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The great Apostle Paul was (using the word in its medical sense) an admirable "case" of cosmic consciousness. His initial earnestness of character, his instantaneous illumination, his age at the time-probably a little over thirty-the subjective light, the voice which spoke to him, his consternation, the resulting intellectual illumination and moral exaltation-all these typical symptoms make the true nature of his "conversion" as plain as would be a case of typhoid fever with frontal headache, diarrhoea, ochre stools, characteristic temperature and rose spots. But still more absolute proof of Paul's entry into cosmic consciousness is his own account of his subsequent habitual feelings and convictions as given us by himself in those letters of his which have come down to us. He says for instance in second Corinthians: "I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ fourteen years ago, (whether in the body or out of the body I know not) such a one caught up even to the third heaven-into paradiseand heard unspeakable words." Again in Galatians: "For I make known to you brethren as touching the gospel which was preached by me that it is not after man. For neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through the revelation of Jesus Christ." Here Paul uses almost exactly the same words as above quoted from Guatama. There is only time to give one more short quotation from Paul, but all his writings may be read with very great advantage from the present point of view. He says in Romans: "There is therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh: but they that are after the spirit, the things of the spirit. For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the spirit is life and peace." That is to say: In cosmic consciousness there is no sense of sin or of death. The merely self-conscious man cannot by "keeping the law" or in any other way destroy either sin or the sense of sin, but "Christ" that is the cosmic sense can and does accomplish both.

In the case of Mohammed there was the same initial earnestness of character. The same instantaneous illumination. His age was thirty-nine. There was the intense subjective light. The voice which spoke to him. The same extreme consternation. The same intellectual illumination. The same moral exaltation.

In the case of Dante there was the same initial earnestness of

character combined with unusual spirituality. The same instantaneous illumination. He was of the typical age at the time, namely 35 years. There was the intense subjective light. The voice that is the duplex personality that belongs to the condition, spoke to him. There was the same consternation followed immediately by the same intellectual illumination and the same moral exaltation.

The evidence of Dante's illumination in his great work the Divine Comedy is overwhelming, but I have only space here for one short quotation, namely, the passage in which he describes the on-coming of the cosmic sense. He says: "Beatrice was standing with her eyes wholly fixed on the eternal wheels and on her I fixed my eyes from thereabove removed. Looking at her I inwardly became such as Glaucus became on tasting of the herb which made him consort in the sea of the other gods. Transhumanization cannot be signified in words: therefore let the example suffice for him to whom grace reserves experience. If I was only what of me thou didst last create, O Love that governest the heavens, Thou knowest who with thy light didst lift me."

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Beatrice (i. e., making blessed ") is Dante's name for cosmic consciousness. He says that when his illumination took place he fixed his eyes on the cosmic sense and the eyes of the cosmic sense were wholly fixed on the eternal wheels (in the language of Guatama "on the chain of causation"-both expressions meaning the same thing-i. e., the life and order of the universe). Then he says: looking upon this new sense that had come to me I became transhumanized into a god. He says that of course this change that was wrought in him cannot be expressed in words and that no one will be able to understand it until he himself experiences it, and like Paul he does not know whether at that time he was in heaven or upon the earth, whether he continued during the experience in the body or whether for a time he left the body.

All these men recognize clearly three states or stages of mind, namely: Simple consciousness; self-consciousness; cosmic consciousness. And that there exists as clear and broad a distinction between the two last as between the two first. Thus Balzac says: "The world of ideas divides itself into three spheres,-that of instinct (simple consciousness): that of abstractions (self-consciousness) and that of specialism (cosmic consciousness). As an instinctive, man is below the level: as an abstractive, he attains to

it as a specialist, he rises above it: specialism opens to man his course: the infinite dawns upon him, he catches glimpses of his destiny."

Balzac proceeds as follows. "There exist three worlds-the natural world, the spiritual world, the divine world. Humanity moves hither and thither in the natural world which is fixed neither in its essence nor in its properties. The spiritual world is fixed in its essence and variable in its properties. The divine world is fixed in properties and in its essence." In other words: Men who live almost entirely in simple consciousness float on the stream of time as do the animals-drift with the seasons, the food supply, etc., as a leaf drifts on a current not self moved or self balanced but moved by outer influences and balanced by the natural forces as are the animals and the trees. The fully self-conscious man takes stock of himself and is (so to say) self-centred. He feels that he is a fixed point-he judges all things with reference to this point. But outside of himself, we know, there is nothing fixed for him, he trusts what he calls God and he does not trust, he is a deist, an atheist, a Christian, a Buddhist. He believes in science but his science is constantly changing and will rarely tell him in any case anything worth knowing. He is fixed, then, on one point and moves freely on that. The man with cosmic consciousness being conscious of himself and conscious of the cosmos, its meaning and drift, is fixed both without and within-in Balzac's words: "In his essence and in his properties."

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To sum up: The creature with simple consciousness only is a straw floating on a tide, moving freely every way with every influence. The self-conscious man is a needle pivoted by its centre— fixed in one point but oscillating and revolving freely on that with every influence. The man with cosmic consciousness is the same needle magnetized. It is still fixed by its centre but besides that it points steadily to the north-it has found something real and permanent outside of itself toward which it cannot but steadily look.

One word in conclusion: I have been searching three years for cases of cosmic conciousness and have so far found twenty-three. Several of these are cotemporary, minor cases, such as may have occurred in any age and no record of them remain. I have however found thirteen all of them so great that they must live. Of these thirteen cases, five appeared in the thirteen hundred years extending from Guatama to Mohammed-and include, of course,

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both of these men.

But including Dante and from him to the present time (a space of barely six hundred years) there have lived no less than eight cases-and these (so far as I can see) just as great as the five cases of the earlier thirteen hundred years. But eight cases in six hundred years is more than three and a half times as great a frequency as five cases in thirteen hundred years. I do not pretend to say that cases of cosmic consciousness are becoming more frequent in exactly this ratio. There must have occurred a large number of cases in the last twenty-five hundred years that I know nothing about and I suppose no man could say positively how many lived in any given epoch. But it seems to me certain that these men are more numerous in the modern than they were in the ancient world, and this fact taken in connection with the general theory of psychic evolution propounded by the best writers on the subject such as Darwin and Romanes points to the conclusion that just as, long ago, self-consciousness appeared in the best specimens of our ancestral race in the prime of life and gradually became more and more universal and appeared earlier and earlier until as we see now it has become almost universal and appears at the average age of about three years-so will cosmic consciousness become more and more universal and appear earlier in the individual life until practically the whole race will possess this faculty. I say the whole race, but as a matter of fact a cosmic conscious race will not be the race which exists to-day any more than the present is the same race which existed prior to the evolution of self-consciousness. The simple truth is that a new race is being born from us, and this new race will in the near future possess the earth.

IMPORTANCE OF LIBERAL ADMINISTRATION OF

FOOD IN THE CURABLE INSANE.

BY ELI E. JOSSELYN, M. D.,
Philadelphia, Pa.

It is not proposed to discuss the propriety of forcibly feeding patients who from active delusions abstain from taking nourishment until life is in jeopardy or the attending circumstances which make such procedure necessary, but rather to consider the effect of an apparently excessive quantity of food in recoverable cases of mental disorder and the intimate relation which an improved physical condition bears to the permanent restoration of sound mental health.

It is hardly probable that the beginning of mental derangement often depends upon permanent pathological changes within the cranium save in paresis and senile decay, and doubt may be well entertained if the existence of insanity for some time can generally be made out without a knowledge of the mental symptoms. The absence of any constant abnormal condition in a sufficient number of cases and the frequency of recovery of recent cases under judicious medical care and treatment are enough to justify the assumption that degenerative changes of the intellectual centres. are not the primary difficulty but secondary to unnatural conditions elsewhere.

In the incipient stage of a large majority of cases of threatened mental aberration there is a decrease in bodily weight which becomes more and more apparent if the disease progresses. The crisis of alarming cases of insanity is not infrequently accompanied by extreme emaciation. This loss of flesh is more constant than any other prognostic. Where there is a hereditary taint and where there have been one or more attacks of insanity, the continued or progressive loss of weight, however gradual, is significant of approaching mental disorder. In these cases its importance can hardly be over-estimated and should never be regarded lightly by the patient, friends or medical attendant. Whether in developed or incipient insanity, no hope of permanent restoration can be reasonably entertained without first restoring the physical

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