For none hath trodden or shall ever tread
This hither limbus of the outer dread.
Cloven abrupt, the absolute abyss
Falls sheer beneath us, fathoms fathomless,
And still high o'er us heaves the unclimbed hill,
And the unanswered questions front us still.”
The “thought” escapes us. Somewhere beyond the boundary of the physical flits this elusive, this tantalising ghost. How it is acted upon and how it reacts we know to some extent. But what the nature of its action may be is more than we can determine.
Nay! A moment ago we lightly spoke of passing out of the magic circle into which we have been born, and we forthwith proceeded to talk as if we had in reality escaped from this our prison. But there is no escape for us, of course. No man can jump out of his skin. There undoubtedly arc such things as “waves,” or “undulations,” or “oscillations,” or “vibrations,” or whatever we like to call them. But they are not what we imagine them to be. There is, we may suppose, a four-dimensioned universe of “space-time.” But it is beyond our conception. There is “objective reality,” in a word. But it is no reality to us. Those very expressions, glibly used though they be, are but metaphors—“pretendings” a child would call them—attempts to bring the remote a little nearer to us, to clothe the uncouth in the garments we ourselves wear ; all
