Cosmic Consciousness

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”, 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, 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 the inquiry now before us; that is: Had Blake Cosmic Consciousness?

Blake’s death was as noble and characteristic as his life. Gilchrist gives us the following simple and touching account of it:

Summary

a. Blake seems to have entered into Cosmic Consciousness when a little more than thirty years of age

b. The present editor does not know anything of the occurrence of subjective light in his case

1.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 Rothschild’s. 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 getting it cannot hold it. Buddha, Jesus, Paul, Las Casas, Yepes, Böhme 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.

2.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.

3.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: I 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”. This reminds us of what Hawley said of Bacon: “He had not his knowledge from books, but from some grounds within himself”, and of Whitman’s “You shall no longer feed on the specters in books”.

4.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”; or as Paul writes: “I will not dare to speak of any things save those which Christ wrought through me” “Loose the stop from your throat” says Whitman to the Cosmic Sense. And so universally.

5.“O I am sure,” says Whitman, “they really came from Thee – the urge, the ardor, the potent, felt, interior, command, a message from the heavens”. “The noble truths,” Gautama said, ‘’were not among the doctrines banded down, but there arose within him the eye to perceive them”.

6. 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.

8.“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”.

10.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.

11.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.

12.His attitude toward death is that of all the illuminati. He does not believe in “another life.” He does not think he will be immortal. He has eternal life.

13.So writes George Frederic Parsons about Balzac. Thoreau makes a similar suggestion as to Whitman], 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, Böhme, Whitman, Carpenter and the rest has each seen for himself that other world of which he tells us. No one can tell of it at second hand, for no one who has not seen something of it can conceive it.

14.Blake’s name for Cosmic Consciousness. With this paragraph compare Whitman’s “I swear I think now that everything without exception has an eternal soul! The trees have rooted in the ground! The weeds of the sea have! The animals”.

15.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”.

16.”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”.

17. i.e., it is the advent of universal Cosmic Consciousness. “Specialism [the Cosmic Sense] opens to man,” says Balzac, “his true career; the infinite dawns upon him”. “The audit of nature, though delayed, must be answered, and her quietus is to render thee” [Cosmic Consciousness].

18. 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”. So the Hindu experts teach and have always taught, that suppression and effacement of many of the self conscious faculties are necessary conditions to illumination.

19. So Carpenter asks (knowing well the answer): “does there not exist in truth … an inner illumination … by which we can ultimately see things as they are, beholding all creation … in its true being and order.

20. “Their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched”, said by Jesus of the self conscious life, which (also) is the hell of Dante.

22. “He [my other self], nor that affable, familiar ghost [the Cosmic Sense] which nightly gulls him with intelligence”.

CHAPTER 12 Honoré de Balzac

1799–1850

1

“PERHAPS THE GREATEST name in the post Revolutionary literature of France”.

And well summed up by a still more recent writer, W. P. Trent:

“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 Comédie 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 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”.

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 somnambulists, who sometimes find the true, who often find the false, and who commonly attain only verisimilitude”.

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 Louis Lambert – really Balzac himself – seems withdrawn] may not be the consequence of an illumination so much higher than 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”.

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 (1) 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” “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”.

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 pseudonym of “Horace de Saint Aubin,” some forty volumes, said to be almost entirely valueless. A good authority 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 the 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 Médecin 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’”.

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 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 torso 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 kind-heartedness. 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.

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 l’aine), and a question of his to a friend touches closely upon the thesis of this volume:

Are you certain [he said] that your soul has had its full development? Do you breathe in air through every pore of it? Do your eyes see all they can see?¹

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 Médecin 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”.

“October, 1833. Do you know how the Médecin 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”.

“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”.

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 servants 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 consommé, and trembling with eagerness to see him drink it. Balzac would catch sight of her; perhaps the fumes of the soup would reach his factories; 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 anything; 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.

It has been said: “Few writers have been greater than Balzac in the exhibition of the moral qualities.” But says Goethe: “Wenn ihr nicht füllt 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 but shows the truth”.

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, represented 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 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”.

“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’”.

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 observation, his marvelous 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”.

“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”.

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, sometime 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, and was himself, during the necessary time.

As another man of the same class says of himself: “I am a free com-panion.” “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.

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 dénuée de grace).

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 plays 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”. 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 anyone 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.

It will be noticed that he, like all men of the class to which he belongs, was religious, though not quite in the orthodox way; these men seldom adhere to a church. A “specialist” may found a religion; he seldom belongs to one. “Specialists” are for religion, not for a religion. So Balzac tells us of himself, under the name of Louis Lambert:

Though naturally religious, he did not share in the minute observances of the Roman Church; his ideas were more particularly in sympathy with those of St. Theresa, Fénelon, several of the fathers and a few saints, who would be treated in our day as heretics or atheists. He was unmoved during the church services. Prayer, with him, proceeded from an impulse, a movement, an elevation of the spirit, which followed no regular course; in all things he gave himself up to nature, and would neither pray nor think at settled periods.

The limit which most brains attain was the point of departure from which his was one day to start in search of new regions of intelligence.

Later he makes this remark about himself:

The seed has swelled and germinated. Philosophers may regret the foliage, struck with frost ere it burgeoned, but they shall one day see the perfect flower blooming in regions higher far than the highest places of the earth.

In his further fragmentary, veiled, and mystic narration of the actual oncoming of the Cosmic Sense, it is important, for the present argument, to notice that: (a) He had no idea what had happened to him. (b) He was seized with terror. (c) He debated seriously with himself whether he was not insane. (d) He considers (or reconsiders) the question of marriage – doubts that it will be “an obstacle to the perfectability of his interior senses and to his flight through the spiritual worlds” and seems to decide against it. And, in fact, when we consider the antagonistic attitude of so many of the great cases toward this relation (Gautama, Jesus, Paul, Whitman, etc.), there seems little doubt that anything like a general possession of Cosmic Consciousness must abolish marriage as we know it today.

2

Balzac must have attained to Cosmic Consciousness about 1831 or 1832, at the age of thirty-two or thirty-three. It was at this time he began writing his great books. But it is especially important at present to note that in 1832 he wrote Louis Lambert and in 1833 Seraphita.

In these two books he describes the new sense more fully than it had ever been described elsewhere. In Louis Lambert he gives a bold, plain common sense description of it which is especially valuable for our present purpose. Then the next year, after writing that work, he composed Seraphita, the object of which was to delineate a person who was possessed of the great faculty. The two taken together prove the possession of the faculty by their author. Seraphita must be read entirely to be understood and appreciated, and so, of course, ought Louis Lambert; but the evidence now needed may be obtained from the latter within the compass of a few pages. The extracts are from A. P. Wormley’s translation, which has been compared with the original and found faithful.

The world of ideas divides itself into three spheres – that of instinct; that of abstraction; that of specialism.²

The greater part of visible humanity – that is, the weaker part – inhabits the sphere of instinctivity. The instinctives are born, work and die without rising to the second degree of human intelligence – namely, abstraction.³

At abstraction society begins. Though abstraction as compared with instinct is an almost divine power, it is infinitely feeble compared with the endowment of specialism, which alone can explain God. Abstraction comprises within it a whole nature in germ, as potentially as the seed contains the system of a plant and all its products. From abstraction 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 which leads to the infinite. 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 sees – in that is everything. There are, necessarily, intermediate beings who separate the kingdom of instinctives from the kingdom of the abstractives, in whom instinctivity mixes with abstractivity in endless variety of proportion. Some have more of the former than of the latter, and vice versa. Also there are beings in whom the action of each is neutralized, because both are moved by an equal force.⁴

Specialism consists in seeing the things of the material world as well as those of the spiritual world in their original and consequential ramifications. The highest human genius is that which starts from the shadows of abstraction to advance into the light of specialism. (Specialism, species, sight, speculation, seeing all, and that at one glance; speculum, the mirror or means of estimating a thing by seeing it in its entirety). Jesus was a specialist. He saw the deed in its roots and in its products; in the past, which begot it; in the present, where it is manifested; in the future, where it develops; his sight penetrated the understanding of others. The perfection of the inward sight gives birth to the gift of specialism. Specialism carries with it intuition. Intuition is a faculty of the inner man, of whom specialism is an attribute.⁵

Between the sphere of specialism and the sphere of abstraction, and likewise between those spheres and that of instinctivity, we find beings in whom the diverse attributes of the two kingdoms are mingled, producing a mixed nature – the man of genius.⁶

The specialist is necessarily the loftiest expression of man – the link which connects the visible to the superior worlds. He acts, he sees, he feels through his inner being. The abstractive thinks. The instinctive simply acts.⁷

Hence three degrees for man. As an instinctive he is below the level; as an abstractive he attains to it; as a specialist he rises above it. Specialism opens to man his true career: the Infinite dawns upon him – he catches a glimpse of his destiny.⁸

Balzac proceeds as follows:

There exists three worlds – the natural world, the spiritual world, the divine world. Humanity moves hither and thither in the natural world, which is fixed neither in its essence nor in its properties. The spiritual world is fixed in its essence and variable in its properties. The divine world is fixed in its properties and its essence. Consequently there is a material worship, a spiritual worship, a divine worship; which three are manifested by action, word and prayer, or (to express it otherwise) deed, understanding, love. The instinctive desires deeds; the abstractive turns to ideas; the specialist sees the end, he aspires to God, whom he inwardly perceives or contemplate.⁹

Therefore perhaps one day the inverse sense of et verbo caro factum will be the epitome of a new gospel which will read: and the flesh shall be made the word; it shall become the utterance of God.¹⁰

The “resurrection” is not of the so called dead, but of the living who are “dead” in the sense of never having entered upon true life.¹¹

3

SUMMARY OF THE CASE OF BALZAC

a. We do not know of any day and hour when the Cosmic Sense declared itself

b. We know nothing about a subjective light

c. We know that Balzac had the intensely earnest nature and the spiritual aspiration which seems necessarily to precede, though it often exists without leading up to, illumination

d. We know that Balzac, after a certain age, had the almost preternatural intellectual and moral qualities which are characteristic of the Cosmic Sense

e. But the proof that Balzac was a case of Cosmic Consciousness rests upon the fact that he has accurately defined and described the mental status so named, and he could not have described the condition if he had not experienced it

f. He not only describes it in great detail, as in Louis Lambert, and ascribes it there to himself – for that book is openly autobiographic; but still more, in Seraphita he creates a personality in which the Cosmic Sense is the chief element and in the course of the narrative brings in every characteristic feature of the same, and to do this the possession of the Cosmic Sense was an absolute prerequisite

g. To anyone who realizes what the Cosmic Sense is it is as certain that Balzac possessed it as that he possessed eyesight.

1.This recalls Whitman’s: “the eyesight has another eyesight, and the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice”.

2.There are in the intellect three stages – simple consciousness, self consciousness and Cosmic Consciousness.

3.It is, of course, not true that the bulk of the race has simple and not self consciousness. It is in fact the latter that constitutes a given creature a man. But it is true (what Balzac means) that with the mass simple consciousness plays a far greater part than self consciousness. The “weaker part” do live in simple far more than in self consciousness.

4.At abstraction – i.e., at self consciousness – humanity, and therefore human society, begins. “Specialism alone can explain God.” Let it be noted in this connection that all religion worthy of the name – Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Christianity and possibly others – has sprung from specialism – i.e., Cosmic Consciousness. “I” [Christ, Cosmic Sense] “am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to God but by me.” It is not so clear how self consciousness bars the way to Cosmic Consciousness. It seems, on the contrary, the necessary and only road which could lead there. Many of the illuminated, however, take the same view as Balzac, and they ought to be the best judges.

5.Note that Balzac is only speaking of Cosmic Consciousness from the point of view of “ideas.” He therefore does not tell us here of the moral exaltation which is an essential part of it. He gives that aspect, however, very fully in Seraphita.

As says Dante: “Even as earthly minds see that two obtuse angles are not contained in a triangle, so thou [the Cosmic Sense], gazing upon the point to which all times are present, seest contingent things ere in themselves they are”

6.Natura non facit saltum: There must be a gradual passage from simple to self and from self to Cosmic Consciousness – i.e., there must be a way of passing gradually. Nevertheless nothing is surer than that the passage from simple to self and from self to Cosmic Consciousness is commonly made with a sudden and often terribly startling jump. But that the conditions may not blend and overlap one another, as Balzac says, it would be well not to be too positive.

7.The state of Cosmic Consciousness is undoubtedly the highest that we can at present conceive, but it does not follow that there are not higher nor that we may not eventually attain to higher.

8.With simple consciousness only man is not yet man – he is the alalus homo. With self consciousness he is what we know him. With Cosmic Consciousness he is as we see him (or rather do not see him; for who of us really sees these men?) in Jesus, Mohammed, Balzac, Whitman. When the race shall have attained to Cosmic Consciousness, as in the far past it attained to self consciousness, another start will be made on another level. Man will enter into his heritage and into his true work.

9.In other words: The men who live entirely or almost entirely in simple consciousness float on the stream of time as do the animals – drift with the seasons, the food supply, etc., etc., as a leaf drifts on a current, not self moved or self balanced, but moved by outer influences and balanced by the natural forces as are the animals and the trees. The fully self conscious man takes stock of himself and is, so to say, self centered. He feels that he is a fixed point. He judges all things with reference to that point. But outside of himself (we know) there is nothing fixed. He trusts in what he calls God and he does not trust in him – he is a deist, an atheist, a Christian, a Buddhist. He believes in science, but science is constantly changing and will rarely tell him, in any case, anything worth knowing. He is fixed, then, at one point and moves freely on that. The man with Cosmic Consciousness being conscious of himself and conscious of the Cosmos, its meaning and drift, is fixed both without and within, “in his essence and in his properties.” The creature with simple consciousness only is a straw floating on a tide, it moves freely with every influence. The self conscious man is a needle pivoted by its centre – fixed in one point but revolving freely on that. The man with Cosmic Consciousness is the same needle magnetized. It is still fixed by its centre, but besides that it points steadily to the north – it has found something real and permanent outside of itself toward which it cannot but steadily look.

10.When the whole race shall have attained to Cosmic Consciousness our idea of God shall be realized in man.

11.The resurrection is brought about by the winds of heaven which sweep the worlds. The angel born upon the blast saith not: “Ye Dead, arise;” he saith, “Arise, ye living”.

CHAPTER 13 Walt Whitman

1819–1892

1

IN EACH OF THESE instances of so called Cosmic Consciousness it would be proper to give a fairly exhaustive account of the external life of the man as well as of his teaching, since the one does, and ought to be shown to, corroborate the other. It would not, however, be possible to do this and still keep the argument within reasonable limits. Fortunately, too, it is not absolutely necessary; most of the men in question being so well known. Also it may be said that the present volume is intended not so much to teach anything as to show that there exists a certain lesson to be learned and to indicate where it may be studied. This volume is not so much a road as a finger post on a road. Its greatest value (if it have any) will be to lead to the serious study of certain men of an exceptional type; not one or the other of them, but as a group and from a particular standpoint. While it is necessary, then, to say a few words about Walt Whitman here, it will be well for the reader to be far from satisfied with these but to seek elsewhere a much more complete statement of the life and thought of this remarkable man. The following brief description is taken from the writer’s Life of Whitman, written in the summer of 1880, while he was visiting the author. Walt Whitman was then sixty-one years of age:

At first sight he looks much older, so that he is often supposed to be seventy or even eighty.

He is six feet in height, and quite straight. He weighs nearly two hundred pounds. His body and limbs are full sized and well proportioned. His head is large and rounded in every direction, the top a little higher than a semicircle from the front to the back would make it. Though his face and head give the appearance of being plentifully supplied with hair, the crown is moderately bald; on the side and back the hair is long, very fine, and nearly snow white. The eyebrows are highly arched, so that it is a long distance from the eye to the centre of the eyebrow (this is the facial feature that strikes one most at first sight). The eyes themselves are light blue, not large – indeed, in proportion to the head and face they seem rather small; they are dull and heavy, not expressive – what expression they have is kindness, composure, suavity. The eyelids are full, the upper commonly droops nearly half over the globe of the eye. The nose is broad, strong, and quite straight; it is full sized, but not large in proportion to the rest of the face; it does not descend straight from the forehead, but dips down somewhat between the eyes with a long sweep. The mouth is full sized, the lips full. The sides and lower part of the face are covered with a fine white beard, which is long enough to come down a little on the breast. The upper lip bears a heavy moustache. The ear is very large, especially long from above downwards, heavy and remarkably handsome.

I believe all the poet’s senses are exceptionally acute, his hearing especially so; no sound or modulation of sound perceptible to others escapes him, and he seems to hear many things that to ordinary folk are inaudible. I have heard him speak of hearing the grass grow and the trees coming out in leaf. His cheeks are round and smooth. His face has no lines expressive of care, or weariness, or age – it is the white hair and beard, and his feebleness in walking (due to paralysis) that make him appear old. The habitual expression of his face is repose, but there is a well marked firmness and decision. I have never seen his look, even momentarily, express contempt, or any vicious feeling. I have never known him to sneer at any person or thing, or to manifest in any way or degree either alarm or apprehension, though he has in my presence been placed in circumstances that would have caused both in most men. His complexion is peculiar – a bright maroon tint, which, contrasting with his white hair and beard, makes an impression very striking. His body is not white like that of all others whom I have seen of the English or Teutonic stock – it has a delicate but well marked rose color.

All his features are large and massive, but so proportioned as not to look heavy. His face is the noblest I have ever seen.

No description can give any idea of the extraordinary physical attractiveness of the man. I do not speak now of the affection of friends and of those who are much with him, but of the magnetism exercised by him upon people who merely see him for a few minutes or pass him on the street. An intimate friend of the author’s, after knowing Walt Whitman a few days, said in a letter: “As for myself, it seems to me now that I have always known him and loved him.

And in another letter, written from a town where the poet had been staying for a few days, the same person says: “Do you know everyone who met him here seems to love him?”

The following is the experience of a person well-known to the present writer:

He called on Walt Whitman and spent an hour at his home in Camden, in the autumn of 1877. He had never seen the poet before, but he had been profoundly reading his works for some years. He said that Walt Whitman only spoke to him about a hundred words altogether, and these quite ordinary and commonplace; that he did not realize anything peculiar while with him, but shortly after leaving a state of mental exaltation set in, which he could only describe by comparing to slight intoxication by champagne, or to falling in love, and this exaltation, he said, lasted at least six weeks in a clearly marked degree, so that, for at least that length of time, he was plainly different from his ordinary self. Neither, he said, did it then or since pass away, though it ceased to be felt as something new and strange, but became a permanent element in his life, a strong and living force (as he described it), making for purity and happiness. I may add that this person’s whole life has been changed by that contact – his temper, character, entire spiritual being, outer life, conversation, etc., elevated and purified in an extraordinary degree. He tells me that at first he used often to speak to friends and acquaintances of his feeling for Walt Whitman and the Leaves, but after a time he found that he could not make himself understood, and that some even thought his mental balance impaired. He gradually learned to keep silence upon the subject, but the feeling did not abate, nor its influence upon his life grow less.

Walt Whitman’s dress was always extremely plain. He usually wore in pleasant weather a light gray suit of good woolen cloth. The only thing peculiar about his dress was that he had no necktie at any time, and always wore shirts with very large turndown collars, the button at the neck some five or six inches lower than usual, so that the throat and upper part of the breast were exposed. In all other respects he dressed in a substantial, neat, plain, common way. Everything he wore and everything about him was always scrupulously clean. His clothes might (and often did) show signs of wear, or they might be torn or have holes worn in them, but they never looked soiled. Indeed, an exquisite aroma of cleanliness has always been one of the special features of the man; it has always belonged to his clothes, his breath, his whole body, his eating and drinking, his conversation, and no one could know him for an hour without seeing that it penetrated his mind and life, and was in fact the expression of a purity which was physical as much as moral and moral as much as physical.

Walt Whitman, in my talks with him at that time, always disclaimed any lofty intention in himself or his poems. If you accepted his explanations they were simple and commonplace. But when you came to think about these explanations, and to enter into the spirit of them, you found that the simple and commonplace with him included the ideal and the spiritual. So it may be said that neither he nor his writings are growths of the ideal from the real, but are the actual real lifted up into the ideal. With Walt Whitman his body, his outward life, his inward spiritual existence and his poetry were all one; in every respect each tallied the other, and any one of them could always be inferred from any other. He said to me one day (I forget now in what connection): “I have imagined a life which should be that of the average man in average circumstances, and still grand, heroic.” There is no doubt that such an ideal had been constantly before his mind, and that all he did, said, wrote, thought and felt, had been and were, from moment to moment, molded upon it. His manner was curiously calm and self contained. He seldom became excited in conversation, or at all events seldom showed excitement; he rarely raised his voice or used any gestures. I never knew him to be in a bad temper. He seemed always pleased with those about him. He did not generally wait for a formal introduction; upon meeting any person for the first time he very likely stepped forward, held out his hand (either left or right, whichever happened to be disengaged), and the person and he were acquainted at once. People could not tell why they liked him. They said there was something attractive about him; that he had a great deal of personal magnetism, or made some other vague explanation that meant nothing. One very clever musical person, who spent a couple of days in my house while Walt Whitman was there, said to me on going away: “I know what it is; it is his wonderful voice that makes it so pleasant to be with him.” I said: “Yes, perhaps it is; but where did his voice get that charm?’

Though he would sometimes not touch a book for a week, he generally spent a part (though not a large part) of each day in reading. Perhaps he would read on an average a couple of hours a day. He seldom read any book deliberately through, and there was no more (apparent) system about his reading than in anything else that he did; that is to say, there was no system about it at all. If he sat in the library an hour, he would have half a dozen to a dozen volumes about him, on the table, on chairs and on the floor. He seemed to read a few pages here and a few pages there, and pass from place to place, from volume to volume, doubtless pursuing some clue or thread of his own. Sometimes (though very seldom) he would get sufficiently interested in a volume to read it all. I think he read almost, if not quite the whole, of Renouf’s Egypt, and Bruschbey’s Egypt, but these cases were excep-tional. In his way of reading he dipped into histories, essays, metaphysical, religious and scientific treatises, novels and poetry – though I think he read less poetry than anything else. He read no language but English, yet I believe he knew a great deal more French, German and Spanish than he would own to. But if you took his own word for it, he knew very little of any subject.

His favorite occupation seemed to be strolling or sauntering about outdoors by himself, looking at the grass, the trees, the flowers, the vistas of light, the varying aspects of the sky, and listening to the birds, the crickets, the tree frogs, the wind in the trees, and all the hundreds of natural sounds. It was evident that these things gave him a feeling of pleasure far beyond what they give to ordinary people. Until I knew the man it had not occurred to me that anyone could derive so much absolute happiness and ample fulfilment from these things as he evidently did. He himself never spoke of all this pleasure. I dare say he hardly thought of it, but anyone who watched him could see plainly that in his case it was real and deep.

He had a way of singing, generally in an undertone, wherever he was or whatever he was doing, when a lone. You would hear him the first thing in the morning while he was taking his bath and dressing (he would then perhaps sing out in full, ballads or martial songs), and a large part of the time that he sauntered outdoors during the day he sang, usually tunes without words, or a formless recitative. Sometimes he would recite poetry, generally, I think, from Shakespeare or Homer, once in a while from Bryant or others. He spent very little time in writing. It is probable that he never did give much time to that occupation. He wrote few private letters. While he was with us he would write a letter to a Canadian paper, about his travels, his condition, and his latest doings and thoughts, and get fifty or a hundred copies and send them to his friends and relations, especially the girls and young folks, and make that do for correspondence. Almost all his writing was done with a pencil in a sort of loose book that he carried in his breast pocket. The book consisted of a few sheets of good white paper, folded and fastened with a pin or two. He said he had tried all sorts of note books and he liked that kind best. The literary work that he did was done at all sorts of times, and generally on his knee, impromptu, and often outdoors. Even in a room with the usual conveniences for writing he did not use a table; he put a book on his knee, or held it in his left hand, laid his paper upon it and wrote so. His handwriting was clear and plain, every letter being perfectly formed.

He was very fond of flowers, either wild or cultivated; would often gather and arrange an immense bouquet of them for the dinner table, for the room where he sat, or for his bedroom; wore a bud or just started rose, or perhaps a geranium, pinned to the lapel of his coat, a great part of the time; did not seem to have much preference for one kind over any other; liked all sorts. I think he admired lilacs and sunflowers just as much as roses. Perhaps, indeed, no man who ever lived liked so many things and disliked so few as Walt Whitman. All natural objects seemed to have a charm for him; all sights and sounds, outdoors and indoors, seemed to please him. He appeared to like (and I believe he did like) all the men, women and children he saw (though I never knew him to say that he liked anyone), but each who knew him felt that he liked him or her, and that he liked others also. He was in this and in everything entirely natural and unconventional. When he did express a preference for any person (which was very seldom) he would indicate it in some indirect way; for instance, I have known him to say: “Goodbye, my love,” to a young married lady he had only seen a few times.

He was especially fond of children, and all children liked and trusted him at once. Often the little ones, if tired out and fretful, the moment he took them up and caressed them, would cease crying, and perhaps go to sleep in his arms. One day several ladies, the poet and myself, attended a picnic given to hundreds of poor children in London. I lost sight of my friend for perhaps an hour, and when I found him again he was sitting in a quiet nook by the river side, with a rosy faced child of four or five years old, tired out and sound asleep in his lap.

For young and old his touch had a charm that cannot be de. scribed, and if it could the description would not be believed except by those who knew him either personally or through Leaves of Grass. This charm (physiological more than psychological), if understood would explain the whole mystery of the man, and how he produced such effects not only upon the well, but among the sick and wounded.

It is certain, also, perhaps contrary to what I have given, that there is another phase, and a very real one, to the basis of his character. An elderly gentleman I talked with (he is a portrait painter and a distant relative of the poet), who was much with him, particularly through the years of his middle age and later (1845 to 1870), tells me that Walt Whitman, in the elements of his character, had deepest sternness and hauteur, not easily aroused, but coming forth at times, and then well understood by those who knew him best as something not to be trifled with. The gentleman alluded to (he is a reader and thorough accepter of Leaves of Grass) agrees with me in my delineation of his benevolence, evenness and tolerant optimism, yet insists that at the inner framework of the poet there has always been, as he expresses it, “a combination of hot blood and fighting qualities.” He says my outline applies more especially to his later years; that Walt Whitman has gradually brought to the front the attributes I dwell upon, and given them control. His theory is, in almost his own words, that there are two natures in Walt Whitman. The one is of immense suavity, self control, a mysticism like the occasional fits of Socrates, and a pervading Christlike benevolence, tenderness and sympathy (the sentiment of the intaglio frontispiece portrait, which I showed him, and he said he had seen exactly that look “in the old man,” and more than once during 1863–64, though he never observed it before or since). But these qualities, though he has enthroned them and for many years governed his life by them, are duplicated by far sterner ones. No doubt he has mastered the latter, but he has them. How could Walt Whitman (said my interlocutor) have taken the attitude toward evil, and things evil, which is behind every page of his utterance in Leaves of Grass from first to last – so different on that subject from every writer known, new or old – unless he enfolded all that evil within him.

Then there was another side to the picture – the indispensable exception that proved the rule. This man, the sight of whom excited such extraordinary affection, whose voice had for most of those who heard it such a wonderful charm, whose touch possessed a power which no words can express – in rare instances, this man, like the magnet, repelled as well as attracted. As there were those who instinctively loved him, so there were others, here and there, who instinctively disliked him. As his poetic utterances were so ridiculous to many, even his personal appearance, in not a few cases, aroused equally sarcastic remark. His large figure, his red face, his copious beard, his loose and free attire, his rolling and unusually ample shirt collar, without necktie and always wide open at the throat, all met at times with jeers and explosive laughter.

He did not talk much. Sometimes, while remaining cheery and good natured, he would speak very little all day. His conversation, when he did talk, was at all times easy and unconstrained. I never knew him to argue or dispute, and he never spoke about money. He always justified, sometimes playfully, sometimes quite seriously, those who spoke harshly of himself or his writings, and I often thought he even took pleasure in those sharp criticisms, slanders and the opposition of enemies. He said that his critics were quite right, that behind what his friends saw he was not at all what he seemed, and that, from the point of view of his foes, his book deserved all the hard things they could say of it – and that he himself undoubtedly deserved them and plenty more.

When I first knew Walt Whitman I used to think that he watched himself, and did not allow his tongue to give expression to feelings of fretfulness, antipathy, complaint and remonstrance.

It did not occur to me as possible that these mental states could be absent in him. After long observation, however, and talking to others who had known him for many years, I satisfied myself that such absence or unconsciousness was entirely real. His deep, clear and earnest voice made a good part, though not all, of the charm of the simplest things he said – a voice not characteristic of any special nationality or dialect. If he said (as he sometimes would involuntarily on stepping to the door and looking out), “Oh, the beautiful sky!” or, “Oh, the beautiful grass!” the words produced the effect of sweet music.

He said, one day, while talking about some fine scenery and the desire to go and see it (and he himself was very fond of new scenery): “After all, the great lesson is that no special natural sights – not Alps, Niagara, Yosemite or anything else – is more grand or. more beautiful than the ordinary sunrise and sunset, earth and sky, the common trees and grass.” Properly understood, I believe this suggests the central teaching of his writings and life – namely, that the commonplace is the grandest of all things; that the exceptional in any line is no finer, better or more beautiful than the usual, and that what is really wanting is not that we should possess something we have not at present, but that our eyes should be opened to see and our hearts to feel what we all have.

He never spoke deprecatingly of any nationality or class of men, or time in the world’s history, or feudalism, or against any trades or occupations – not even against any animals, insects, plants or inanimate things, nor any of the laws of nature, or any of the results of those laws, such as illness, deformity or death. He never complained or grumbled either at the weather, pain, illness or at anything else. He never in conversation, in any company, or under any circumstances, used language that could be thought indelicate (of course he has used language in his poems which has been thought indelicate, but none that is so). In fact, I have never known of his uttering a word or a sentiment which might not be published without any prejudice to his fame. He never swore; he could not very well, since as far as I know he never spoke in anger, and apparently never was angry. He never exhibited fear, and I do not believe he ever felt it. His conversation, mainly toned low, was always agreeable and usually instructive. He never made compliments, very seldom apologized, used the common forms of civility, such as “if you please” and “thank you,” quite sparingly, usually made a smile or a nod answer for them. He was, in my experience of him, not given to speculating on abstract questions (though I have heard others say that there were no subjects in which he so much delighted). He never gossiped. He seldom talked about private people, even to say something good of them, except to answer a question or remark, and then he always gave what he said a turn favorable to the person spoken of.

His conversation, speaking generally, was of current affairs, work of the day, political and historical news, European as well as American, a little of books, much of the aspects of nature – as scenery, the stars, birds, flowers and trees. He read the newspapers regularly, liked good descriptions and reminiscences. He did not, on the whole, talk much anyhow. His manner was invariably calm and simple, belonged to itself alone, and could not be fully described or conveyed.

2

Walt Whitman is the best, most perfect, example the world has so far had of the Cosmic Sense, first because he is the man in whom the new faculty has been, probably, most perfectly developed, and especially because he is, par excellence, the man who in modern times has written distinctly and at large from the point of view of Cosmic Consciousness, and who also has referred to its facts and phenomena more plainly and fully than any other writer either ancient or modern.

He tells us plainly, though not as fully as could be wished, of the moment when he attained illumination, and again towards the end of his life of its passing away. Not that it is to be supposed that he had the Cosmic Sense continuously, for years, but that it came less and less frequently as age advanced, probably lasted less and less long at a time, and decreased in vividness and intensity.

Moreover, in the case of Whitman, we have means of knowing the man thoroughly from youth till death – both before and after illumination – and so (better than in any other. case, except, perhaps, that of Balzac) can compare the fully developed man with his earlier self. The line of demarcation (between the two Whitmans) is perfectly drawn.

On the one hand the Whitman of the forties, writing tales and essays (such as “Death in the School-Room,” 1841; “Wild Frank’s Return,” id.; “Bervance: or Father and Son,” id.; “The Tomb Blossoms,” 1842; “The Last of the Sacred Army,” id.; “The Child Ghost; a Story of the Last Loyalist,” id.; “The Angel of Tears,” id.; “Revenge and Requital,” 1845; “A Dialogue,” id.; etc.), which even his present splendid fame cannot galvanize into life; on the other the Whitman of the fifties, writing the first (1855) edition of the Leaves.

We expect and always find a difference between the early and mature writings of the same man. What an interval, for instance, between Shelley’s romances and the Cenci; between Macaulay’s earliest essays and the history. But here is something quite apart from those and similar cases. We can trace a gradual evolution of aptitude and power from Zastrozzi to Epipsychidion, from Macaulay’s “Milton” to his “Massacre of Glencoe.” But in the case of Whitman (as in that of Balzac) writings of absolutely no value were immediately followed (and, at least in Whitman’s case without practice or study) by pages across each of which in letters of ethereal fire are written the words ETERNAL LIFE; pages covered not only by a masterpiece but by such vital sentences as have not been written ten times in the history of the race. It is upon this instantaneous evolution of the Titan from the Man, this profound mystery of the attainment of the splendor and power of the king-dom of heaven, that this present volume seeks to throw light.

And it is interesting to remark here that Whitman seems to have had as little idea as had Gautama, Paul or Mohammed what it vas that gave him the mental power, the moral elevation and the perennial joyousness which are among the characteristics of the state to which he attained and which seem to have been to him subjects of continual wonder. “Wandering amazed,” he says, “at my own lightness and glee”.

Let us see, now, what Whitman says about this new sense which must have come to him in June, 1853 or 1854, at the age, that is, of thirty-four or thirty-five. The first direct mention of it is on page 15 of the 1855 edition of the Leaves. That is to say, it is upon the third page of his first writing after this new faculty had come to him – for the long preface in this volume was written after the body of the book. The lines are found essentially unaltered in every subsequent edition. In the current (1891–92) edition they are upon page 32.

As given here the quotation is from the 1855 edition, as it is important to get as near the man at the time of writing the words as possible. He says:

I believe in you my soul … the other I am must not abase itself to you,

And you must not be abased to the other.

Loaf with me on the grass … 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. I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer morning;

You settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me,

And parted the shirt from my bosom bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare stripped heart.

And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and joy and knowledge that pass all the art and argument of the earth;

And I know that the hand of God is the elder hand of my own,

And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own,

And that all the men ever born are also my brothers … and the women my sisters and lovers,

And that a kelson of creation is love.¹

His outward life, also, became subject to the dictation of the new self – it held his feet. Finally he tells in brief of the change wrought in his mind and heart by the birth within him of the new faculty. He says he was filled all at once with peace and joy and knowledge transcending all the art and argument of the earth. He attained that point of view from which alone can a human being see something of God (“which alone,” says Balzac, “can explain God;” which point, unless he attains, “he cannot,” says Jesus, “see the kingdom of God”). And he sums up the account by the statement that God is his close friend, that all the men and women ever born are his brothers and sisters and lovers and that the whole creation is built and rests upon love.

Add now to this the following four lines, written at another time but certainly referring to the same or to a similar experience:

As in a swoon, one instant,

Another sun, ineffable full dazzles me,

And all the orbs I knew, and brighter, unknown orbs;

One instant of the future land, Heaven’s land.²

At the same time and in the same connection consider this passage:

Hast never come to thee an hour,

A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles, fashions, wealth?

These eager business aims – books, politics, arts, amours,

To utter nothingness?

For the purpose now of aiding to bring before the mind of the earnest reader (and any other has little business with this book) a hint, a suggestion (for what more is it possible to give here?) of what this Cosmic Consciousness is, it may be well to quote from a prose work of Whitman’s certain passages that seem to throw light on the subject. Speaking of the people, he says: “The rare, cosmic, artist mind, lit with the infinite, alone confronts his manifold and oceanic qualities”. Again: “There is yet, to whoever is eligible among us, the prophetic vision, the joy of being tossed in the brave turmoil of these times – the promulgation and the path, obedient, lowly reverent to the voice, the gesture of the god, or holy ghost, which others see not, hear not”. Once more: “The thought of identity. … Miracle of miracles, beyond statement, most spiritual and vaguest of earth’s dreams, yet hardest basic fact, and only entrance to all facts. In such devout hours, in the midst of the significant wonders of heaven and earth (significant only because of the Me in the centre), creeds; conventions, fall away and become of no account before this simple idea. Under the luminousness of real vision, it alone takes possession, takes value. Like the shadowy dwarf in the fable, once liberated and looked upon, it expands over the whole earth and spreads to the roof of heaven”. Yet another: “I should say, indeed, that only in the perfect uncontamination and solitariness of individuality may the spirituality of religion positively come forth at all. Only here and on such terms, the meditation, the devout ecstasy, the soaring flight. Only here communion with the mysteries, the eternal problems, whence? whither? Alone and identity and the mood – and the soul emerges, and all statements, churches, sermons, melt away like vapors. Alone, and silent thought, and awe, and aspiration – and then the interior consciousness, like a hitherto unseen inscription, in magic ink, beams out its wondrous lines to the sense. Bibles may convey and priests expound, but it is exclusively for the noiseless operation of one’s isolated Self to enter the pure ether of veneration, reach the divine levels, and commune with the unutterable”. The next passage seems prophetical of the coming race: “A fitly born and bred race, growing up in right conditions of outdoor as much as indoor harmony, activity and development, would probably, from and in those conditions, find it enough merely to live – and would, in their relations to the sky, air, water, trees, etc., and to the countless common shows, and in the fact of life itself, discover and achieve happiness – with Being suffused night and day by wholesome ecstasy, surpassing ail the pleasures that wealth, amusement, and even gratified intellect, erudition, or the sense of art, can give”. And finally, and best of all, the following: “Lo! Nature (the only complete, actual poem) existing calmly in the divine scheme, containing all, content, careless of the criticisms of a day, or these endless and wordy chatterers. And to! to the consciousness of the soul, the permanent identity, the thought, the something, before which the magnitude even of Democracy, art, literature, etc., dwindles, becomes partial, measurable – something that fully satisfies (which those do not). That something is the All and the idea of All, with the accompanying idea of eternity, and of itself, the soul, buoyant, indestructible, sailing Space forever, visiting every region, as a ship the sea. And again to! the pulsations in all matter, all spirit, throbbing forever – the eternal beats, eternal systole and diastole of life in things – wherefrom I feel and know that death is not the ending, as we thought, but rather the real beginning – and that nothing ever is or can be lost, nor even die, nor soul nor matter”. Here we have brought out strongly the consciousness of the Cosmos, its life and eternity – and the consciousness of the equal grandeur and eternity of the individual soul, the one balancing (equal to) the other. In a word, we have here the expression (as far, perhaps, as it can be expressed) of what is called in this volume Cosmic Consciousness.

Those who so far have been endowed with Cosmic Consciousness have been, almost to a man, carried away and subjugated by it; they have looked upon it – most of them – as being a preterhuman, more or less supernatural faculty, separating them from other men. They have almost, if not quite, always sought to help men, for their moral sense has been inevitably purified and elevated by the oncoming of the new sense, to an extraordinary degree; but they have not realized the need, nor, probably, felt the possibility of using their unusual insight and power in any systematic manner. That is, THE MAN has not mastered, taken possession of, and used, the new faculty, but has been (on the contrary) largely or entirely mastered and used by it. This was clearly the case with Paul, who was led away by the grandeur and glory of the new sense to underrate the really equal divinity of his previous human faculties. The same words could with nearly equal truth be applied to the case of Gautama. The evils that humanity has suffered and is today suffering simply because these two men took this mistaken view – the evils, namely, that have come upon us through despising “the flesh” – i.e., through despising the so called “natural man” – the evils, in fine, that have come from the teaching that one part of man is good and to be cultivated, while another part is bad and (if possible) to be extirpated, or, if that is not possible, covered up and hidden away – the evils that have come upon us from this false view are entirely incalculable and would sometimes almost tempt us to forget the even greater benefits bestowed upon the race by the men from whom the evils specified have come. Not that Gautama and Paul are by any means entirely responsible for the monasticism and asceticism of their followers. It is doubtless true, as Lecky tells us, that this movement had already begun. But no one can or will deny that the influence of these two men in intensifying and directing the passion for abnegation of pleasure and so called purity (in other words, in setting aside the things of the self conscious life in favor of those of the Cosmic Conscious) was incalculably great.

The evils in question have been clearly seen, lucidly portrayed and traced back to their predominant source in these great teachers by many writers. Among the rest Kidd has indicated with great force and truth the immense impulse toward self denial that marked the early centuries of Christianity; has shown that the impulse in question, though “irrational,” had a meaning deeper than reason; that if the race is to advance such anti social instincts are a necessity (though it is neither necessary nor well that they should often have the force they possessed in the centuries referred to); that they have their place in this scheme just as have their complement, the social instincts. What Kidd does not see is – whence the great teachers derived the insight from which was born the assurance that so moved them and through them the world.

This antagonism between the higher and the lower life, between the life for self and the life for others, between the life of the flesh and the life of the spirit, between the life of the individual and the life of the race, between the self conscious life and the Cosmic Conscious life, is, perhaps, the supreme fact of the modern world – giving to it both motion and stability, just as the opposite forces, the centrifugal and the centripetal, give both motion and stability in the sphere of the astral universe. And from this point of view it is clear why it should be that: Le sort des grands hommes est de passer tour à tour pour des fous et pour des sages. La gloire est d’etre un de ceux que choisit successivement l’humanité par les aimer et les haïr.

It may be that Walt Whitman is the first man who, having Cosmic Consciousness very fully developed, has deliberately set himself against being thus mastered by it, determining, on the contrary, to subdue it and make it the servant along with simple consciousness, self consciousness and the rest of the united, individual SELF. He saw, what neither Gautama nor Paul saw, what Jesus saw, though not so clearly as he, that though this faculty is truly Godlike, yet it is no more supernatural or preternatural than sight, hearing, taste, feeling, or any other, and he consequently refused to give it unlimited sway, and would not allow it to tyrannize over the rest. He believes in it, but he says the other self, the old self, must not abase itself to the new; neither must the new be encroached upon or limited by the old; he will see that they live as friendly co-workers together. And it may here be said that whoever does not realize this last clause will never fully understand the Leaves.

The next reference made by Walt Whitman to Cosmic Consciousness, to be noted here, is in a poem called the “Prayer of Columbus”, a few words on the history of which will be in order. It was written about 1874–5, when the condition of the poor, sick, neglected spiritual explorer was strikingly similar to that of the heroic geographical explorer shipwrecked on the Antillean island in 1503, at which time and place the prayer is supposed to be offered up. Walt Whitman – a very common trick with him – used this agreement of circumstance to put his own words (ostensibly) into the mouth of the other man. The prayer is inreality, of course, Walt Whitman’s own and all the allusions in it are to his own life, work, fortunes – to himself. In it he refers specifically and pointedly to the present subject matter. Speaking to God, he says:

Thou knowest my manhood’s solemn and visionary meditations.

O I am sure they really came from Thee,

The urge, the ardor, the unconquerable will,

The potent, felt, interior command, stronger than words,

A message from the Heavens, whispering to me even in sleep,

These sped me on.

One effort more, my altar this bleak sand;

That Thou O God my life hast lighted,

With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee,

Light rare untellable, lighting the very light,

Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages;

For that O God, be it my latest word, here on my knees,

Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee.

My hands, my limbs grew nerveless,

My brain feels rack’d, bewilder’d,

Let the old timbers part, I will not part,

I will cling fast to Thee O God, though the waves buffet me,

Thee,

Thee at least I know.

At the time of writing these lines Walt Whitman is fifty-five or fifty-six years of age. For over twenty years he has been guided by this (seeming) supernatural illumination. He has yielded freely to it and obeyed its behests as being from God Himself.

He has “loved the earth, sun, animals, despised riches, given alms to everyone that asked, stood up for the stupid and crazy, devoted his income and labor to others”, as commanded by the divine voice and as impelled by the divine impulse, and now for reward he is poor, sick, paralyzed, despised, neglected, dying. His message to man, to the delivery of which he has devoted his life, which has been dearer in his eyes (for man’s sake) than wife, children, life itself, is unread or scoffed and jeered at. What shall he say to God? He says that God knows him through and through, and that he is willing to leave himself in God’s hands. He says that he does not know men nor his own work, and so does not judge what men may do with, or say to, the Leaves. But he says he does know God, and will cling to him though the waves buffet him. Then about the inspiration, the illumination, the potent, felt, interior command stronger than words? He is sure that this comes from God. He has no doubt. There can be no doubt of that.

He goes on to speak of the ray of light, steady, ineffable, with which God has lighted his life, and says it is rare, untellable, beyond all signs, descriptions, languages. And this (be it well remembered) is not the utterance of wild enthusiasm, but of cold, hard fact by a worn out old man on (as he supposed) his deathbed.

This acknowledgment by Whitman of God’s goodness recalls forcibly Bacon’s gratitude to God for his “gifts and graces,” his circumstances in the summer of 1621 (both outwardly and inwardly) being as parallel as they could possibly be with those of Whitman in 1875.

The next direct allusion to Cosmic Consciousness to be noted is embodied in a poem called “Now Precedent Songs, Farewell”, written in June, 1888, when he again, and with good reason, supposed himself dying. The poem was written as a hasty goodbye to the Leaves. At the end of it he refers to his songs and their origin in these words:

O heaven! what flash and started endless train of all!

Compared indeed to that!

What wretched shred e’en at the best of all!

He says: Compared to the flash, the divine illumination from which they had their origin, how poor and worthless his poems are. And it must be borne in mind that Whitman never had a bad opinion of the Leaves. He used to say (in a semi jocular manner, but fully meaning it all the same) that none of the fellows (meaning out and out admirers), not even O’Conner, Burroughs or Bucke, thought as highly of them as he did. But thinking that way of them he could still exclaim how poor they were compared to the illumination from which they sprang. But he did not die at that time. He rallied, and again, it seems, from time to time the vision appeared and the voice whispered. Doubtless the vision grew more dim and the voice less distinct as time passed and the feebleness of age and sickness advanced upon him. At last, in 1891, at the age of seventy-two, the “Brahmic Splendor” finally departed, and in those mystic lines, “To the Sunset Breeze” [193: 414], which the Harpers returned to him as “a mere improvisation,” he bids it farewell:

Thou hast O Nature! elements! utterance to my heart

beyond the rest – and this is of them …

Thou art spiritual, Godly, most of all known to my sense,

Minister to speak to me, here and now, what word has never

told, and cannot tell,

Art thou not universal, concrete’s distillation?

As a man with Cosmic Consciousness sees the Cosmic order, and that, as Paul says, “all things work together for good”, so every such man is what is called “an Optimist,” and it may be freely stated that the knowledge of the friendliness of the universe to man is a distinctive mark of the class of men considered in this volume. That Whitman has this mark needs saying only to those who have not read him. Again and again in ever varying words he says and repeats: “And I say there is in fact no evil”. “Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.” “Is it lucky to be born?” he asks, and answers: “It is just as lucky to die”.

So Dante, in summing up, declares that, seen by the light of the Cosmic Sense, all is perfect, including that which outside that light is (or seems) imperfect.

It is not supposed that in the case of any man so far born has the Cosmic Sense been constantly present for years, months, or even weeks – probably not even for days or hardly hours. In many cases it appears only once and for a few moments only, but that flash is sufficient to light up (more or less brightly) all the subsequent years of life. In the greatest cases it may be present for many minutes at a time and return at intervals of weeks, months or years. Between these extremes there would seem to be a vast range of greater and less cases.

It has already been stated more than once that while Cosmic Consciousness is actually present there is a profound change in the appearance of the subject of it. If one thinks how the countenance is lit up by ordinary great joy, it will be seen that the change spoken of must happen. Not only so, but it is within the personal knowledge of the writer that (at all events, in some cases) a man does not altogether return (at least permanently) to his old expression and appearance for months or even years after a period of illumination.

This is as much as to say that the face of a man who had occasional periods of illumination, extending through years, would wear, habitually, a more or less exalted and noble expression, and this is true.

It is, however, of course, while Cosmic Consciousness is actually present that the change in the aspect of the subject is the greatest. The following seems to be a description of this change. Either Cosmic Consciousness was actually present at the hour mentioned or it had been present immediately before it. The account is by an eye witness – Miss Helen Price – a lady well known to the person who writes these lines:

One evening in 1866, while Walt Whitman was stopping with us in New York, the tea bell had been rung ten minutes or more when he came down from his room, and we all gathered around the table. I remarked him as he entered the room; there seemed to be a peculiar brightness and elation about him, an almost irrepressible joyousness, which shone from his face and seemed to pervade his whole body. It was the more noticeable as his ordinary mood was one of quiet, yet cheerful serenity. I knew he had been working at a new edition of his book, and I hoped if he had an opportunity he would say something to let us into the secret of his mysterious joy. Unfortunately most of those at the table were occupied with some subject of conversation; at every pause I waited eagerly for him to speak; but no, someone else would begin again, until I grew almost wild with impatience and vexation. He appeared to listen, and would even laugh at some of the remarks that were made, yet he did not utter a single word during the meal; and his face still wore that singular brightness and delight, as though he had partaken of some divine elixir. His expression was so remarkable that I might have doubted my own observation had it not been noticed by another as well as myself.

3

SUMMARY

a. The subjective light appeared strongly to Whitman

b. The moral elevation and intellectual illumination were extreme, and in his case stand out very clearly, since we know the man so well both before and after the oncoming of the Cosmic Sense

c. In no other man who ever lived was the sense of eternal life so absolute

d. Fear of death was absent. Neither in health nor in sickness did he show any sign of it, and there is every reason to believe he did not feel it

e. He had no sense of sin. This must not be understood as meaning that he felt himself to be perfect. Whitman realized his own greatness as clearly and fully as did any of his admirers. He also realized how immeasurably he was below the ideal which he constantly set up before himself

f. The change of the self conscious man into the Cosmic Conscious was instantaneous – occurring at a certain hour of a certain day

g. It occurred at the characteristic age and at the characteristic time of the year

h. The altered appearance of the man while in the Cosmic Conscious state was seen and noted.

1.The new experience came in June, probably in 1853, when he had just entered upon his thirty-fifth year. It would seem that he was at first in doubt what it meant, then became satisfied and said: I believe in its teaching. Although, however, it is so divine, the other I am (the old self) must not be abased to it, neither must it (the new self) ever be overridden by the more basic organs and faculties. He goes on: Stay with me, loaf with me on the grass, instruct me, speak out what you mean, what is in you, no matter about speaking musically, or poetically, or according to the rules, or even using the best language, but just use your own words in your own way. He then turns back to tell of the exact occurrence. The illumination (or whatever it was, came to him or upon him one June morning, and took (though gently) absolute possession of him, at least for the time.

Henceforth, he says, his life received its inspiration from the newcomer, the new self, whose tongue, as he expresses it, was plunged to his bare stripped heart.

2.So Dante: “Day seemed to be added to day as if he who is able had adorned the heavens with another sun.”

CHAPTER 14 Edward Carpenter

1844–1929

1

WAS BORN AUGUST 29th, 1844, in Brighton, where he spent his early youth. His father came from Cornwall. He went for several years to Brighton College, and in 1864 entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he obtained a scholarship, graduated in 1868 as tenth wrangler, and afterwards was elected a fellow of the college. In due course he was ordained, and for some years acted as curate of St. Edward’s Church, Cambridge, of which at the time Frederic Dennison Maurice was vicar. He never profoundly believed in the historical accuracy of the Bible. His father was a Broad Churchman, and brought him up to think for himself. When quite young he had made up his mind to take orders and stuck to that notion largely from an idea that the church could be widened from the inside. Once fairly inside, however, he found it would take a precious long time. In fine, he soon felt himself so ill at ease that a complete break with the whole thing became absolutely necessary. He was in orders from 1869 to 1874.

We find him immediately after this working with approved success in a new field – that of university extension. He was at this time, from 1874 to 1880, especially known and loved in and about York, Nottingham, and Sheffield.

About the same time he began to study deeply social questions, and became convinced that society was on a wrong basis and moving in a wrong direction.

It was early in 1881, as he tells us, when in his thirty-seventh year, that Carpenter entered into Cosmic Consciousness. The evidence of the fact is perfectly clear, but it is not within the power of the writer to give details of illumination in the case beyond those given below. As a direct result of the oncoming of the Cosmic Sense he practically resigned his social rank and became a laborer; that is to say, he procured a few acres of land not many miles from Dronfield, in Derbyshire, built upon it a small house and lived there with the family of a working man as one of themselves. Dressing in the common corduroy of the country side, he took up his spade and worked steadily with the others. It seemed to him that the manners and habits of the rich were less noble than those of the poor; that the soul and life of the rich were less noble. He preferred to live with the comparatively poor and to be himself comparatively poor, in that respect (not following the example of, but) participating in the instinct of Gautama. Jesus, Paul, Las Casas and Whitman. He retains his piano, and after his hours of manual toil will refresh himself with a sonata of Beethoven, for he is an accomplished and original musician. It is needless to say that he is a pronounced and advanced socialist – perhaps an anarchist. He is one with the people, the “common” people (made so numerous, so common, said Lincoln, because God loves them and likes to see many of them). It is childish to say (as some have thought and said) that men of this stamp live as poor men with the poor for the sake of influencing these and as an example to the rich. They simply live as poor men with the poor, as laboring men with laborers, because they prefer the life, the manners, the habits, the surroundings, the personality of these to the life, the manners, the habits, the surroundings and the personality of the rich. Occasionally he descends into so called “good society” (having close and dear relations there), but does not remain in it for any length of time. He loves above all things, in himself and others, honesty, candor, sincerity and simplicity, and he says he finds more of these in the poor, common, working people than he finds in the rich men and women who constitute “society.”

In 1873 Carpenter published Narcissus and Other Poems, and in 1875 Moses: A Drama. He began reading Whitman in 1869, and read the Leaves continuously for ten years thereafter. Whether Carpenter would have acquired Cosmic Consciousness if he had never read Whitman cannot perhaps be said, either by himself or by anyone else, but there seems little doubt that the study of the Leaves was a material factor leading up to his illumination. He is not the only man who has been helped forward by the same agency, and it is probable that in the world’s future many thousand men and women will be in similar manner helped to the same goal. For (and in this fact is the raison d’être of the present volume), next to the necessary heredity and the right constitution (bodily and mental), association with the minds of those who have passed the boundary into “Specialism” is of supreme importance. He began to write Towards Democracy (the book in which he attempted to embody the teachings of the Cosmic Sense) immediately after his illumination. The first edition, small and thin, was published in 1883; the second, a good deal enlarged, in 1885; the third, grown into a stout, handsome volume, in 1892; and the fourth, in 1896. No better book can be read from which to obtain an idea as to what Cosmic Consciousness is and in what it differs from self consciousness. Besides Towards Democracy, Carpenter published, in 1887, England’s Ideal; in 1889, Civilization, its Cause and Cure, and in 1893, From Adam’s Peak to Elephanta; all of which are exceedingly well worth attention.

2

In a letter to the present writer, who had asked for certain facts about the new sense, he says:

I really do not feel that I can tell you anything without falsifying and obscuring the matter. I have done my best to write it out in Towards Democracy. I have no experience of physical light in this relation. The perception seems to be one in which all the senses unite into one sense. In which you become the object. But this is unintelligible, mentally speaking. I do not think the matter can be defined as yet; but I do not know that there is any harm in writing about it.¹

In another place he has the following clear and explicit passage on the subject:

Notwithstanding, then, the prevalence of the foot régime (inductive science) and that the heathen so furiously rage together in their belief in it, let us suggest that there is in man a divine consciousness as well as a foot consciousness. For as we saw that the sense of taste may pass from being a mere local thing on the tip of the tongue to pervading and becoming synonymous with the health of the whole body; or as the blue of the sky may be to one person a mere superficial impression of color, and to another the inspiration of a poem or picture, and to a third, as to the “God intoxicated” Arab of the desert, a living presence like the ancient Dyaus or Zeus – so may not the whole of human consciousness gradually lift itself from a mere local and temporary consciousness to a divine and universal? There is in every man a local consciousness connected with his quite external body; that we know. Are there not also in every man the making of a universal consciousness? That there are in us phases of consciousness which transcend the limit of the bodily senses is a matter of daily experience; that we perceive and know things which are not conveyed to us by our bodily eyes and heard by our bodily ears is certain; that there rise in us waves of consciousness from those around us – from the people, the race, to which we belong – is also certain. May there, then, not be in us the makings of a perception and knowledge which shall not be relative to this body which is here and now, but which shall be good for all time and everywhere? Does there not exist, in truth, as we have already hinted, an inner illumination, of which what we call light in the outer world is the partial expression and manifestation, by which we can ultimately see things as they are, beholding all creation – the animals, the angels, the plants, the figures of our friends and all the ranks and races of human kind, in their true being and order – not by any local act of perception, but by a cosmic intuition and presence, identifying ourselves with what we see? Does there not exist a perfected sense of hearing – as of the morning stars singing together – an understanding of the words that are spoken all through the universe, the hidden meaning of all things, the word which is creation itself – a profound and far pervading sense, of which our ordinary sense of sound is only the first novitiate and initiation? Do we not become aware of an inner sense of health and of holiness – the translation and final outcome of the external sense of taste – which has power to determine for us absolutely and without any ado, without argument, and without denial, what is good and appropriate to be done or suffered in every case that can arise? If there are such powers in man, then, indeed, an exact science is possible. Short of it there is only a temporary and phantom science. “Whatsoever is known to us by (direct) consciousness,” says Mill in his “Logic,” “is known to us without possibility of question.” What is known by our local and temporary consciousness is known for the moment beyond possibility of question; what is known by our permanent and universal consciousness is permanently known beyond possibility of question.

In a later book, Carpenter has a chapter, “Consciousness Without Thought”, written expressly to give to the uninitiated an idea of what is meant by the words used as the title of the present volume. Here follows that chapter entire. Those interested in the subject had better see the book itself, as it contains other chapters almost equally important. The chapter begins:

The question is: What is this experience? or rather – since an experience can really only be known to a person who experiences it – we may ask: What is the nature of this experience? And in trying to indicate an answer of some kind to this question I feel considerable diffidence, just for the very reason (for one) already mentioned – namely, that it is so difficult or impossible for one person to give a true account of an experience which has occurred to another.

If I could give the exact words of the teacher, without any bias derived either from myself or the interpreting friend, the case might be different; but that I cannot pretend to do; and if I could, the old world scientific form in which his thoughts were cast would probably only prove a stumbling block and a source of confusion, instead of a help, to the reader. Indeed in the case of the sacred books, where we have a good deal of accessible and authoritative information, Western critics, though for the most part agreeing that there is some real experience underlying, are sadly at variance as to what that experience may be.

For these reasons I prefer not to attempt or pretend to give the exact teaching, unbiased, of the Indian Gurus or their experiences, but only to indicate, so far as I can, in my own words, and in modern thought form, what I take to be the direction in which we must look for this ancient and world old knowledge which has had so stupendous an influence in the East, and which indeed is still the main mark of its difference from the West.

And first let me guard against an error which is likely to arise. It is very easy to assume, and very frequently assumed, in any case where a person is credited with the possession of an unusual faculty, that such person is at once lifted out of our sphere into a supernatural region, and possesses every faculty of that region. If, for instance, he or she is, or is supposed to be, clairvoyant, it is assumed that everything is or ought to be known to them; or if the person has shown what seems a miraculous power at any time or in any case, it is asked by way of discredit why he or she did not show a like power at other times or in other cases. Against all such hasty generalizations it is necessary to guard ourselves. If there is a higher form of consciousness obtainable by man than that which he can for the most part claim at present, it is probable – nay, certain – that it is evolving and will evolve but slowly, and with many a slip and hesitant pause by the way. In the far past of man and the animals consciousness of sensation and consciousness of self have been successively evolved – each of these mighty growths with innumerable branches and branch lets continually spreading. At any point in this vast experience a new growth, a new form of consciousness might well have seemed miraculous. What could be more marvelous than the first revealment of the sense of sight, what more inconceivable to those who had not experienced it, and what more certain than that the first use of this faculty must have been fraught with delusion and error? Yet there may be an inner vision which again transcends sight, even as far as sight transcends touch. It is more than probable that in the hidden births of time there lurks a consciousness which is not the consciousness of sensation and which is not the consciousness of self – or at least which includes and entirely surpasses these – a consciousness in which the contrast between the ego and the external world, and the distinction between subject and object, fall away. The part of the world into which such a consciousness admits us (call it super mundane or whatever you will) is probably at least as vast and complex as the part we know, and progress in that region at least equally slow and tentative and various, laborious, discontinuous and uncertain. There is no sudden leap out of the back parlor onto Olympus; and the routes, when found, from one to the other, are long and bewildering in their variety.

And of those who do attain to some portion of this region we are not to suppose that they are at once demi gods or in fallible. In many cases indeed the very novelty and strangeness of the experience give rise to phantasmal trains of delusive speculation. Though we should expect, and though it is no doubt true on the whole, that what we should call the higher types of existing humanity are those most likely to come into possession of any new faculties which may be flying about, yet it is not always so, and there are cases well recognized, in which persons of decidedly deficient or warped moral nature attain powers which properly belong to a higher grade of evolution, and are correspondingly dangerous thereby.

All this, or a great part of it, the Indian teachers insist on. They say – and I think this commends the reality of their experience – that there is nothing abnormal or miraculous about the matter; that the faculties acquired are on the whole the result of long evolution and training, and that they have distinct laws and an order of their own. They recognize the existence of persons of a demoniac faculty, who have acquired powers of a certain grade without corresponding moral evolution, and they admit the rarity of the highest phases of consciousness and the fewness of those at present fitted for its attainment. With these little provisos, then, established I think we may go on to say that what the Gñáni seeks and obtains is a new order of consciousness – to which, for want of a better term, we may give the name universal or Cosmic Consciousness, in contradistinction to the individual or special bodily consciousness with which we are all familiar. I am not aware that the exact equivalent of this expression “universal consciousness” is used in the Hindu philosophy; but the Sat-chit-ánanda Brahm, to which every yogi aspires, indicates the same idea: sat, the reality, the all pervading; chit, the knowing, perceiving; ánanda, the blissful – all these united in one manifestation of Brahm.

The West seeks the individual consciousness – the enriched mind, ready perceptions and memories, individual hopes and fears, ambition, loves, conquests – the self, the local self, in all its phases and forms – and sorely doubts whether such a thing as an universal consciousness exists. The East seeks the universal consciousness, and in those cases where its quest succeeds individual self and life thin away to a mere film, and are only the shadows cast by the glory revealed beyond.

The individual consciousness takes the form of Thought, which is fluid and mobile like quicksilver, perpetually in a state of change and unrest fraught with pain and effort; the other consciousness is not in the form of Thought. It touches, hears, sees, and is those things which it perceives – without motion, without change, without effort, without distinction of subject and object, but with a vast and incredible Joy.

The individual consciousness is specially related to the body. The organs of the body are in some degree its organs. But the whole body is only as one organ of the Cosmic Consciousness. To attain this latter one must have the power of knowing one’s self separate from the body – of passing into a state of ecstasy, in fact. Without this the Cosmic Consciousness cannot be experienced. It is said: “There are four main experiences in initiation – (1) the meeting with a Guru; (2) the consciousness of Grace or Arul – which may perhaps be interpreted as the consciousness of a change – even of a physiological change – working within one; (3) the vision of Siva (God), with which the knowledge of one’s self as distinct from the body is closely connected; (4) the finding of the universe within.” “The wise,” it is also said, “when their thoughts become fixed, perceive within themselves the Absolute consciousness, which is Sarva sakshi, Witness of all things.”

Great have been the disputes among the learned as to the meaning of the word Nirvāna – whether it indicates a state of no consciousness or a state of vastly enhanced consciousness. Probably both views have their justification; the thing does not admit of definition in the terms of ordinary language. The important thing to see and admit is that under cover of this and other similar terms there does exist a real and recognizable fact (that is, a state of consciousness in some sense), which has been experienced over and over again, and which to those who have experienced it in ever so slight a degree has appeared worthy of lifelong pursuit and devotion. It is easy of course to represent the thing as a mere word, a theory, a speculation of the dreamy Hindu; but people do not sacrifice their lives for empty words, nor do mere philosophical abstractions rule the destinies of continents. No, the word represents a reality, something very basic and inevitable in human nature. The question really is not to define the fact – for we cannot do that – but to get at and experience it. It is interesting at this juncture to find that modern Western science, which has hitherto – without much result – been occupying itself with mechanical theories of the universe, is approaching from its side this idea of the existence of another form of consciousness. The extraordinary phenomena of hypnotism – which no doubt are in some degree related to the subject we are discussing, and which have been recognized for ages in the East – are forcing Western scientists to assume the existence of the so called secondary consciousness in the body. The phenomena seem really inexplicable without the assumption of a secondary agency of some kind, and it every day becomes increasingly difficult not to use the word consciousness to describe it. Let it be understood that I am not for a moment assuming that this secondary consciousness of the hypnotists is in all respects identical with the Cosmic Consciousness (or whatever we may call it) of the Eastern occultists. It may or may not be. The two kinds of consciousness may cover the same ground, or they may only overlap to a small extent. That is a question I do not propose to discuss. The point to which I wish to draw attention is that Western science is envisaging the possibility of the existence in man of another consciousness of some kind beside that with whose workings we are familiar. It quotes (A. Moll) the case of Barkworth, who “can add up long rows of figures while carrying on a lively discussion, without allowing his attention to be at all diverted from the discussion”; and asks us how Barkworth can do this unless he has a secondary consciousness which occupies itself with the figures while his primary consciousness is in the thick of argument. Here is a lecturer (F. Myers) who for a whole minute allows his mind to wander entirely away from the subject in hand, and imagines himself to be sitting beside a friend in the audience and to be engaged in conversation with him, and who wakes up to find himself still on the platform lecturing away with perfect ease and coherency. What are we to say to such a case as that, here, again, is a pianist who recites a piece of music by heart, and finds that his recital is actually hindered by allowing his mind (his primary consciousness) to dwell upon what he is doing. It is sometimes suggested that the very perfection of the musical performance shows that it is mechanical or unconscious, but is this a fair inference? and would it not seem to be a mere contradiction in terms to speak of an unconscious lecture or an unconscious addition of a row of figures?

Many actions and processes of the body, e.g., swallowing, are attended by distinct personal consciousness; many other actions and processes are quite unperceived by the same; and it might seem reasonable to suppose that these latter, at any rate, were purely mechanical and devoid of any mental substratum. But the later developments of hypnotism in the West have shown – what is well known to the Indian fakirs – that under certain conditions consciousness of the internal actions and processes of the body can be obtained; and not only so, but consciousness of events taking place at a distance from the body and without the ordinary means of communication.

Thus the idea of another consciousness, in some respects of wider range than the ordinary one, and having methods of perception of its own, has been gradually infiltrating itself into Western minds.

There is another idea, which modern science has been familiarizing us with, and which is bringing us towards the same conception – that, namely, of the fourth dimension. The supposition that the actual world has four space dimensions instead of three makes many things conceivable which otherwise would be incredible. It makes it conceivable that apparently separate objects, e.g., distinct people, are really physically united; that things apparently sundered by enormous distances of space are really quite close together; that a person or other object might pass in and out of a closed room without disturbance of walls, doors, or windows, etc.; and if this fourth dimension were to become a factor of our consciousness it is obvious that we should have means of knowledge which to the ordinary sense would appear simply miraculous. There is much, apparently, to suggest that the consciousness attained to by the Indian Gñánis in their degree, and by hypnotic subjects in theirs, is of this fourth dimensional order.

As a solid is related to its own surfaces, so, it would appear, is Cosmic Consciousness related to ordinary consciousness. The phases of the personal consciousness are but different facets of the other consciousness; and experiences which seem remote from each other in the individual are perhaps all equally near in the universal. Space itself, as we know it, may be practically annihilated in the consciousness of a larger space of which it is but the superficies; and a person living in London may not unlikely find that he has a back door opening quite simply and unceremoniously out in Bombay.

“The true quality of the soul,” said the Guru one day, “is that of space, by which it is at rest, everywhere.”

Cf. Whitman: “Dazzling and tremendous, how quick the sunrise would kill me, if I could not now and always send sunrise out of me. We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun.”

But this space (Akása) within the soul is far above the ordinary material space. The whole of the latter, including all the suns and stars, appears to you then as it were but an atom of the former” – and here he held up his fingers as though crumbling a speck of dust between them.

“At rest everywhere,” “Indifference,” “Equality.” This was one of the most remarkable parts of the Guru’s teaching. Though (for family reasons) maintaining many of the observances of caste himself, and though holding and teaching that for the mass of the people caste rules were quite necessary, he never ceased to insist that when the time came for a man (or woman) to be “emancipated” all these rules must drop aside as of no importance – all distinction of castes, classes, all sense of superiority or self goodness – of right and wrong even – and the most absolute sense of equality must prevail towards everyone, and determination in its expression. Certainly it was remarkable (though I knew that the sacred books contained it) to find this germinal principle of Western Democracy so vividly active and at work deep down beneath the innumerable layers of Oriental social life and custom. But so it is; and nothing shows better the relation between the West and East than this fact.

This sense of equality, of freedom from regulations and confinements, of inclusiveness, and of the life that “rests everywhere,” belongs, of course, more to the Cosmic or universal part of a man than to the individual part. To the latter it is always a stumbling block and an offense. It is easy to show that men are not equal, that they cannot be free, and to point the absurdity of a life that is indifferent and at rest under all conditions. Nevertheless to the larger consciousness these are basic facts, which underlie the common life of humanity, and feed the very individual that denies them.

Thus repeating the proviso that in using such terms as Cosmic and universal consciousness we do not commit ourselves to the theory that the instant a man leaves the personal part of him he enters into absolutely unlimited and universal knowledge, but only into a higher order of perception – and admitting the intricacy and complexity of the region so roughly denoted by these terms, and the microscopic character of our knowledge about it – we may say once more, also as a roughest generalization, that the quest of the East has been this universal consciousness, and that of the West the personal or individual consciousness. As is well known the East has its various sects and schools of philosophy, with subtle discriminations of qualities, essences, godheads, devilhoods, etc., into which I do not propose to go, and which I should feel myself quite incompetent to deal with. Leaving all these aside, I will keep simply to these two rough Western terms, and try to consider further the question of the methods by which the Eastern student sets himself to obtain the Cosmic state, or such higher order of consciousness as he does encompass.

Later [62] Carpenter has made still another attempt to explain or at least indicate the nature of the new sense. He says:

I have sometimes been asked questions about Towards Democracy which I found it difficult to answer: and I will try and shape a few thoughts about it here.²

Quite a long time ago (say when I was about twenty-five, and living at Cambridge) I wanted to write some sort of a book which should address itself very personally and closely to anyone who cared to read it – establish, so to speak, an intimate personal relation between myself and the reader; and during successive years I made several attempts to realize this idea – of which beginnings one or two in verse (one, for instance, I may mention, called “The Angel of Death and Life”) may be found in a little volume entitled Narcissus and Other Poems, now well out of print, which I published in 1873. None of my attempts satisfied me, however, and after a time I began to think the quest was an unreasonable one – unreasonable because, while it might not be difficult for anyone with a pliant and sympathetic disposition to touch certain chords in any given individual that he met, it seemed impossible to hope that a book – which cannot in any way adapt itself to the idiosyncrasies of its reader – could find the key of the personalities into whose hands it might come. For this it would be necessary to suppose, and to find, an absolutely common ground to all individuals (all, at any rate, who might have reached a certain stage of thought and experience), and to write the book on and from that common ground; but this seemed at that time quite unfeasible.

Years followed, more or less eventful, with flight from Cambridge and university lectures carried on in the provincial towns, and so forth; but of much dumbness as regards writing, and inwardly full of extreme tension and suffering. At last, early in 1881, no doubt as the culmination and result of struggles and experiences that had been going on, I became conscious that a mass of material was forming within me, imperatively demanding expression – though what exactly its expression would be I could not then have told. I became for the time overwhelmingly conscious of the disclosure within me of a region transcending in some sense the ordinary bounds of personality, in the light of which region my own idiosyncrasies of character – defects, accomplishments, limitations, or what not – appeared of no importance whatever – an absolute freedom from mortality, accompanied by an indescribable calm and joy.

I also immediately saw, or felt, that this region of self existing in me existed equally (though not always equally consciously) in others. In regard to it the mere diversities of temperament which ordinarily distinguish and divide people dropped away and became indifferent, and a field was opened in which all might meet, in which all were truly equal. Thus the two words which controlled my thought and expression at that time became Freedom and Equality. The necessity for space and time to work this out grew so strong that in April of that year I threw up my lecturing employment. Moreover another necessity had come upon me which demanded the latter step – the necessity, namely, for an open air life and manual work. I could not finally argue with this any more than with the other; I had to give in and obey. As it happened, at the time I mentioned I was already living in a little cottage on a farm (at Bradway, near Sheffield) with a friend and his family, and doing farm work in the intervals of my lectures. When I threw up the lecturing I had everything clear before me. I knocked together a sort of wooden sentinel box in the garden, and there, or in the fields and the woods, all that spring and summer and on through the winter, by day and sometimes by night, in sunlight or in rain, in frost and snow, and all sorts of gray and dull weather, I wrote Towards Democracy – or at any rate the first and longer poem that goes by that name.

By the end of 1881 this was finished – though it was worked over and patched a little in the early part of 1882; and I remember feeling then that, defective and halting and incoherent in expression as it was, still if it succeeded in rendering even a half the splendor which inspired it, it would be good, and I need not trouble to write anything more (which, with due allowance for the said “if,” I even now feel was a true and friendly intimation).

The writing of this and its publication (in 1883) got a load off my mind which had been weighing on it for years, and I have never since felt that sense of oppression and anxiety which I had constantly suffered from before – and which I believe, in its different forms, is a common experience in the early part of life.

In this first poem were embodied, with considerable alterations and adaptations, a good number of casual pieces, which I had written (merely under stress of feeling and without any particular sense of proportion) during several preceding years. They now found their interpretation under the steady and clear light of a new mood or state of feeling which previously had only visited me fitfully and with clouded beams. The whole of Towards Democracy – I may say, speaking broadly and including the later pieces – had been written under the domination of this mood. I have tested and measured everything by it; it has been the sun to which all the images and conceptions and thoughts used have been as material objects reflecting its light. And perhaps this connects itself with the fact that it has been so necessary to write in the open air. The more universal feeling which I sought to convey refused itself from me within doors; nor could I at any time or by any means persuade the rhythm or style of expression to render itself up within a room – tending there always to break back into distinct metrical forms; which, however much I admire them in certain authors, and think them myself suitable for certain kinds of work, were not what I wanted and did not express for me the feeling which I sought to express. This fact (of the necessity of the open air) is very curious, and I cannot really explain it. I only know that it is so, quite indubitable and insurmountable. I can feel it at once, the difference, in merely passing through a doorway – but I cannot explain it. Always, especially the sky, seemed to contain for me the key, the inspiration; the sight of it more than anything gave what I wanted (sometimes like a veritable lightning flash coming down from it on to my paper – I a mere witness, but agitated with strange transports).

But if I should be asked – as I have sometimes been asked – What is the exact nature of this mood, of this illuminant splendor, of which you speak? I should have to reply that I can give no answer. The whole of Towards Democracy is an endeavor to give it utterance; any mere single sentence, or direct definition, would be of no use – rather indeed would tend to obscure by limiting. All I can say is that there seems to be a vision possible to man, as from some more universal standpoint, free from the obscurity and localism which specially connect themselves with the passing clouds of desire, fear, and all ordinary thought and emotion; in that sense another and separate faculty; and a vision always means a sense of light, so here is a sense of inward light, unconnected of course with the mortal eye, but bringing to the eye of the mind the impression that it sees, and by means of the medium which washes, as it were, the interior surfaces of all objects and things and persons – how can I express it? And yet this is most defective, for the sense is a sense that one is those objects and things and persons that one perceives (and the whole universe) – a sense in which sight and touch and hearing are all fused in identity. Nor can the matter be understood without realizing that the whole faculty is deeply and intimately rooted in the ultra moral and emotional nature, and beyond the thought region of the brain.

And now with regard to the “I” which occurs so freely in this book. In this and in other such cases the author is naturally liable to a charge of egotism, and I personally do not feel disposed to combat any such charge that may be made. That there are mere egotism and vanity embodied in these pages I do not for a moment doubt, and that so far as they exist they mar the expression and purpose of the book I also do not doubt. But the existence of these things do not affect the real question: What or who in the main is the “I” spoken of?

To this question I must also frankly own that I can give no answer. I do not know. That the word is not used in the dramatic sense is all I can say. The “I” is myself, as well as I could find words to express myself; but what that self is and what its limits may be – and therefore what the self of any other person is and what its limits may be – I cannot tell. I have sometimes thought that perhaps the best work one could do – if one felt at any time enlargements and extensions of one’s ego – was to simply record these as faithfully as might be, leaving others – the scientist and the philosopher – to explain, and feeling confident that what really existed in oneself would be found to exist either consciously or in a latent form in other people. And I will say that I have in these records above all endeavored to be genuine. If I have said “I, Nature,” it was because at the time, at any rate, I felt “I, Nature”; If I have said “I am equal with the lowest,” it was because I could not express what I felt more directly than by those words. The value of such statements can only appear by time; if they are corroborated by others, then they help to form a body of record which may well be worth investigation, analysis and explanation. If they are not so corroborated, then they naturally and properly fall away as mere vagaries of self deception. I have not the least doubt that anything which is really genuine will be corroborated. It seems to me more and more clear that the word “I” has a practically infinite range of meaning – that the ego covers far more ground than we usually suppose. At some points we are intensely individual, at others intensely sympathetic; some of our impressions (as the tickling of a hair) are of the most momentary character, others (as the sense of identity) involve long periods of time. Sometimes we are aware of almost a fusion between our own identity and that of another person. What does all this mean? Are we really separate individuals, or is individuality an illusion, or, again, is it only a part of the ego or soul that is individual and not the whole? Is the ego absolutely one with the body, or is it only a part of the body, or again is the body but a part of the self – one of its organs, so to speak, and not the whole man? Or, lastly, is it perhaps not possible to express the truth by any direct use of these or other terms of ordinary language? Anyhow, what am I?

These are questions which come all down Time, demanding solution – which humanity is constantly endeavoring to find an answer to. I do not pretend to answer them. On the contrary I am sure that not one of the pieces in To wards Democracy has been written with the view of providing an answer. They have simply been written to express feelings which insisted on being expressed. Nevertheless it is possible that some of them – by giving the experiences and affirmations even of one person – may contribute material towards that answer to these and the like questions which will one day most assuredly be given. That there is a region of consciousness removed beyond what we usually call mortality, into which we humans can yet pass, I practically do not doubt; but granting that this is a fact, its explanation still remains for investigation. I have said in these few notes on Towards Democracy nothing about the influence of Whitman – for the same reason that I have said nothing about the influence of the sun or the winds. These influences lie too far back and ramify too complexly to be traced. I met with Wil-liam Rosetti’s little selection from Leaves of Grass in 1868 or 1869, and read that and the original editions continuously for ten years. I never met with any other book (with the exception perhaps of Beethoven’s sonatas) which I could read and re-read as I could this one. I find it difficult to imagine what my life would have been without it. Leaves of Grass “filtered and fiber’d” my blood; but I do not think I ever tried to imitate it or its style. Against the inevitable drift out of the more classic forms of verse into a looser and freer rhythm I fairly fought, contesting the ground (“kicking against the pricks”) inch by inch during a period of seven years in numerous abortive and mongrel creations – till in 1881 I was finally compelled into the form (if such it can be called) of Towards Democracy.

I did not adopt it because it was an approximation to the form of Leaves of Grass. Whatever resemblance there may be between the rhythm, style, thoughts, construction, etc. of the two books, must, I think, be set down to a deeper similarity of emotional atmosphere and intention in the two authors – even though that similarity may have sprung and no doubt largely did spring out of the personal influence of one upon the other.

Anyhow our temperaments, standpoints, antecedents, etc. are so entirely diverse and opposite that, except for a few points, I can hardly imagine that there is much real resemblance to be traced. Whitman’s full-blooded, copious, rank, masculine style must always make him one of the world’s great originals – a perennial fountain of health and strength, moral as well as physical. He has the amplitude of the Earth itself, and can no more be thought away than a mountain can. He often indeed reminds me of a great quarry on a mountain side – the great shafts of sunlight and the shadows, the primitive face of the rock itself, the power and the daring of the men at work upon it, the tumbled blocks and masses, materials for endless buildings and the beautiful tufts of weed or flower on inaccessible ledges – a picture most artistic in its very incoherence and formlessness. Towards Democracy has a milder radiance, as of the moon compared with the sun – allowing you to glimpse the stars behind. Tender and meditative, less resolute and altogether less massive, it has the quality of the fluid and yielding air rather than of the solid and uncompromising earth.

All the above passages from the writings of Edward Carpenter are to be looked upon as utterances of the self conscious mind about Cosmic Consciousness. In Towards Democracy it must be understood that the Cosmic Sense itself speaks; sometimes about itself, sometimes about nature, man, etc., from the point of view of itself. As for instance:

Lo! What mortal eye hath not seen nor ear heard – All sorrow finished – the deep, deep ocean of joy opening within – the surface sparkling.

The myriad formed disclosed, each one and all, all things that are, transfigured – Being filled with joy, hardly touching the ground, reaching cross shaped with outstretched arms to the stars, along of the mountains and the forests, habitation of innumeral creatures, singing, joy unending –

As the sun on a dull morning breaking through the clouds – so from behind the sun another sun, from within the body another body – these shattered falling

Lo! now at last or yet awhile in due time to behold that which ye have so long sought –

O eyes, no wonder you are intent.³

That day – the day of deliverance – shall come to you in what place you know not; it shall come but you know not the time.⁴

In the pulpit while you are preaching the sermon, behold!

Suddenly the ties and bands – in the cradle, in the coffin, cerements and swathing clothes – shall drop off;

In the prison One shall come; and the chains which are stronger than iron, the fetters harder than steel, shall dissolve – you shall go free forever.

In the sick room, amid lifelong suffering and tears and weariness, there shall be a sound of wings – and you shall know that the end is near –

(O loved one arise, come gently with me – be not too eager – lest joy itself should undo you.)

In the field with the plow and the chain harrow; by the side of your horse in the stall;

In the brothel amid indecency and idleness and repairing your and your companions’ dresses;

In the midst of fashionable life, in making and receiving morning calls, in idleness, and arranging knick knacks in your drawing room – even there who knows?

It shall duly, at the appointed hour, come.⁵

There is no peace except where I am, saith the Lord –

Though you have health – that which is called health – yet

without me it is only the fair covering of disease;

Though you have love, yet if I be not between and around the

lovers, is their love only torment and unrest;

Though you have wealth and friends and home – all these

shall come and go – there is nothing stable or secure, which

shall not be taken away. But I alone remain – I do not change,

As space spreads everywhere, and all things move and

change within it, but it moves not nor changes,

So I am the space within the soul, of which the space without

is but the similitude and mental image;

Comest thou to inhabit me, thou hast the entrance to all life

– death shall no longer divide thee from whom thou lovest.

I am the sun that shines upon all creatures from within –

gazest thou upon me thou shalt be filled with joy eternal.

Be not deceived. Soon this outer world shall drop off – thou

shalt slough it away as a man sloughs his mortal body.

Learn even now to spread thy wings in that other world – the

world of equality – to swim in the ocean, my child, of me and

my love.

(Ah! have I not taught thee by the semblance of this outer

world, by its alienations and deaths and mortal sufferings –

all for this?

For joy, ah! joy unutterable!).⁶

3

Summary

a. Illumination occurred at the characteristic age – in the thirty-seventh year

b. And in the characteristic season – in the spring

c. There was a sense of “inward light,” but not strictly the usual experience of subjective light

d. There was the usual sudden intellectual illumination,

e. And the usual sudden moral elevation

f. His life was absolutely governed henceforth by the new light that had dawned upon him – ”it held his feet”

g. He lost, absolutely, upon illumination, the sense of sin

h. He clearly saw himself to be immortal

i. But the best proof of Cosmic Consciousness in his case is his description thereof, which could only be drawn (as he tells us it was) from his own experience.

1.In the Vagasaneyi Samhita Upanishad occurs the following verse: “When, to a man who understands, the self has become all things, what sorrow, what trouble can there be to him who once beheld that unity”?

2.It is important to notice that all through this exposition, as well as in Carpenter’s other writings on the same subject (as whoever has read this book so far will see without further repetition), his testimony as to the phenomena of Cosmic Consciousness constantly runs parallel to, is often even identical with, that of the Suttas, of Böhme, of Yepes, and of other writers of the same class dealing with this subject (especially, perhaps, the author of the Bhagavad Gita), though it does not appear that he has, and probably he has not studied these writers.

3.A suggestion of what the Cosmic Sense shows him.

4.As it came to him so shall it come to others.

5.Almost literally true of Las Casas.

6.The Cosmic Sense speaks.

CHAPTER 11

William Blake

1757–1827

1

2

3

Summary

CHAPTER 12

Honoré de Balzac

1799–1850

1

2

3

SUMMARY OF THE CASE OF BALZAC

CHAPTER 13

Walt Whitman

1819–1892

1

2

3

SUMMARY

CHAPTER 14

Edward Carpenter

1844–1929

1

2

3

Summary