mysterious Presence with another.

"Who am I; what is this ME? A Voice, a Motion, an Appearance;--some
embodied, visualized Idea in the Eternal Mind? _Cogito, ergo sum_. Alas,
poor Cogitator, this takes us but a little way. Sure enough, I am; and
lately was not: but Whence? How? Whereto? The answer lies around,
written in all colors and motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and
wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious Nature: but where
is the cunning eye and ear to whom that God-written Apocalypse will yield
articulate meaning? We sit as in a boundless Phantasmagoria and
Dream-grotto; boundless, for the faintest star, the remotest century, lies
not even nearer the verge thereof: sounds and many-colored visions flit
round our sense; but Him, the Unslumbering, whose work both Dream and
Dreamer are, we see not; except in rare half-waking moments, suspect not.
Creation, says one, lies before us, like a glorious Rainbow; but the Sun
that made it lies behind us, hidden from us. Then, in that strange Dream,
how we clutch at shadows as if they were substances; and sleep deepest
while fancying ourselves most awake! Which of your Philosophical Systems
is other than a dream-theorem; a net quotient, confidently given out, where
divisor and dividend are both unknown? What are all your national Wars,
with their Moscow Retreats, and sanguinary hate-filled Revolutions, but the
Somnambulism of uneasy Sleepers? This Dreaming, this Somnambulism is what
we on Earth call Life; wherein the most indeed undoubtingly wander, as if
they knew right hand from left; yet they only are wise who know that they
know nothing.

"Pity that all Metaphysics had hitherto proved so inexpressibly
unproductive! The secret of Man's Being is still like the Sphinx's secret:
a riddle that he cannot rede; and for ignorance of which he suffers death,
the worst death, a spiritual. What are your Axioms, and Categories, and