thinking. Philosophical division into I and Not-I. Dogmatic religions or dualistic spiritism. Codified morality. Division into spirit and matter. Positivistic science. The idea of evolution. A mechanical universe. The understanding of cosmic ideas as metaphors. Imperialism, "historical materialism," socialism, etc. Subjection of the personality to society and law. Automatism. Death as the extinction of the personality. Intellect and flashes of self-consciousness.

Fourth form. Beginning of the understanding of four-dimensional space. A new concept of time. The possibility of more prolonged self-consciousness. Flashes of cosmic consciousness. The idea and sometimes the sensation of a living universe. A striving toward the wondrous. Sensation of infinity. Beginning of self-conscious will and moments of cosmic consciousness. Possibility of personal immortality.

Thus the third form includes that "man" whom science studies. But the fourth form is characteristic of the man who is beginning to pass out of the field of observation of positivism and logical understanding.

The table at the end of the book is a summing up of the contents of the entire book, and shows more in detail the correlation of the observed forms of consciousness in the living world and in "man."

EVOLUTION OR CULTURE?

The most interesting and important questions arising with regard to cosmic consciousness may be summed up as follows: 1.—Is the manifestation of cosmic consciousness a problem of the distant future, and of other generations—i. e., must cosmic consciousness appear as the result of an evolutionary process, after centuries and millenniums, and will it then become a common property or a property of the majority? And 2.—Can cosmic consciousness make its appearance now in contemporary man, i. e., at least as the result of a certain education and self-development which will aid the unfolding in him of dominant forces and capabilities, i. e., as the result of a certain culture?

It seems to me that with regard to this, the following ideas are tenable:

EVOLUTION OR CULTURE?

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The possibility of the appearance or development of cosmic consciousness belongs to the few.

But even in the case of those men in whom cosmic consciousness may appear, certain quite definite inner and outer conditions are requisite for its manifestation—a certain culture, the education of those elements congenial to cosmic consciousness, and the elimination of those hostile to it.

The distinguishing signs of those men in whom cosmic consciousness is likely to manifest are not studied at all.

The first of these signs is the constant or frequent sensation that the world is not at all as it appears; that what is most important in it is not at all what is considered most important. The quest of the wondrous, sensed as the only real and true, results from this impression of the unreality of the world and everything related thereto.

High mental culture, high intellectual attainments, are not necessary conditions at all. The example of many saints, who were not intellectual, but who undoubtedly attained cosmic consciousness, shows that cosmic consciousness may develop in purely emotional soil, i. e., in the given case as a result of religious emotion. Cosmic consciousness is also possible of attainment through the emotion attendant upon creation—in painters, musicians and poets. Art in its highest manifestations is a path to cosmic conscious

ness.

But equally in all cases the unfoldment of cosmic consciousness demands a certain culture, a correspondent life. From all the examples cited by Dr. Bucke, and all others that one might add, it would not be possible to select a single case in which cosmic consciousness unfolded in conditions of inner life adverse to it, i. e., in moments of absorption by the outer life, with its struggles, its emotions and interests.

For the manifestation of cosmic consciousness it is necessary that the center of gravity of everything shall lie for man in the inner world, in self-consciousness, and not in the outer world at all.

If we assume that Dr. Bucke himself had been surrounded by entirely different conditions than those in which he found himself at the moment of experiencing cosmic consciousness, then in all probability his illumination would not have come at all.

He spent the evening reading poetry in the company of men of

high intellectual and emotional development, and was returning home full of the thoughts and emotions of the evening.

But if instead of this he had spent the evening playing cards in the society of men whose interests were common and whose conversation was vulgar, or at a political meeting, or had he worked a night shift in a factory at a turning-lathe or written a newspaper editorial in which he himself did not believe and nobody else would believe— then we may declare with certainty that no cosmic consciousness would have appeared in him at all. For it undoubtedly demands a great freedom, and concentration on the inner world.

This conclusion in regard to the necessity for special culture and definitely favorable inner and outer conditions does not necessarily mean that cosmic consciousness is likely to manifest in every man who is put in these conditions. There are men, probably an enormous majority of contemporary humanity, in whom exists no such possibility at all. And in those who do not possess it in some sort already, it cannot be created by any culture whatever, in the same way that no kind or amount of culture will make an animal speak the language of man. The possibility of the manifestation of cosmic consciousness cannot be inoculated artificially. A man is either born with or without it. This possibility can be throttled or developed, but it cannot be created.

Not all can learn to discern the real from the false; but he who can will not receive this gift of discernment free. This is a thing of great labor, a thing of great work, which demands boldness of thought and boldness of feeling.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion I wish to speak of those wonderful words, full of profound mystery from the Apocalypse and the apostle Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, which are placed as the epigraph of this book.

The Apocalyptic angel swears that THERE SHALL BE TIME NO

LONGER.

We know not what the author of the Apocalypse wanted to convey, but we do know those STATES OF SPIRIT when time disappears. We know that in this very thing, in the change of the time-sense, the beginning of the fourth form of consciousness is expressed, the beginning of the transition to COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS.

In this and in phrases similar to it, the profound philosophical content of the evangelical teaching sometimes flashes forth. And the understanding of the fact that the Mystery Of Time is the first mystery to be revealed is the first step toward the development of cosmic consciousness along the intellectual path.

But what did the Apocalyptic sentence mean? Did it mean precisely what we are now able to construe in it—or was it simply a bit of verbal art, a rhetorical figure of speech, the accidental harping of a string which has continued to sound up to our own time, through centuries and millenniums, with such a wonderfully powerful, true and beautiful tone of thought? We know not now, nor shall we ever, but the words are full of splendor, and we may accept them as a symbol of remote and inaccessible truth.

The apostle Paul's words are even more strange, even more startling by reason of their mathematical exactness. (A friend showed me these words in A. Dobroluboff's From the Book Invisible, who saw in them a direct reference to "the fourth measure of space.") Truly, what does this mean?

.. That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the BREADTH and LENGTH and DEPTH and

HEIGHT.

First of all, what does the comprehension of breadth and length and depth and height mean? What is it but the comprehension of space? And we now know that the comprehension of the mysteries of space is the beginning of the higher comprehension.

The apostle says that "being rooted and grounded in love, with all saints" they may comprehend what space is.

Here arises the question: why must love give comprehension? That love leads to sanctity—this is easily understood. Love in the sense that the apostle Paul understands it (Chapter XIII of the First Epistle to the Corinthians) is the highest of all emotions, the synthesis, the blending of all highest emotions. Incontestably, this leads to sanctity. Sanctity: that is the state of the spirit liberated from the duality of man, from his eternal disharmony of soul and body. In the language of the apostle Paul sanctity meant even a little less than in our contemporary language. He called all members of his church saints; sanctity meant to him righteousness, morality, religiosity. We say that all this is merely the path to sanctity. Sanctity is something more—something attained. But it is after all immaterial how we shall understand his words—in his meaning or in ours—sanctity is a superhuman quality. In the region of morality it corresponds to genius in the region of mind. Love is the path to sainthood.

But with sanctity the apostle Paul unites KNOWLEDGE. Saints comprehend what is the breadth and length and depth and height; and he says that all—through love—may comprehend this with them. But may comprehend what, exactly? COMPREHEND SPACE. Because "breadth and length and depth and height" translated into our language of shorter definitions actually means space.

This last is the most strange.

How could the apostle Paul possibly Know that sanctity gives a new understanding of space? We know that it must give it, but From What could he know that?

None of his contemporaries ever united sanctity with the idea of the comprehension of space; and in general there was no discussion at all about "space" at that time, at least among the Greeks and Romans. Only now, after Kant, and after we have had access to the treasures of thought of the Orient, do we understand that the transi tion into a new phase of consciousness is impossible without the expansion of the space-sense.