Prev | Current Page 148 | Next

Benson, Robert Hugh, 1871-1914

"The Necromancers"

He did not argue or deduce; simply he understood.
And, in a flash, simultaneous with the whole vision, he perceived that
he was behind all the slow processes of the world, by which this is
added to that, and a conclusion drawn; by which light travels, and
sounds resolve themselves and emotions run their course. He had
reached, he thought, the ultimate secret.... It was This that lay
behind everything.
Now it is impossible to set down, except progressively, all this sum
of experiences that occupied for him one interminable instant. Neither
did he remember afterwards the order in which they presented
themselves; for it seemed to him that there was no order; all was
simultaneous.
But he understood plainly by intuition that all was open to him.
Space no longer existed for him; nothing, to his perception, separated
this from that. He was able, he saw, without stirring from his
attitude to see in an instant any place or person towards which he
chose to exercise his attention. It seemed a marvelously simple point,
this--that space was little more than an illusion; that it was, after
all, nothing else but a translation into rather coarse terms of what
may be called "differences.


Pages:
136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160