. I sought only for the heart of God, therein to hide myself from the tempestuous storms of the devil [41 : 237] . None of those who have attained Cosmic Consciousness “sought” for it; they could not, for they did not know there was such a thing. But it would seem that all the pronounced cases were men who earnestly sought for the “ heart of God ” — i. e., for the highest and best life. Two quaint expositions of the generating of the second (Cosmic Conscious) self in the first (self conscious) self. Now the will cannot endure the attracting and impregnation, for it would be free, and yet cannot, because it is desirous ; and feeling it cannot be free, it entereth with the attracting into itself, and taketh (or conceiveth) in itself another will, which is to go out from the darkness into itself, and that other conceived will is the eternal mind, and entereth into itself as a sudden flash (of lightning) and dissipateth the darkness, and goeth forth into itself, and dwelleth in itself, and maketh to itself another (or second) principle of another quality (source or condition), for the sting of the stirring remaineth in the darkness [43 :

5]. The first eternal will is God the Father, and it is to generate his Son — viz., his Word — not out of anything else, but out of himself ; and we have already informed you about the essences, which are generated in the will, and also how the will in the essences is set in darkness, and how the darkness (in the wheel of the anxiety) is broken asunder by the flash of fire, and how the will cometh to be in four forms, whereas in the original all four are but one, but in the flash of fire appear in four forms; as also how the flash of fire doth exist, in that the first will doth sharpen itself in the eager hardness, so that the liberty of the will shineth in the flesh. Whereby we

have given you to understand that the first will shineth in the flash of the fire and is consuming by reason of the anxious sharpness, where the will continueth in the sharpness, and comprehendeth the other will in itself (understand in the centre of the sharpness), which is to go out from the sharpness, and to dwell in itself in the eternal liberty without pain or source [43 : 15-16]. For Jesus Christ, the son of God, the Eternal Word in the Father (who is the glance, or brightness, and the power of the light eternity), must become man, and be born in you, if you will know God ; otherwise you are in the dark stable, and go about groping and feeling, and look always for Christ at the right hand of God, supposing that he is a great way off ; you cast your mind aloft above the stars and seek God, as the sophisters teach you, who represent God as one afar off, in heaven [43 ; 24] . “ Christ,” used as by Paul for the Cosmic Sense — “ I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” [22 : 2 : 20]. “Christ who is our life” [25 : 3 : 4]. “ Jesus Christ is in you ” [21 : 13 ;

I was as simple concerning the hidden mysteries as the meanest of all ; but my virgin of the wonders of God taught me, so that I must write of his wonders ; though indeed my purpose is to write this for a memorandum for myself, and yet I shall speak as for many, which is known to God [43 : 31]. Thus we distinguish to you the substance in the darkness ; and though we are very hard to be understood by you, and though also little belief may be afforded to it, we yet have a very convincing proof of it, not only in the created heaven, but also in the centre of the earth, as also in the whole principle of this world, which would be too long to set down here [43: 33]- The scholar said to his master : “ How may I come to the supersensual life, that I may see God and hear him speak ? ” His master said ; ” When thou canst throw thyself but for a moment into that where no creature dwelleth, then thou hearest what God speaketh.” Scholar. — Is that near at hand or far off?

The Cosmic Sense a virgin. Compare Dante’s Beatrice and Balzac’s Seraphita — Seraphitus — so also the youth — Cosmic Sense — in Bacon’s “Sonnets ” is a virgin. “ For a memorandum.” Compare Whitman : “Only a few hints I seek for my own use to trace out here ” [193 : 14]. So as proof or argument for some of his most spiritual and recondite doctrines — optimism, immortality, unending growth, expansion and evolution— Whitman appeals to the common phenomena of nature and life. He says : “I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven, O suns — 0 grass of graves — O perpetual transfers and promotions, if you do not say anything how can 1 say anything” [193 : 77] ? So Balzac tells us : “From abstraction [self consciousness] are derived laws, arts, interests, social ideas. It is the glory and scourge of the world : Glorious, it creates societies ; baneful, it exempts man from entering the path of specialism [Cosmic Consciousness], which leads to the Infinite ” [5 : 142]. Master. — It is in thee, and if thou canst for awhile cease from all thy thinking and willing thou shalt hear unspeakable words of God.

Scholar. — How can I hear when I stand still from thinking and willing ? Master. — When thou standest still from the thinking and willing of self, the eternal hearing, seeing and speaking will be revealed to thee, and so God heareth and The same doctrine is repeated over and over in seeth through thee. Thine own hearing, ^e Suttas. Compare also Carpenter [56: 166- willing and seeing hindereth thee, that ' thou dost not see nor hear God. Scholar. — Wherewithal shall I hear and see God, being he is above nature and creature ? Master. — When thou art quiet or silent, then thou art that which God was before nature and creature, and whereof he made thy nature and creature. Then thou hearest and seest with that therewith God saw and heard in thee before thy own willing, seeing and hearing began. Scholar. — What hindereth or keepeth me back that I cannot come to that? Master. — Thy own willing, seeing and hearing. And because thou strivest against that out of which thou art come, thou breakest thyself off with thy own willing from God’s willing, and with thy own seeing thou seest in thy own willing only ; and thy willing stoppeth thy hearing with thy own thinking of earthly natural things, and bringeth thee into a ground, and overshadoweth thee with that which thou wiliest, so that thou canst not come to that which is supernatural and supersensual [50 : 75-6].

Master. — If thou rulest over all crea- tures outwardly only, then thy will and ruling is m a bestial kind, and is but an imaginary transitory ruling, and thou bringest also thy desire into a bestial essence, whereby thou becomest infected and captivated, and gettest also a bestial condition. But if thou hast left the imaginary condition, then thou art in the super-imaginariness, and rulest over all creatures, in that ground out of which they are created, and nothing on earth can hurt thee, for thou art like all things, and nothing is unlike to thee [50 : 76]. His master said to him very kindly: Loving scholar, if it were that thy will could break off itself for one hour from all creatures and throw itself into that, where no creature is, it would be ever clothed with the highest splendor of God’s glory, and would taste in itself the most sweet love of our Lord Jesus, which no man can express, and it would find in itself the unspeakable words of our Lord concerning his great mercy ; it would feel in itself that the cross of our Lord Christ would be very pleasing to it, and it would love that more than the honor and goods of the world [50 : 78].

Master. — Though thou lovest the earthly wisdom now, yet when thou art ever-clothed with the heavenly [wisdom] thou wilt see that all the wisdom of the world is but folly, and that the world hateth So says Whitman in respect to ownership : “As if one fit to own things could not at pleasure enter upon all and incorporate them into himself ’ ’ [193: 214]. And again: “To see no posses- sion but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one particle of it, to take the best of the farmer’s farm and the rich man’s elegant villa, and the chaste blessings of the well married couple and the fruits of orchards and the flowers of gardens [193 : 127]. The “cross of Christ,” from the point of view of what might be called the Pauline type of these men, means simply the deprivation of the good things of self consciousness and the bearing of the so-called evils of the self conscious life. But these goods are seen by them not to be good, and these evils not to be evils, and to reach that point of view (in Cosmic Consciousness) is the one good thing. “ To arrive there is to depart hence, going away out of one’s self as far as possible from this vile state to that which is the highest of all. Therefore, rising above all that may be known and understood temporally and spiritually, the soul must earnestly desire to reach that which in this life [the self conscious life] cannot be known and which the heart cannot conceive ; and, leaving behind all actual and possible taste and feeling of sense and spirit, must desire earnestly to arrive at that which transcends all sense and all feeling” [203 : 74].

“We speak wisdom among the perfect; yet a wisdom not of this world ” [20 : 2 : 6] . “If any man thinketh he is wise among you in this world let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God” [20: 3: 18-19]. wisdom of self consciousness is foolishness from the point of view of the Cosmic Sense. but thy enemy — viz., the mortal life ; and when thou thyself comest to hate the will thereof, then thou also wilt begin to love that despising of the mortal life [50 : 80]. Scholar. — What is the virtue, power, height and greatness of love ? Master. — Its virtue is that nothing (whence all things proceed), and its power is (in and) through all things, its height is as high as God and its greatness is greater than God ; whosoever findeth it findeth nothing, and all things. Scholar. — Loving master, pray tell me how I may understand this. Master. — That I said its virtue is that This extract and the next contain a definition of Cosmic Consciousness from the point of view of Nirvana, its Buddhist name.

“O Bhikshu, empty this boat (i. e., empty yourself of the things of self consciousness); if emptied it will go quickly ; having cut off passion and hatred, thou wilt go to Nirvana” [156 : 86]. nothing, thou mayest understand thus : When thou art gone forth wholly from the creature, and art become nothing to all that is nature and creature, then thou art in that eternal one, which is God himself, and then thou shalt perceive and feel the highest virtue of love [50—1 : 81]. Also, that I said whosoever findeth it findeth nothing and all things ; that is also true, for he findeth a supernatural, supersensual abyss, having no ground, where there is no place to dwell in ; and he findeth also nothing that is like it, and therefore it may be compared to nothing, for it is deeper than anything, and is as nothing to all things, for it is not comprehensible ; and because it is nothing, it is free from all things, and it is that only good, which a man cannot express or utter what it is. But that I lastly said, he that findeth it, findeth all things, is also He who is fit (says Whitman) can enter into true; it hath been the beginning of all possession of all things [193:214]. things, and it ruleth all things. If thou

findest it, thou comest into that ground from whence all things are proceeded, and wherein they subsist, and thou art in it a king over all the works of God [50 : 81]. Scholar. — Loving master, I can no more endure anything should divert me, how shall I find the nearest way to it ? Master. — Where the way is hardest there walk thou, and take up what the world rejecteth; and what the world doth, that do not thou. Walk contrary to the world in all things. And then thou comest the nearest way to it. . . . Master. — That thou sayest also, thou shouldst be accounted a silly fool is true ; for the way to the love of God is folly to the world, but wisdom to the children of God. When the world perceiveth this fire of love in the children of God, it saith they are turned fools, but to the children of God it is the greatest treasure, so great that no life can express it, nor tongue so much as name what the fire of the inflaming love of God is ; it is whiter than the sun, and sweeter than anything ; it is far more nourishing than any meat or drink, and more pleasant than all the joy of this world. Whosoever getteth this is richer than any king on earth, more noble than any emperor can be, and more potent and strong than all authority and power.

If you wish to attain the divine life (Cosmic Consciousness), says Yepes, you must cast away every satisfaction, temporal and spiritual (of the self conscious man) [204 : 534], “forgetting the things which are behind [the things of self consciousness] and stretching forward to the things which are before ” [24 : 3 : 13]. And this seems to be the universal dictum. “The natural [merely self conscious] man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God ; for they are foolishness unto him ” [20 : 2 : 14]. Then the scholar asked his master further, saying : “Whither goeth the soul when the body dieth, be it either saved or damned? ” 2Iasttr. It needed no going forth. “ There will never be any more heaven or hell Only the outward moral life with the body than there is now’’ [193 : 30]. do separate themselves from the soul ; the soul hath heaven and hell in itself before, as it is written. The kingdom of God cometh not with outward observation, neither shall they say, lo here, or lo, there it is, for behold the kingdom of God is within you : And whether of the two, viz., either heaven or hell, shall be manifest in it, in that the soul standeth [50 : 82-3].

Scholar. — What, then, is the body of a man ? Master. — It is the visible world, an Says Whitman : “Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the meaning, the main concern, any more than a man’s substance and life, or a woman’s substance and life, return in the body and the soul, indifferently before death and after death. Behold the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern, and includes and is the soul ; whoever you are, how superb and divine is your body or any part of it’’ [193 : 25]. image and essence of all that the world is ; and the visible world is a manifestation of the inward spiritual world, (come) out of the eternal darkness, out of the spiritual weaving (twining or connection) and it is an object or resemblance of eternity, wherewith eternity hath made itself visible; where self-will and resigned-will., viz., evil and good, work one with the other ; and such a substance the outward man also is ; for God created man out of the outward world, and breathed into him the inner spiritual world, for a soul and an understanding life, and therefore in the things of the outward world man can receive and work evil and good.

Scholar. — What shall be after this world, when all things perish ? Master. — The material substance only “ The soul is of itself, all verges to it, all has reference to what ensues, all that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence, not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or her in a day, month, any part of the direct lifetime, or the hour of death, but the same affects him or her onward afterwards through the indirect lifetime’’ [193 : 289]. ceaseth — viz., the four elements, the sun, moon, and stars, and then the inward world will be wholly visible and manifest. But whatsoever hath been wrought by the spirit in this time, whether evil or good, I say, every work shall separate itself there in a spiritual manner, either into the eternal light, or into the eternal darkness ; for that which is born from each will penetrateth again into that which is like itself [50 : 86]. a. In the case of Jacob Behmen there was the initial earnestness of character which belongs to the class of men of whom this book treats. b. There was (almost certainly), though we are not told of it in so many words, the subjective light.

c. There was extraordinary intellectual illumination. d. And equal moral elevation. e. There was the sense of immortality. f. Loss of the fear of death (if he ever had it, as is likely, since he seems to have been quite an ordinary boy and young man). g. There was the suddenness, the instantaneousness, of the awakening of the new life. h. At the time of his illumination he was at the typical age — namely, thirty-five years. Born 1757; died 1827. If Blake had Cosmic Consciousness the words written above as to the vastly greater scope and variety of this than of self consciousness will receive from his case illustration. The few short extracts from his writings, below quoted, almost prove that he had the Cosmic Sense, which he called “ Imaginative Vision ” [95 ; 166], and he must have attained to it within a very few years after reaching the thirtieth of his age. There do not appear to be any details extant of his entrance into it, but his writings may fairly be allowed to prove the fact of possession. W. M. Rossetti, in the “Prefatory Memoir” to “The Poetical Works of William Blake” [52], gives an admirable sketch of Blake’s actual life and apparently a fair estimate of his abilities and defects. The following extracts

therefrom will materially assist us in Had Blake Cosmic Consciousness ? The difficulty of Blake’s biographers, subsequent to 1863, the date of Mr. Gilchrist’s book, is of a different kind altogether. It is the difficulty of stating sufficiently high the extraordinary claims of Blake to admiration and reverence, without slurring over those other considerations which need to be plainly and fully set forth if we would obtain any real idea of the man as he was — of his total unlikeness to his contemporaries, of his amazing genius and noble performances in two arts, of the height by which he transcended other men, and the incapacity which he always evinced for performing at all what others accomplish the inquiry now before us ; that is : In the fact that Blake soared beyond, and far beyond, men of self consciousness merely, but could not see or do many things that these saw clearly and could do easily, we see a relationship between him and the great illuminati. For surely the very same thing could be said of all these. In worldly matters they are all, or nearly all, as little children, while in spiritual things they are as gods. Note Balzac contracting enormous debts for want of ordinary business common sense and laboring vainly for years to pay them while in the full exercise of enough genius to equip a regiment of Rothchilds. Bacon showered upon the human race intellectual and spiritual riches beyond all computation, but with every apparent advantage (position at court, hereditary prestige, influential friends) he labors in vain for years for position in the self conscious sphere, and after

easily. He could do vastly more than they, but he could seldom do the like. By some unknown process he had soared to the top of a cloud-capped Alp, while they were crouching in the valley : But to reach a middle station on the mountain getting it cannot hold it. Buddah, Jesus, Paul, Las Casas, Yepes, Behmen and Whitman were wise : They saw that the things of the Cosmic Sense were enough, and they simply put by the things of self consciousness, but had they tried for these the chances are they would have failed to obtain them. was what they could readily manage step by step, while Blake found that ordinary achievement impracticable. He could not and he would not do it ; the want of will, or rather the utter alienation of will, the resolve to soar (which was natural to him), and not constituted or counted instead of an actual Rapt in a passionate yearning, he realized, even on this earth and in his mortal body, a species of Nirvana : his whole faculty, his whole personality, the very essence of his mind and mould, attained to absorption into his ideal ultimate, into that which Dante’s profound phrase designates “ il Ben dell’ intelletto ” [139: il].

to walk (which was unnatural and repulsive), want of power [139 : 9]. Blake, too, found the world of the Cosmic Sense enough, and wisely did not waste time and energy seeking for the so-called goods and riches of the self-conscious life. William Blake’s education was of the scantiest, being confined to reading and writing ; arithmetic may also be guessed at, but is not recorded, and very probably his capacity for acquiring or retaining that item of knowledge was far below the average [139 : 14]. “ He had not his knowledge from books, but fro Whitman’s “ You shall no longer feed on the spe These men are independent of education, and most of them — like Blake himself — think it useless or worse. Blake says of it : ' ‘ There is no use in education ; 1 hold it to be wrong. It is the great sin ; it is eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This was the fault of Plato. He knew of nothing but the virtues and vices, and good and evil. There is nothing in all that. Everything is good in God’s eyes” [139: 80]. This reminds us of what Rawley said of Bacon : some grounds within himself” [141 : 47], and of es in books ” [193 : 30].

In the preface to “ The Jerusalem ”j Blake speaks of that composition as having been “ dictated ” to him , and other expressions of his prove that he regarded it rather as a revelation of which he was the scribe than as the product of his own inventing and fashioning brain. Blake considered it “ the grandest poem that this world con- This is the declaration of each possessor of the Cosmic Sense. It is not I, the visible man who speaks, but (as Jesus says) ‘‘As the Father hath said unto me so I speak” [14 : 12 : 50] ; or as Paul writes: ‘‘I will not dare to speak of any things save those which Christ wrought through me ” [16:15:18]. ‘‘ Loose the stop from your throat” [193 : 32] says Whitman to the Cosmic Sense. And so universally. tains ; ” adding, “ I may praise it, since I dare not pretend to be any other than the secretary — the authors are in eternity.” In an earlier letter (April 25th, 1803) he had said; “I have written this poem from immediate dictation, twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time, without premeditation, and even against my will” [139 : 41].

Blake had a mental intuition, inspiration. or revelation — call it what we will ; it was as real to his spiritual eye as a material object could be to his bodily eye ; and no doubt his bodily eye, the eye of a designer or painter with a great gift of invention and composition, was far more than nor- ‘‘0 1 am sure," says Whitman, “ they really came from Thee — the urge, the ardor, the potent, felt, interior, command, a message from the heavens” [193:324]. “The noble truths,” Gautama said, “were not among the doctrines handed down, but there arose within him the eye to perceive them ” [159: 150]. Each word of this passage is strictly true of Whitman, and allowing for difference of manners and customs in other times and countries, the paragraph could be read into the life of any one of the men discussed in this book. mally ready at following the dictate of the spiritual eye, and seeing, with an almost instantaneously creative and fashioning act, the visual semblance of a visionary essence [139 ; 62]. His unworldliness, extreme as it was, did not degenerate into ineptitude. He apprehended the requirements of practical life, was prepared to meet them in a resolute and diligent spirit from day to day, and could on occasions display a full share of sagacity. He was of lofty and independent spirit, not caring to refute any odd stories that were current regarding his conduct or demeanor, neither parading nor concealing his poverty, and seldom accepting any sort of aid for which he could not and did not supply a full equivalent [139 : 69] .

He knows that what he does is not inferior to the grandest antiques. Superior “Divine am I,” says Whitman, “inside and it cannot be, for human power cannot go = 49]- beyond either what he does or what they have done. It is the gift of God, it is inspiration and vision [139 : 72]. It must be allowed that in many instances Blake spoke of himself with measureless and rather provoking self-applause. This is in truth one conspicuous outcome of that very simplicity of character of which I have just spoken ; egotism it is, but not worldly, self-seeking [139 : 71]. That he was on the whole and in the best sense happy is, considering all his trials and crosses, one of the very highest evidences in his praise. “ If asked,” writes Mr. Palmer, “whether I ever knew among the intellectual a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me.” Visionary and ideal aspirations of the intensest kind; the imaginative life wholly predominating over the corporeal and mundane life, and almost swallowing it up ; and a child-like simplicity of personal character, free from self-interest, and ignorant or careless of any policy of self-control, though habitually guided and regulated by noble emotions and a resolute loyalty to duty — these are the main lines which we trace throughout the entire career of Blake, in his life and death, in his writings and his art. This it is which makes him so peculiarly lovable and admirable as a man, and invests his works, especially his poems, with so delightful a charm. We feel that he is truly “of the kingdom of heaven:” above the firmament, his soul holds converse with archangels ; on the earth, he is as the little child whom Jesus “ sat in the midst of them ” [139 : 70].

“ I conned old times,” says Whitman ; “ I sat studying at the feet of the great masters, now if eligible O that the great masters might return and study me” [193 : 20]. Happiness is one of the marks of the Cosmic Sense. The essence of Blake’s faculty, the power by which he achieved his work, was intuition : this holds good of his artistic productions, and still more so of his poems. Intuition reigns supreme in them ; and even the reader has to apprehend them intuitively, or else to leave them aside altogether [139 : 74]. It is too bad that these “Prophetic Books” are not published. It seems almost certain that they embody (behind thick veils, doubtless) revelations of extraordinary value — news from “the kingdom of heaven ” — from the better world — the world of the Cosmic Sense. Blake’ s religion — his attitude toward the Church — toward God — toward immortality — is the characteristic attitude of the man who has attained to Cosmic Consciousness — as shown in each life and in all the writings of these men. Ample evidence exists to satisfy us that Blake had real conceptions in the metaphysical or supersensual regions of thought — conceptions which might have been termed speculations in other people, but in him rather intuitions ; and that the “ Prophetic Books ” embody these in some sort of way cannot be disputed [139 : 120].

As to his religious belief, it should be understood that Blake was a Christian in a certain way, and a truly fervent Christian ; but it was a way of his own, exceedingly different from that of any of the churches. For the last forty years of his life he never entered a place of worship [139 : 76]. He believed — with a great profundity and ardor of faith — in God ; but he believed also that men are gods, or that collective man is God. He believed in Christ ; but exactly what he believed him to be is a separate question. “ Jesus Christ,” he said, conversing with Mr. Robinson, “is the only God, and so am I, and so are you” In immortality Blake seems to have His attitude toward death is that of all the illubelieved implicitly, and (in some main n^mati. essentials) without much deviation from other people’s credence. When he heard of Flaxman’s death (December 7th, 1826), he observes, “ I cannot think of death as more than the going out of one room into another.” In one of his writings he says : “The world of imagination is the world of

eternity. It is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetated body ” [139 : 79] He does not believe in “ another life.’’ He does not think he will be immortal. He has eternal life. Blake had in all probability read in his youth some of the mystical or cabalistic writers — Paracelsus, Jacob Bohme, Cornelius Agrippa ; and there is a good deal in his speculations, in substance and tone, and sometimes in detail, which can be traced back to authors of this class [139 : 80]. So writes George Frederic Parsons about Balzac [6 : 1 1], Thoreau makes a similar suggestion as to Whitman [38 : 143], and generally it is constantly being hinted or intimated that some of these men have been reading others of them. This may of course sometimes happen, but, speaking generally, it does not, for many of them are quite illiterate, and the studies of others, as, for instance, Bacon, do not lie in that direction. Blake, Balzac, Yepes, Behmen, Whitman, Carpenter and of which he tells us. it can conceive it. the rest has each seen for himself that other world No one can tell of it at second hand, for no one who has not seen something of

Blake’s death was as noble and characteristic as his life. Gilchrist [94 : 360-1] gives us the following simple and touching account of it : “ His illness was hot violent, but a gradual and gentle failure of physical powers which nowise affected the mind. The speedy end was not foreseen by his friends. It came on a Sunday, August 12, 1827, nearly three months before completion of his seventieth year. ‘ On the day of his death,’ writes Smith, who had his account from the widow, ‘ he composed and uttered songs to his maker so sweetly to the ear of his Catharine that when she stood to hear him he, looking upon her most affectionately, said : “ My beloved, they are not mine — no^ they are not mine ! ” He told her they would not be parted ; he should always be about her to take care of her. To the pious songs followed, about six in the summer evening, a calm and painless withdrawal of breath ; the exact moment almost unperceived by his wife, who sat by his side. A humble female neighbor, her only other companion, said afterwards : “ I have been at the death, not of a man, but of a blessed

It remains to quote certain declarations emanating from Blake and which seem to bear upon the point under consideration— viz., upon the question. Was Blake a case of Cosmic Consciousness ? The world of imagination is the world Blake’s name for Cosmic Consciousness, of eternity. It is the divine bosom into With this paragraph compare Whitmans “I which we sha 1 all go after the death of the vegetated body. This world of imagination the ground! The weeds of the sea have! is infinite and eternal, whereas the world The animals [193 : 337]. of generation, of vegetation, is finite and temporal. There exist in that eternal world the permanent realities of everything which we see reflected in this vegetable glass of nature [95 : 163]. We are in a world of generation and death, and this world we must cast off if we would be artists such as Raphael, Michael Angelo and the ancient sculptors. If we do not cast off this world we shall be only Venetian painters, who will be cast off and lost from art [95 : 172]. The player is a liar when he says : Angels are happier than men because they are better ! Angels are happier than men and devils because they are not always prying after good and evil in one another and eating the tree of knowledge for Satan’s gratification [95 : 176].

The last judgment is an overwhelming jg advent of universal Cosmic Con- of bad art and science [95 : 176]- sciousness. “Specialism [the Cosmic Sense] opens to man,” says Balzac, “ his true career; the infinite dawns upon him ” [5 : 144]- ‘‘ The audit of nature, though delayed, must be answered, and her quietus is to render thee” [Cosmic Consciousness] [176 : 126]. The world of self consciousness. Balzac says : (Self conscious) “man judges all things by his abstractions — good, evil, virtue, crime. His formulas of right are his scales, and his justice is blind ; the justice of God [i. e., of the Cosmic Sense] sees — in that is everything ” [5 : 142]. “Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age. Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent” [193 : 31]. Some people flatter themselves that there will be no last judgment. ... I will not flatter them. Error is created ; truth is eternal. Error or creation will be burned up, and then, and not till then, truth or eternity will appear. It [error] is burned up the moment men cease to behold it. I assert for myself that I do not behold out-

Blake says his self conscious faculties are a hindrance to him, not a help. So Balzac : “Baneful, it [self consciousness] exempts man from entering the path of specialism [Cosmic Consciousness], which leads to the infinite” [5 : 142]. So the Hindoo experts teach and have always taught, that suppression and effacement of many of the self conscious faculties are necessary conditions to illumination [56 : 166 et seq.]- behold outward creation, and that to me it is hindrance and not action. “What!” it will be questioned, “when the sun rises do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?” “Oh, no, no ! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying : ‘ Holy, holy, holy is the Lord So Carpenter asks (knowing well the answer) : “ Does there not exist in truth ... an inner illumination ... by which we can altimately see things as they are, beholding all creation ... in its true being and order [57 : 98]. God Almighty ! ’ ” I question not my corporeal eye any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through it and not with if [95 : 176].

Beneath the figures of Adam and Eve (descending the generative stream from there) is the seat of the harlot, named mystery [self conscious life], in the Revelations. She (jnystery) is seized by two beings (life and death), each with three heads ; they represent vegetative existence. As it is written in Revelations, they strip her naked and burn her with fire [i. e., death strips her naked, and the passions of the self conscious life burn it as with fire] . It represents the eternal consumption of vegetable life and death [the life and death of the merely self conscious] with its lusts. The wreathed torches in their hands [in the hands of life and death] represent eternal fire, which is the fire of generation or vegetation ; it is an eternal consummation. Those who are blessed with imaginative vision [Cosmic Consciousness] see this eternal female [mystery — the self conscious life] and tremble at what others fear not ; while they despise and laugh at what others fear [95 : 166]. I am not ashamed, afraid or averse to tell you what ought to be told — that I am under the direction of messengers from heaven, daily and nightly. But the nature of such things is not, as some suppose, without trouble or care [95 : 185].

“Their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched” [12:9: 48J, said by Jesus of the self conscious life, which (also) is the hell of Dante. I laugh at what you call dis- “ He [my other self], nor that affable, familiar ghost [the Cosmic Sense] which nightly gulls him with intelligence” [176 : 86]. “ A message from the heavens whispering to me even in sleep ” [193 : 324] . a. Blake seemS to have entered into Cosmic Consciousness when a little more than thirty years of age. d. The present editor does not know anything of the occurrence of subjective light in his case. c. The fact of great intellectual illumination seems clear. d. His moral elevation was very marked. e. He seems to have had the sense of immortality that belongs to Cosmic Consciousness. f. Specific details of proof are in this case, as they must inevitably often be, largely wanting, but a study of Blake’s life, writings (he is not in a position nor is he competent to judge Blake from his drawings) and death convinces the writer that he was a genuine and even probably a great case. Born 1799; died 1850. “ Perhaps the greatest name in the post-Revolutionary literature of France ” [78 : 304].

And well summed up by a still more recent writer, W. P. Trent [3 ; 566] : “The unexpected,” he tells us, “sometimes happens, as I discovered recently when I finished the fiftieth volume of M. Calmann Levy’s popular edition of the works of Balzac. I had thought that the completion of Horace’s odes and Shakespeare’s plays, and of the ‘ Odyssey,’ marked the three chief epochs in my own intellectual life, and that I might not likely be so stirred, so swept away again, by any book or by any author. But I had erred. Balzac, whose novels taken singly had moved me powerfully, but had not often swept me away, whom I had made a companion of for years without fully comprehending — this Balzac, when viewed in the light of his total and stupendous achievements, suddenly stood out before me in his full stature and might, as one of the few genuine world geniuses that our race can point to with legitimate and unshakable pride. I had emerged from the ‘ Comedie Humaine ’ just as I had emerged from the Homeric poems and from the plays of Shakespeare, feeling that I had traversed a world and been in the presence of a veritable creator.”

Still another and even more recent writer may be quoted to the same effect. H. T. Peck [128a : 245] sums up the result of his studies as follows: “ The place which this great genius must ultimately hold in literary history has not yet been definitely settled. French critics link his name with that of Shakespeare, while English critics seem to think that a comparison like this is very daring. My own belief is that at the last his name will be placed higher still than Shakespeare’s, at the very apex of a pyramid of literary fame.” “Search as one may, there is no complete life of Balzac. There are still unpublished letters and papers in the possession of the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, a compatriot who thoroughly understood him ; but adding these to all that has been written, it is still doubtful if the real man will be found behind them. Expansive at times, yet he withdrew from the knowledge of others. There are periods in his life when he disappears, lies concealed from sight, and each must interpret for himself the secret that made his power and insures his fame.” Balzac put the following words into the mouth of Dante, who he tells us was a “ Specialist.” Balzac was himself a “ Specialist.” The words will therefore apply as well to him as to Dante : “And so that poor lad thinks himself an angel exiled from heaven.

Who among us has the right to undeceive him ? Is it I ? I who am so often lifted above this earth by magic power ; I who belong to God ; I who am to myself a mystery ? Have I not seen the most beautiful of all angels [the Cosmic Sense] living on this base earth? Is the lad either more or less beside himself than I am ? Has he taken a bolder step into faith ? He believes ; his belief will doubtless lead him into some luminous path like that in which I walk” [9 : 263].

That Balzac stood apart from and on a higher plane than ordinary men was divined during his life and has been perceived by thousands since his death. Taine, groping after an explanation of the obvious fact, says: “His instrument was intuition, that dangerous and superior faculty by which man imagines or discovers in an isolated fact all the possibilities of which it is capable ; a kind of second sight proper to prophets and somnambules, who sometimes find the true, who often find the false, and who commonly attain only verisimilitude ” [6 : 12]. G. F. Parsons, in his introduction to “ Louis Lambert,” comes nearer it when he asks ; “ Whether the condition [of chronic ecstasy, in which the patient — i. e., Louis Lambert — really Balzac himself — seems withdrawn] may not be the consequence of an illumination so much higher thaq that vouchsafed mankind at large as to transcend expression — to separate the recipient from intellectual contact with his fellows by revealing to his inner sense untranslatable things” [6 : ii]. This last seems to be the simple truth, Balzac, very clearly, having been a well marked case of Cosmic Consciousness. The evidence that he was so resides (i) in the fact of his life as observed by others, and (2) in his own revelations as to his inner self. The first series of facts may be gathered from his biography, compiled by K.

P. Wormeley, largely from memoirs written by Balzac’s sister Laure — Madame Surville ; the second from Balzac’s own writings, and chiefly from “Louis Lambert” and “Seraphita.” And first as to his outer life as revealing the inner : Miss W. says : “A complete life of Balzac cannot be written at the present time and possibly never can be. Nearly the whole of what he was to himself, what his own being was, what were the influences that molded it, how that eye that saw the manifold lives of others saw his own life, how that soul which crowned its earthly

work with a vision of the living word was nurtured — what that soul was, in short, has been concealed from sight” [4 : i]. “In all estimates of Balzac’s nature attention must be paid to the fact that he was eminently sound and healthy in mind and body. Though his spirit rose to regions that could be reached only by intuition, and ruminated over problems the study of which we associate with fragility of body and aloofness from things of life, he was at the same time, and quite as thoroughly, a man with human instincts, loving life and enjoying it. In this lies, no doubt, one of the secrets of his power. It was a part of the many-sidedness of his genius ; it enabled him to actually live and have his being in the men and women whom he evoked from the depths and heights of human nature. His temperament was, above all things, genial and his humor gay ; no pressure of worldly anxiety and debt, no crushing toil, no hidden grief, with which the man, like the child in his cell, was acquainted, could destroy that healthy cheerfulness or prevent the rebound into hearty or even jovial gaiety. ‘ Robust ’ is the word that seems to suit him on the material side of his nature, applying even to his mental processes. He was gifted with a strong common sense, which guided his judgment on men and circumstances ” [4 : 58-9].

While still very young Balzac decided to be a writer. It seems that he felt, even as a boy, that he was destined to do something great in that line, and he composed at school, among other things, a treatise on the will and an epic poem. Later he wrote at Paris, in the course of ten years, mostly over the pseudonymn of “Horace de Saint Aubin,” some forty volumes, said to be almost entirely valueless. A good authority [106 : 87] sums up this episode in Balzac’s history as follows: “Before he was thirty years old he had published, under a variety of pseudonyms, some twenty long novels, veritable Grub Street productions, written in sordid Paris attics, in poverty, in perfect obscurity. Several of these ‘ oeuvres de jeunesse ’ have lately been republished, but the best of them are unreadable. No writer ever served harder apprenticeship to his art, or lingered more hopelessly at thfe base of the ladder of fame.” Then, at the age of thirty, his genius began to dawn in “Les Chouans” and “ Physiologie du Marriage.” He must have entered Cosmic Consciousness about the early part of 1831, when thirty-two years of age, since “Louis Lambert” (which was undoubtedly conceived immediately after illumination) was written in 1832. By 1833, when he was thirty-four years of age, he had entered into full possession of his true life, a presentiment of which had dominated him from early boyhood.

Madame Surville says: “It was not until 1833, about the time of the publication of the “ Medecin de Campagne,” that he first thought of collecting all his personages together and forming a complete society. The day when this idea burst upon his mind was a glorious day for him. He started from the Rue Cassini, where he had taken up his abode after leaving the Rue de Tournon, and rushed to the faubourg Poissonniere, where I was then living. “ ‘ Make your bow to me,’ he said to us, joyously ; ‘ I am on the highroad to become a genius ! ’ “ He then unfolded his plan, which frightened him a little, for no matter how vast his brain might be, it needed time to work out a scheme like that. “‘How glorious it will be if I succeed,’ he said, walking up and down the room. He could not keep still ; joy radiated from every feature. ‘ I’ll willingly let them call me a maker of tales, all the while that I am cutting stones for my edifice. I gloat in advance over the astonishment of those nearsighted creatures as they see it rise ! ’ ” [4 : 83].

It seems likely, judging from Madame Surville’s report, that Balzac was either in the state of Cosmic Consciousness during this visit to her, or had recently been so. A writer already quoted [106 : 87] describes, no doubt correctly, in the following words, what Balzac’s scheme now was, and it is worth noting that to all intents and purposes it was the same as that conceived and attempted (each for his own world) by Dante, “Shakespeare’’ and Whitman : “ Balzac proposed to himself to illustrate by a tale or a group of tales every phase of French life and manners during the first half of the nineteenth century. To be colossally and exhaustively complete — complete not only in the generals but in the particulars — to touch upon every salient point, to illuminate every typical feature, to reproduce every sentiment, every idea, every person, every place, every object, that has played a part, however minute, however obscure, in the life of the French people.” Here is a description of him in the early thirties by Lamartine : Balzac was standing before the fireplace of that dear room where I have seen so many remarkable men and women come and go. He was not tall, though the light on his face and the mobility of his figure prevented me from noticing his stature. His body swayed with his thought ; there seemed at times to be a space between him and the floor ; occasionally he stooped as though to gather an idea at his feet, and then he rose on them to follow the flight of his thought above him. At the moment of my entrance he was carried away by the subject of a conversation then going on with Monsieur and Madame de Girardin, and only interrupted himself for a moment to give me a keen, rapid, gracious look of extreme kindness.

He was stout, solid, square at the base and across the shoulders. The neck, chest, body and thighs were powerful, with something of Mirabeau’s amplitude, but without heaviness. His soul was apparent, and seemed to carry everything lightly, gaily, like a supple covering, not in the least like a burden. His size seemed to give him power, not to deprive him of it. His short arms gesticulated easily ; he talked as an orator speaks. His voice resounded with the somewhat vehement energy of his lungs, but it had neither roughness nor sarcasm nor anger in it ; his legs, on which he rather swayed himself, bore the torse easily ; his hands, which were large and plump, expressed his thought as he waved them. Such was the outward man in that robust frame. But in presence of the face it was difficult to think of the structure. That speaking face, from which it was not easy to remove one’s eye, charmed and fascinated you ; his hair was worn in thick masses ; his black eyes pierced you like darts dipped in kindliness ; they entered confidingly into yours like friends. His cheeks were full and ruddy ; the nose well modeled, though rather long ; the lips finely outlined, but full and raised at the corners ; the teeth irregular and notched. His head was apt to lean to one side, and then, when the talk excited him, it was lifted quickly with an heroic sort of pride.

But the dominant expression of his face, greater than even that of intellect, was the manifestation of goodness and kindheartedness. He won your mind when he spoke, but he won your heart when he was silent. No feeling of envy or hatred could have been expressed by that face ; it was impossible that it should seem otherwise than kind. But the kindness was not that of indifference ; it was loving kindness, conscious of its meaning and conscious of others ; it inspired gratitude and frankness, and defied all those who knew him not to love him. A childlike merriment was in his aspect ; here was a soul at play ; he had dropped his pen to be happy among friends, and it was impossible not to be joyous where he was [4 : 123 : 5]. It has been said of Balzac: “He was an illumination thrown upon life.’’ He was an illustration of his own dictum : “All we are is in the soul’’ (“ nous ne sommes que par Fame ’’), and a question of his to a friend touches closely upon the thesis of this volume ; Are you certain [he said] that your soul This recalls Whitman’s : “The eyesight has

has had its full development ? Do you another eyesight, and the hearing another hear- , ■ • .1 1 r -i. ing, and the voice another voice ’ ’ [193: 3421. breathe in air through every pore of it ? ^ ^ Do your eyes see all they can see [4 : A glance at a few of his letters to an intimate friend at the period will throw light on our present inquiry : “August, 1833. The ‘Medecin de Campagne’ will reach you next week. It has cost me ten times the work that ‘ Louis Lambert’ did. There is not a sentence, not an idea, which has not been viewed and reviewed, read and reread, and corrected ; the labor was frightful. I may now die in peace. I have done a great work for my country. To my mind it is better to have written this book than to have made laws and to have won battles. It is the gospel in action’’ [4 : 143]. “October 1833. Do you know how the ‘Medecin’ has been received? By a torrent of insults. The three newspapers of my own party which have spoken of it have done so with the utmost contempt for the work and its author” [4 : 143].

“December, 1835. Never has the torrent which bears me onward been so rapid ; no more terribly majestic work has ever compelled the human brain. I go to my toil as a gambler to cards. I sleep only five hours and work eighteen ; I shall end by killing myself” [4 : 145]. Like all men of his class — i. e., like all men glorified by the divine spark which is the subject of this poor volume — Balzac was greatly loved by those who were brought in contact with him. His serv^ants loved him. Rose, the cook, a true cordon bleu (we called her La Grande Nanon), used to go into despair when her master, in his working months, neglected her dainty dishes. I have seen her come into his room on tiptoe, bringing a delicious consomme, and trembling with eagerness to see him drink it. Balzac would catch sight of her ; perhaps the fumes of the soup would reach his olfactories ; then he would toss back his mane of hair with an impatient jerk of his head, and exclaim in his roughest and most surly voice : “ Rose, go away ; I don’t want anything ; let me

alone ! ” “ But mossieu will ruin his health if he goes on in this way ; mossieu will fall ill ! ” “ No, no ! Let me alone, I say ! ” in a thundering voice. “ I don’t want any- thing ; you worry me ; go away ! ” Then the good soul would turn to go slowly, very slowly, muttering: “ To take such pains to please mossieu! and such a soup — how good it smells ! Why should mossieu keep me in his service if he doesn’t want what I do for him ? ’’ This was too much for Balzac. He called her back, drank the soup at a gulp and said in his kindest voice, as she went off radiant to her kitchen : “ Now, Rose, don’t let this happen again ! ” When his microscopic groom, a poor little orphan whom he called Gain de mil, died, Balzac took extreme care of him, and never failed to go and see him daily during his illness. Yes, God had given my great writer a heart of gold ; and those who really knew him adored him. He possessed the art of making others love him to such a degree that in his presence they forgot any real or fancied complaint against him, and only, remembered the affection they bore him [4 : 162—3].

It has been said : “Few writers have been greater than Balzac in the exhibition of the moral qualities.” But says Goethe : “Wenn ihr nicht fiillt ihr Werdet’s nicht erjagen.” If a man is destitute of a given faculty it is useless for him to attempt to describe it. How is it that, as Hugo says, “A genius is an accursed man?” That the men having the greatest qualities are precisely those men who are accredited with the absence of these? ’ And, to come back to Balzac, why should it be doubted that this man — who gave every proof of moral greatness — was great by his moral as well as his intellectual qualities? Simply because it is easier to misunderstand than to understand men of his class, and because when we do not understand we incline to infer the worst rather than the best. The fact is, as has been said: “Balzac is a moralist, the greatest moralist of the nineteenth century, one who does not preach h\xi shows the truth” [4 : 178]. So Bacon, although in his prose works he may be said to preach, yet these works were intended as merely introductory to others which were to show the truth. In the “ Plan ” of his life work, the “ Instauratio Magna,” he divides this last into six parts : (I) The division of the sciences, repre-

sented by the “De Augmentis;” (II) “The New Organon;” (III) “The Phenomena of the Universe,” represented by his natural history books ; (IV) “The Ladder of the Intellect,” represented by the “Comedies;” (V) “The Forerunners,” represented by the “Histories,” and (VI) “The New Philosophy,” represented by the “Tragedies.” Speaking now [34 : 51] of IV (the “Comedies ”), and describing the aim of that part, he says that this does not consist of precepts and rules (for, he says, I have given plenty of these in the “ Novum Organum ”), but of actual “types and models” by which those things which are to be taught are “set as it were before the eyes.” Then of VI (the “ Tragedies ”) he says that this part consists not in “mere felicity of speculation,” but that it presents (as we know it does) “ the real business and fortunes of the human race.” “ For God forbid,” he continues, “that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world; rather may he graciously grant to us to write an apocalypse or true vision of the footsteps of the creator imprinted on his creatures.” Neither did Jesus, nor Whitman, nor any of these men, preach, but they all showed the truth, each in his own way, in his life and in his spoken or written word.

Another trait that seems common to these men — absorption in their own time — has been noted of Balzac. Theophile Gautier dwells at length on what he calls the absolute modernity of Balzac’s genius. “ Balzac owes nothing,” he says, “to antiquity. For him there are neither Greeks nor Romans, nor any trace in. the composition of his talent of Homer, or Virgil, or Horace — no one was ever less classic” [4 : 170]. “ One might suppose that his feelings would have been hurt when he found the way barred against his entrance to the Academy. But he behaved with dignity and withdrew his name when failure seemed probable. ‘The matter does not stir my feelings very much,’ he said ; ‘some persons think not at all, but they are mistaken. If I do get there, so much the better ; if I do not, no matter’ ” [4 : 190]. George Sand bears witness of him as follows : “He searched for treasures and found none but those he bore within him — his intellect, his spirit of observ^ation, his marvellous capacity, his strength, his gaiety, his goodness of heart — in a word, his genius.”

“Sober in all respects, his morals were pure ; he dreaded excesses as the death of talent ; he cherished women by his heart or his head, and his life from early youth was that of an anchorite” [4 : 201]. “He has seen all and said all, comprehended all and divined all — how, then, can he be immoral ? . . . “ Balzac has been reproached for having no principles because he has, as I think, no positive convictions on questions of fact in religion, art, politics or even love” [4 : 203]. This is a highly significant statement. Every one of these people has been judged in the same way by contemporaries. Why? Because they have no opinions or principles in the sense in which their neighbors have them. The things that seem vital to those about them seem to them of no import. And the things that are of value to them are out of sight of the rest. Here is Gautier’s evidence as to the kind of man he was (it ought to be quoted in full, but that is impossible in this place) : When I saw Balzac for the first time he was about thirty-six, and his personality was one of those that are never forgotten. In his presence Shakespeare’s words came to my memory — before him “nature might stand up and say to all the world: This was a man.’’ He wore the monk’s habit of white flannel or cashmere, in which, some time later, he made Louis Boulanger paint him. What fancy had led him to choose, in preference to all other costumes, this particular one, which he always wore, I do not know. Perhaps it symbolized to his eyes the cloistral life to which his work condemned him ; and, benedictine of romance, he wore the robe. However that may be, it became him wonderfully.

He boasted, showing me his spotless sleeves, that he never dropped the least spot of ink upon it ; “for,’’ he added, “a true literary man ought to be clean at his work.’’ Then, after describing other features, Gautier goes on : As to his eyes, there were never any like them ; they had a life, a light, an inconceivable magnetism ; the whites of the eyeballs was pure, limpid, with a bluish tinge, like that of an infant or a virgin, enclosing two black diamonds, dashed at moments with gold reflections — eyes to make an eagle drop his lids — eyes to read through walls and into bosoms or to terrify a furious wild beast — the eyes of a sovereign, a seer, a subjugator. The habitual expression of the face was that of puissant hilarity, of Rabelaisian and monachal joy. Strange as it may seem to say so in the nineteenth century, Balzac was a seer. His power as an observer, his discernment as a physiologist, his genius as a writer, do not sufficiently account for the infinite variety of the two or three thousand types which play a role more or less important in his human comedy. He did not copy them : he lived them ideally. He wore their clothes, contracted their habits, moved in their surroundings, themselves, during the necessary time [4 : 204-8].

As another man of the same class says of himself: “I am a free companion.” “ My voice is the wife’s voice.” “I am the hounded slave.” “I am an old Artillerist.” “ I am the mashed fireman.” “ It is I let out in the morning and barred at night.” “Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up, too, and am tried and sentenced.” “Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the last gasp. My face is ash colored, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat.” “Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them. I project my hat, sit shamefaced and beg.” Gautier goes on : And yet Balzac, immense in brain, penetrating physiologist, profound observer, intuitive spirit, did not possess the literary gift. In him yawned an abyss between thought and form [4 : 209] . Here is a curious thing. How is it that these men who form the mind of the race can seldom or never (at least according to their contemporaries) write their own language decently? According to Renan (and he does not seem to be contradicted) Paul’s style was about as bad as possible (“ sans charme ; la forme, en est apre est presvue toujour denuee de grace ”) [143 : 568].

Mohammed can hardly be said to have written, and in his day and country there was no recognized standard with which to compare his language. The author of the “ Shakespeare ” drama was for long ranked as a writer below the meanest pamphleteer. And down to the present moment scarcely a man has defended Walt Whitman from the purely literary point of view, while thousands have utterly condemned him. But the writings of Paul dominate whole continents. Mohammed’s utterances hold in spiritual subjection two hundred millions of people. The author of “Hamlet” has been called, and rightly called, “The Lord of Civilization.” And Walt Whitman’s will probably eventually be seen to be the strongest voice of the nineteenth century. The seeming anomaly is perhaps easily explained. In each generation there are certain men, who are never large in number, who possess the literary instinct, and there are also certain men who are endowed with Cosmic Consciousness, but there is no reason whatever why the two endowments should unite. If they do so it is a mere accident. The man with the literary instinct writes for the sake of writing. He feels that he has the faculty, and, looking about for a subject, or for one subject after another, he writes upon it or them. The man endowed with Cosmic Consciousness has almost certainly no literary instinct (the chance is millions to one against it), but he sees certain things which he feels he must tell. He simply, with might and main, does the best he can. The importance of his message causes him to be read. His personality, as it becomes recognized, causes everything in

immediate connection with him to be admired, and in the end he is perhaps held up as a model of style. Madame Surville continuing, says: “The attacks against my brother increased rather than lessened ; the critics, unable to repeat the same things forever, changed their batteries and accused him of immorality. These accusations were very injurious to my brother; they grieved him deeply, and sometimes they disheartened him ’’ [4 : 242]. The old, old story, but never worn out, never threadbare, always as ready for service, as fresh and, alas ! as fatal as ever. The foregoing few brief extracts suggest the kind of man Balzac was as seen from the outside. It is clear from them, to any one in a position to judge, that he was such a person as might very probably be so endowed, and it only remains to show from his own words — words that could not otherwise have been written — that he was really one of the Illuminati — a man possessing the rare and splendid faculty called Cosmic Consciousness. And first a few short extracts, written by Balzac of himself, and which give us glimpses of the inner man before the oncoming of the Cosmic Sense.