Ultimate Questions by Lafcadio Hearn — Read

A memory of long ago. I am walking upon a granite pavement that rings like iron, between buildings of granite bathed in the light of a cloudless noon. Shadows are short and sharp: there is no stir in the hot bright air; and the sound of my footsteps, strangely loud, is the only sound in the street. Suddenly an odd feeling comes to me, with a sort of tingling shock, -- a feeling, or suspicion, of universal illusion. The pavement, the bulks of hewn stone, the iron rails, and all things visible, are dreams! Light, color, form, weight, solidity -- all sensed existences -- are but phantoms of being, manifestations only of one infinite ghostliness for which the language of man has not any word.

This experience had been produced by study of the first volume of the Synthetic Philosophy, which an American friend had taught me how to read. I did not find it easy reading; partly because I am a slow thinker, but chiefly because my mind had never been trained to sustained effort in such directions. To learn the "First Principles" occupied me many months: no other volume of the series gave me equal trouble. I would read one section at a time, -- rarely two, -- never venturing upon a fresh section until I thought that I had made sure of the preceding. Very cautious and slow my progress was, like that of a man mounting, for the first time, a long series of ladders in darkness. Reaching the light at last, I caught a sudden new vision of things, -- a momentary perception of the illusion of surfaces, -- and from that time the world never again appeared to me quite the same as it had appeared before.