I perceive in the common train of my thoughts a natural and
uninterrupted sequence, each implying the next, or, if interruption
occurs, it is occasioned by a new object being presented to my
_senses_. But a steep, and sudden, and by these means unaccountable
transition, is that from a comparatively narrow and partial, what
is called common sense view of things, to an infinitely expanded
and liberating one, from seeing things as men describe them, to
seeing them as men cannot describe them. This implies a sense
which is not common, but rare in the wisest man's experience;
which is sensible or sentient of more than common.
In what enclosures does the astronomer loiter! His skies are
shoal, and imagination, like a thirsty traveller, pants to be
through their desert. The roving mind impatiently bursts the
fetters of astronomical orbits, like cobwebs in a corner of its
universe, and launches itself to where distance fails to follow,
and law, such as science has discovered, grows weak and weary.
The mind knows a distance and a space of which all those sums
combined do not make a unit of measure,--the interval between
that which _appears_, and that which _is_.
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