appearance of things?

"Truly, our eyes are deluded, for eyes of flesh they are.
Therefore they change truth into falsehood, darkness they make
light, and light darkness. Lo, a small chance, a mere accident,
suffices to distort our view of tangible things; how much more do
we stray from the truth with things beyond the reach of our
senses? See the oars in the water. They seem crooked and twisted.
Yet we know them to be straight....

"Verily, man's heart is like the ocean ceaselessly agitated by
the battling winds. As the waves roll forward and backward in
perpetual motion, so our hearts are stirred by never-ending pain
and trouble, and as our emotions sway our will, so our senses
suffer change within us. We see only what we desire to see, hear
only what we long to hear, what our imagination conjures up."
(Act II, scene i.)

This philosophy of externalism and of the impotence of the human mind
threw the poet, believer and devotee of the Kabbalah, into a most
dangerous mysticism. He continued to write for some time: an imitation
of the Psalms; a treatise on logic, _Ha-Higgayon_, not without
value; another treatise on ethics, _Mesilat Yesharim_ ("The Path of
the Righteous"); and a large number of poetic pieces and Kabbalistic
compositions, the greater part of which were never published; and this
enumeration does not exhaust the tale of his literary achievements.
[Footnote: The greater part of Luzzatto's works have never been
published.] Then his powers were used up, the tension of his mind
increased to the last degree; he lost his moral equilibrium. The day
came when he strayed so far afield as to believe himself called to play