162 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



He never went to school, in the ordinary sense of the word; but 

 his education was, notwithstanding, productive in results that could not 

 easily have been surpassed, had he attended in boyhood the regular 

 institutions of learning. 



His early life is described by Dr. Bucke as follows: 



" He was born of good middle-class English stock and grew up 

 almost without education on what was then a backwoods Canadian 

 farm. As a child he assisted in such labour as was within his power. 

 Tended cattle, horses, sheep, pigs; brought in firewood, worked in the 

 hay field, drove oxen and horses, ran errands. His pleasures were as 

 simple as his labours. An occasional visit to a small town, a game 

 oi ball, bathing in the creek that ran through his father's farm, the 

 making and sailing of mimic ships, the search for bird's eggs and 

 flowers in the spring, and for wild fruits in the summer and fall, 

 afl'orded him, with his skates and handsled in the winter, his homely, 

 much-loved recreations. A^Hiile still a young boy he read with keen 

 appreciation Marryat's novels, Scott's poems and novels, and other 

 similar books dealing with outdoor nature and human life." 



The great problems of religion presented themselves to him even 

 as a child : — God, Jesus Christ, immortality, eternal suffering. 



" The boy (even the child) dwelt on these and similar topics far 

 more than anyone would suppose; but probably not more than many 

 other introspective small fellow mortals. He was subject at times 

 to a sort of ecstasy of curiosity and hope; as, on one special occasion^ 

 when about ten years old, he earnestly longed to die, that the secrets 

 of the beyond, if there was any beyond, might be revealed to him; 

 also to agonies of anxiety and terror, ias, for instance, at al)out the 

 same age, he read Eeyn olds' Faust, and being near its end one sunny 

 afternoon he laid it down utterly unable to continue its perusal, and 

 went out into the sunshine to recover from the horror (after more 

 than fifty years he distinctly recalls it) which had seized him." 



At the age of fifteen he read the " Vestiges of Creation," a well- 

 laiown precursor of Darwinism. His inclination to philosophy and 

 science was thus manifested at an early jDcriod of his life. 



]\Iaurice's mother having died, his father married a second time, 

 and in 1S53 he too died. Maurice, then 16 years of age, decided to 

 see the world for himself, and seek his fortunes wherever circumstances 

 Feemed propitious. 



The next five jears were years of varied and remarkable adventure. 

 Crossing Lake Erie, one June day, he lived for three years in the Ohio 

 and Mississippi valleys, working at any employment that ofl'ered. 



