I
saw clearly that before me there lay nothing but destruction. With all my
might I endeavored to escape from this life. And suddenly I, a happy man,
began to hide my bootlaces that I might not hang myself between the
wardrobes in my room when undressing at night; and ceased to take a gun
with me out shooting, so as to avoid temptation by these two means of
freeing myself from this life. * * *

"I lived in this way (that is to say, in communion with the people) for two
years; and a change took place in me. What befell me was that the life of
our class--the wealthy and cultured--not only became repulsive to me, but
lost all significance. All our actions, our judgments, science, and art
itself, appeared to me in a new light. I realized that it was all
self-indulgence, and that it was useless to look for any meaning in it. I
hated myself and acknowledged the truth. Now it had all become clear to
me."

From this time on, Tolstoi's life was that of one who had entered into
cosmic consciousness, as we note the effects in others. Desire for solitude
a taste for the simple, natural things of life, possessed him. The
primitive peasants and their coarse but wholesome food appealed to him. It
was not a penance that Tolstoi imposed upon himself, that caused him to
abandon the life of a country gentleman for that of a hut in the woods.
The penance would come to such a one from enforced living in the glare of
the world's artificialities. Cosmic consciousness bestows above all things
a taste for simplicity; it restores the normal condition of mankind, the
intimacy with nature and the feeling of kinship with nature-children.

It is not our purpose here to enter into any detailed biography of these
instances of cosmic consciousness. The point we wish to make is the fact
that the birth of this new consciousness frequently comes through much
mental travail and agonies of doubt, speculation and questioning; but that
it is worth the price paid, however seemingly great, there can be no
possible distrust.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Balzac should head this chapter, if we were considering these philosophers
in chronological order, as Balzac was born in 1799, preceding Emerson by a
matter of four years. But Balzac's peculiar temperament, might almost be
classed as a religious rather than strictly intellectual example of cosmic
consciousness. Of the latter phase or expression of this "new" sense, as
present-day writers frequently call it, Emerson