Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/218

206 every step the proofs of the all-pervading presence of the Wisdom of God, the Creator, whose invisible hand directs and guides the life of the smallest living thing.

During these months in the forest I observed in myself unquestionable changes, the resurrection in my soul of primitive mysticism and of something more, something disconcerting and almost fear-inspiring for a civilized man trained in the principles of modern science, though it was beautiful at the same time—the return of telepathic sensibilities, which have been almost completely lost by men of to-day but which are a very definite element in the equipment of the wild beings around us.

In the prison cell at Harbin in 1906 I came to know that other solitude of isolation in the very midst of one's own kind. Having as my companion the silent Nowakowski, immersed in the study of Holy Writ, and afterwards living quite alone in the cell, I felt other spiritual changes coming over me. I acquired the ability to understand the whole spiritual process preceding a crystallized thought. As I read the works of Morozoff and of other scholars and writers, I saw before me these men in person and the surroundings in which they created their work; sensed the psychic evolutions of their minds and souls; felt and thought as they had, straining toward the same goals they had sought to reach, travelling with them their roads of logic, tortured by their despondencies and kindled by their interior spiritual fires.

Some years later I had the opportunity to review these experiences, when talking with Morozoff and also with the well-known Belgian poet, Verhaeren, whose works gave me during my prison days many unforgotten moments. I had then the impression that I had unwittingly seen the future fate of these persons, whose souls had burned before my eyes, so that I could study them