"
"But if you cannot distinguish, where is the good?" Cosmo ventured
to ask.
"Nowhere for deductive certainty. Nor, if the things themselves are
not worth remembering, or worthy of influencing us, is there any
good in enquiring concerning them? Shall I mind a thing that is not
worth minding, because it came to me in a dream, or was told me by
a ghost? It is the quality of a thing, not how it arrived, that is
the point. But true things are often mingled with things grotesque.
For aught I know, at one and the same time, a spirit may be taking
advantage of the door set ajar by sleep, to whisper a message of
love or repentance, and the troubled brain or heart or stomach may
be sending forth fumes that cloud the vision, and cause evil echoes
to mingle with the hearing. When you look at any bright thing for a
time, and then close your eyes, you still see the shape of it, but
in different colours. This figure has come to you from the outside
world, but the brain has altered it. Even the shape itself is
reproduced with but partial accuracy: some imperfection in the
recipient sense, or in the receptacle, sends imperfection into the
presentation. In a way something similar may our contact with the
dwellers beyond fare in our dreams. My unknown mother may be
talking to me in my sleep, and up rises some responsive but stupid
dream-cloud of my own, and mingles with and ruins the descended
grace. But it is well to remind you again that the things around us
are just as full of marvel as those into which you are so anxious
to look.
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