used to follow the example of the saints and sages of old, and
mortify or despise the lower self--the manifestation. He had indeed _struck
the balance_; he recognized his dual nature, each in its rightful place and
with its rightful possessions, and refused to abase either "I am" to the
other. He literally "rendered unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," by
claiming for the flesh the purity and the cleanliness of God's handiwork.

In Whitman, too, we find an almost perfect realization of immortality and
of blissfulness of life and the complete harmony and unity of his soul with
_all there is_. Following closely upon the experience that seems to have
been the most vivid of the many instances of illumination which he enjoyed
throughout a long life, he wrote the following lines, indicative of the
emotions immediately associated with the influx of illumination:

"Swiftly arose and spread around me, the peace and joy and knowledge that
pass all the art and argument of earth;
And I know that the hand of God is the elder hand of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my
sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of creation is love."

In lines written in 1860, about seven years after the first vivid instance
of the experience of illumination which afterward became oft-recurrent,
Whitman speaks of what he calls "Perfections," and from what he writes we
may assume that he referred to those possessing cosmic consciousness, and
the practical impossibility of describing this peculiarity and accounting
for the alteration it makes in character and outlook.

Says Whitman:

"Only themselves understand themselves, and the like of themselves,
As souls only understand souls."

It has been pointed out that Whitman more perfectly illustrates the type of
the coming man--the cosmic conscious race, because Whitman's illumination
seems to have come without the terrible agonies of doubt and prayer and
mortification of the flesh, which characterize so many of those saints and
sages of whom we read in sacred literature. But it must not be inferred
from this that Whitman's life was devoid of suffering.

A biographer says of him:

"He has loved the earth, sun, animals; despised riches, given alms to every
one that asked; stood up for the stupid and crazy; devoted his income and
labor to others; according to the comm