s a future life,--that would be a small
matter--but a pronounced _consciousness_ that the life now being lived is
eternal, death being seen as a trivial incident which does not affect its
continuity.

"Further, there is annihilation of the sense of sin, and an intellectual
competency, not simply surpassing the old plane, but on an entirely new and
higher plane. * * * The cosmic conscious race will not be the race that
exists to-day, any more than the present is the same race that existed
prior to the evolution of self-consciousness. A new race is being born from
us, and this new race will in the near future, possess the earth."

Dr. Bucke later published an article in a current magazine, illustrating
the illumination of his friend Walt Whitman, and supplemented with an
account of his own experience. We quote briefly from Dr. Bucke's account of
his own experience:

"I had spent the evening in a great city with some friends reading and
discussing poetry and philosophy. We had occupied ourselves with
Wordsworth, Shelley, Browning, and especially Whitman. We parted at
midnight. I had a long drive in a hansom to my lodgings. My mind, deeply
under the influence of the ideas, images and emotions called up by the
reading and talk, was calm and peaceful. I was in a state of quiet, almost
passive enjoyment, not actually thinking, but letting ideas, images and
emotions flow of themselves, as it were, through my mind. All at once,
without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped in a flame-colored
cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, an immense conflagration somewhere
close by in that great city. The next moment I knew that the fire was
within myself."

While Dr. Bucke is unquestionably right in his estimate of the fact that "a
new race is being born," as he expresses it, there can scarcely be any
question of individual age, in which the new consciousness may be expected.
Physical maturity can have nothing whatever to do with the matter, since
the acquisition of supra-consciousness is a matter of the maturity of the
soul. This completement of the cycle of the soul's pilgrimage and service,
may come at any age, as far as the physical body is concerned. Indeed,
science records no definite age at which even physical maturity is
invariably reached, although there is an approximate age.

A case recently widely commented upon was that of a child of six years who
showed every symptom of senility or old age, which could hardly b