“I know,” I said, “that you think so, and so does Mr. Kipling, and all the train of violent and bloody bards who follow the camp of the modern army of progress.  I have no quarrel with you or with them; you may very well be right in your somewhat savage worship of activity.  I am only trying to ascertain the conditions of your being right, and I seem to find it in personal immortality.”

“No,” he persisted.  “We are right without condition, right absolutely and beyond all argument.  Pursue Good is the one ultimate law; whether or no it can be attained is a minor matter; and if to inquire into the conditions of its attainment is only to weaken us in the pursuit, then I say the inquiry is wrong, and ought to be discouraged.”

“Well” I said, “I will not dispute with you further.  Whether you are right or wrong I cannot but admire your strenuous belief in Good and in our obligation to pursue it.  And that, after all, was my main point.  On the other question about what Good is and whether it is attainable, I could hardly wish to make converts, so conscious am I that I have infinitely more to learn than to teach.  Only, that there is really something to learn, of that I am profoundly convinced.  Perhaps even Audubon will agree with me there?”

“I don’t know that I do,” he replied, “and anyhow it doesn’t seem to me to make much difference.  Whatever we may think about Good, that doesn’t affect the nature of Reality—­and Reality, I believe, is bad!”

“Ah, Reality!” I rejoined, “but what is Reality?  Is it just what we see and touch and handle?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“That is a sober view, and one which I have constantly tried to impress upon myself.  Sometimes, even, I think I have succeeded, under the combined stress of logic and experience.  But there comes an unguarded moment, some evening in summer, like this, when I am walking, perhaps, alone in a solitary wood, or in a meadow beside a quiet stream; and suddenly all my work is undone, and I am overwhelmed by a direct apprehension, or what seems at least for the moment to be such, that everything I hear and see and touch is mere illusion after all, and behind it lies the true Reality, if only I could find the way to seize it.  It is due, I suppose, to some native and ineradicable strain of mysticism; or perhaps, as I sometimes think, to the memory of a strange experience which I once underwent and have never been able to forget”

“What was that?”

“It will not be very easy, I fear, to describe, but perhaps it may be worth while to make the attempt, for it bears, more or less, on the subject of our conversation.  Once then, you must know, and once only, a good many years ago now, I was put under the influence of anaesthetics; and during the time I was unconscious, or rather, conscious in a new way, I had a very curious dream, if dream it were, which has never ceased to affect my thoughts and my life.  It was as follows: