life-side then; and one has as little meaning as the other.  As it has been, so it will be, now, henceforth, and for ever, in and out, in and out, without pause or stint, futile, trivial, silly, stale, tedious, monotonous, and vain!’ The long pre-occupation of men with religion, philosophy, and art, seemed to me now as incomprehensible as it was ridiculous.  There was nothing after all to be interested about!  There was simply this!  The dreariness of my mood was indescribable, and corresponded so closely to the scene before me that I found myself wondering which was effect, which cause.  The silence, the tracts of unformed space, the unsubstantial river, the ceaseless vibration along its surface of infinite moving points, all this was a reflex of my thoughts and they of it.  My misery was Intolerable; to escape became my only object; and with this in view I rose and began to move, I knew not whither, along the silent shore.

“As I went, I presently became aware of what looked like high towers standing along the margin of the stream.  I say they looked like towers, but I should rather have said they symbolized them; for they had no specific shape, round or square, nor any definite substance or dimensions.  They suggested rather, if I may say so, the idea of verticality; and otherwise were as blank and void of form or colour as everything else in this strange land.  I made my way towards them along the bank; and when I had come close under the first, I saw that there was a door in it, and written over the door, in a language I cannot now recall, but which then I knew that I had always known, an inscription whose sense was: 

  “‘I am the Eye; come into me and see.’

“Miserable as I was, it was impossible that I should hesitate; I did not know, it is true, what might await me within, but it could not be worse and might well be better than my present plight.  The door was open; I stepped in; and no sooner had I crossed the threshold than I was aware of an experience more extraordinary and delightful than it had ever been my lot to encounter.  I had the sensation of seeing light for the first time!  For hitherto, as I have tried to explain, though it has been necessary to speak in terms of sight, I have done so only by a metaphor, and it was not really by vision that I became acquainted with the scene I have described.  But now I saw, and saw pure light!  And yet not only saw, but, as I thought apprehended it with the other senses, both with those we know and with others of which we have not yet dreamt.  I heard light, I tasted and touched it, it enveloped and embraced me; I swam in it as in an element, wafted and washed and luxuriantly lapped.  Pure light, and nothing else!  No objects, at first!  It was only by degrees, and as the first intoxication subsided, that I began to be aware of anything but the medium itself.  I saw then that I was standing at what seemed to be a window, looking out over the scene I had just left But how changed it was!  The river