THE CRITICAL EXPERIENCE

by night, in sunlight or in non, by frost and snow and ail sorts of grey and dull weather, I wrote T&wardê Démocracy — or at any rate the first and longer poem that goes by that name.^

Precisely what was this mood ? Itisnecessary to inquire somewhat closely into this, because it is the critical expérience apart from which Towards Démocracy would not hâve come into existence, and apart from which it cannot, either as a whole or in its parts, be understood. Just as the whole teaching of St. Paul is centred round/ and dérives from, the expérience which befell him on the road to Damascus, so the whole of Carpenter's teaching is little more than an intellectual and literary expression of what befell him at Bradway. He himself when pressed describéd it as

the disclosure within of a région transcending in some S0nse the ordinary bounds of personality, in the light of which région my own idiosyncrasies of character — defects, accomplishments» limitations, or what not — appeared of no importance whatev^, an absolute freedom from mortality, accompanied by an indescribable calm and joy.8

In a phrase, reminiscent of Carlyle, he speaks of it as a Splendour of which, like Sheba's glory, the half could not be told. It was an illumination, coming upon him at times with côruscating flashes of Imaginative insight, It was a " central

» T, D,, p. 513. • Ihid., p. 512,

COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS 7

glow " experienced chiefly as feèUng, a Und of cosmic emotionalism, but ccmtmually ■rînriiiafîf^g up into the inteUectual consdousness in sparks of thought some of which it was possible for him to capture and retain in q;)eech-fonns. It was the up-rush of a f ountain of living waters, normally latent in man, which hère and there, bccause of some spécial local condition, is able to breach the barrier of separated individuality. . . .

Let us imagine that individuals are like enclosed pools or small seas, lying close to the Océan, but separated therefrom by natural barriers, some of which are thicker and stouter than others, some of which may indeed be strengthwed by artificial means. The barrier looldng oceanward» represents the f orm of our individuality as opposed to the Universal. It is at the barrier that our consdousness of separateness within and from the great Whole of life, our consdousness of the not-me, anses. This is the usual condition. The enclosed waters, which are, indeed, of the same " stufE " as the Océan, know nothing thereof, save the Sound of its endless motibn, perchance some tremor from its constant tidal beating, and maybe now and again in stress of spiritual weather a dash of its mighty spray. But hère (let us say) is a barrier which is slighter than others, looser in structure, more penetrable, wom thin somehow ; and through this, one day — " Ye know not the day nor the hour when 'the Son of Man cometh" — ^the Océan pours triumphantly in,