98 HELEN ABBOTT MICHAEL 



a time when knowledge brought doubts of the rights of Church 

 or of system to hold back the craving of the soul for devel- 

 opment; for soul-development, it seems to me, may in some 

 natures where the love for knowledge is strong, be retarded 

 by the withholding of facts or the control through Church 

 laws to the detriment of the free action of the individual. To 

 bind myself entirely to scientific thought and its teachings, 

 to the exclusion of Literature and Art, brought me to a solid 

 blank wall, to a full stop. This state of being was most un- 

 fruitful, as interest, through weak health, nagged in objec- 

 tive studies. The veil of night enveloped me. A severe illness 

 at the end of ten years of soul-suppression the last five, of 

 almost total repression came, and with it a clearing away 

 of the mist and low heavy clouds. A curious vision brought 

 to my soul's eye the realization of God, the Universe, and my 

 place in it. ... After this, clearer conception of objective 

 things came; and the voice, though indistinct at first, that I 

 must encourage the plan of declaring my individuality and 

 throw off the shackles of custom habit, through early educa- 

 tion or conventionality, holding me down became clearer." 



In a letter to the late Dr. Bucke, one of the literary executors 

 of Walt Whitman, she seems to refer more explicitly to this 

 ' ' ecstatic vision. ' ' She says : 



" A long period before last spring had been a season of what 

 might be called spiritual dryness. My spiritual nature was in 

 a condition of tension, from which once liberated it sprang 

 into space with a force likened to an arrow released from a 

 taut bowstring. 



"I will mention here, subsequent minor experiences have 

 been initiated in a similar manner; the soul seemed for a time 

 before mute, as if preparing by a recoil to dart forward with 

 greater velocity. Returning to my experience I am unable 

 to picture, verbally, the exaltation accompanying this libera- 

 tion. My soul was moistened by a dew of bliss and content- 

 ment I had never before felt; a happiness pervaded my be- 

 ing. I seemed to have acquired a new strength. 



"I stood alone in the Universe, powerful to comprehend 

 in its entirety the whole, I knew my place as a personality in 



