cherries, but his vision of them, his purified emotion towards them. He
has, so to speak, come out from the chorus of actors, of cherry-eaters,
and become a spectator.

I borrow, by his kind permission, a beautiful instance of what he well
calls "Psychical Distance" from the writings of a psychologist.[36]

"Imagine a fog at sea: for most people it is an experience of acute
unpleasantness. Apart from the physical annoyance and remoter forms of
discomfort, such as delays, it is apt to produce feelings of peculiar
anxiety, fears of invisible dangers, strains of watching and listening
for distant and unlocalized signals. The listless movements of the ship
and her warning calls soon tell upon the nerves of the passengers; and
that special, expectant tacit anxiety and nervousness, always associated
with this experience, make a fog the dreaded terror of the sea (all the
more terrifying because of its very silence and gentleness) for the
expert seafarer no less than the ignorant landsman.

"Nevertheless, a fog at sea can be a source of intense relish and
enjoyment. Abstract from the experience of the sea-fog, for the moment,
its danger and practical unpleasantness; ... direct the attention to the
features 'objectively' constituting the phenomena--the veil surrounding
you with an opaqueness as of transparent milk, blurring the outlines of
things and distorting their shapes into weird grotesqueness; observe the
carrying power of the air, producing the impression as if you could
touch some far-off siren by merely putting out your hand and letting it
lose itself behind that white wall; note the curious creamy smoothness
of the water, hypercritically denying as it were, any suggestion of
danger; and, above all, the strange solitude and remoteness from the
world, as it can be found only on the highest mountain tops; and the