178 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



the hearer was instantaneous and lasting. Henceforth his life was 

 largely influenced by Whitman's personality and " Leaves of Grass." 

 To this influence may be attributed practically the whole of his literary 

 product. 



In 1868 he procured a copy of 'W. M. Eossettfs Selections. In 

 1870, visiting Dr. Hunt in Montreal, he borrowed the latter's copy 

 of the 1855 edition of the Leaves. In 1872 he obtained a copy of the 

 new edition of 1871. All these volumes as well as Whitman's later 

 publications in prose and verse he studied Avith eagerness. * 



It was during the early spring of 1S72, while in England, that 

 he passed through an experience known in the nomenclature of 

 mysticism as illumination. " He and two friends had spent the 

 evening reading Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning, and especially 

 W^ihitman. They parted at midnight, and he had a long drive in a 

 hiiusom (it was an English city). His mind deeply under the influ- 

 eiice of the ideas, images and emotions called up by the reading and 

 tnlk of the evening, was calm and peaceful. He was in a state of 

 quiet, almost passive enjoyment. All at once, without warning of any 

 kind, he found himself wrapped around as it were by a flame-coloured 

 cloud. For an instant he thought of fire, some sudden conflagration 

 in the great city, the next he knew that the light was within himself. 

 Directly afterwards came upon him a sense of exultation, of immense 

 joyousness, accompanied or immediately followed h}' an intellectual 

 illumination quite impossible to descril)e. hito his brain streamed 

 one momentary lightning-flash of the Brahmic-Splendour which has 

 ever since lightened his life; upon his heart fell one drop of Brahmic 

 Bliss, leaving thenceforward for always an after taste of heaven." 



The effects were similar in some respects to those of '" conversion." 

 " Among other things he did not come to believe, he saw and knew 

 that the Cosmos is not dead matter, but a living Presence, that the 

 soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so built and ordered 

 that without any peradventure all things Avork together for the good 

 of each and all, that the foundation principle -of the world is what 

 we call love, and that the happiness of every one is in the long run 

 absolutely certain. He claims that he learned more within the few 

 seconds during which the illumination lasted than in previous months 

 or even years of study, and that he learned much that no study could 

 ever have taught." 



31. 



To this psychical experience may be traced, on Dr. Bucke's own 

 authority, the theory elaborated by him in his book, " Man's Moral 



