That
clear, perpetual outline of face and limb is but an image of ours, under
which we group them--a design in a web, the actual threads of which pass
out beyond it. This at least of flamelike our life has, that it is but
the concurrence, renewed from moment to moment, of forces parting sooner
or later on their ways.
Or if we begin with the inward world of thought and feeling, the
whirlpool is still more rapid, the flame more eager and devouring. There
it is no longer the gradual darkening of the eye and fading of colour
from the wall,--the movement of the shore-side, where the water flows
down indeed, though in apparent rest,--but the race of the mid-stream, a
drift of momentary acts of sight and passion and thought. At first sight
experience seems to bury us under a flood of external objects, pressing
upon us with a sharp and importunate reality, calling us out of ourselves
in a thousand forms of action. But when reflexion begins to act upon
those objects they are dissipated under its influence; the cohesive force
seems suspended like a trick of magic; each object is loosed into a group
of impressions--colour, odour, texture--in the mind of the observer.
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