methodical and self-forced assent to certain principles or
presuppositions "one could not do without." Were there, as the
expression "one could not do without" seemed to hint, beliefs,
without which life itself must be almost impossible, principles which
had their sufficient ground of evidence in that very fact?
Experience certainly taught that, as regarding the sensible world he
could attend or not, almost at will, to this or that colour, this or
that train of sounds, in the whole tumultuous concourse of colour and
sound, so it was also, for the well-trained intelligence, in regard
to that hum of voices which besiege the inward no less than the
outward ear. Might it be not otherwise with those various and
competing hypotheses, the permissible hypotheses, which, [65] in that
open field for hypothesis--one's own actual ignorance of the origin
and tendency of our being--present themselves so importunately, some
of them with so emphatic a reiteration, through all the mental
changes of successive ages? Might the will itself be an organ of
knowledge, of vision?

On this day truly no mysterious light, no irresistibly leading hand
from afar reached him; only the peculiarly tranquil influence of its
first hour increased steadily upon him, in a manner with which, as he
conceived, the aspects of the place he was then visiting had
something to do. The air there, air supposed to possess the singular
property of restoring the whiteness of ivory, was pure and thin. An
even veil of lawn-like white cloud had now drawn over the sky; and
under its broad, shadowless light every hue and tone of time came out
upon the yellow old temples, the elegant pillared circle of the
shrine of the patronal Sibyl, the houses seemingly of a piece with
the ancient fundamental rock. Some half-conscious motive of poetic
grace would appear to have determined their grouping; in part