HELEN ABBOTT MICHAEL 
98 
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, flagged 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 
