enewed effort to _transcend_ the sphere of blind Custom, and
so become Transcendental?

'Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but
of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that
the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True,
it is by this means we live; for man must work as well as wonder: and
herein is Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit.
But she is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish
nurslings, when, in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the
same deception. Am I to view the Stupendous with stupid indifference,
because I have seen it twice, or two-hundred, or two-million times?
There is no reason in Nature or in Art why I should: unless, indeed, I
am a mere Work-Machine, for whom the divine gift of Thought were no
other than the terrestrial gift of Steam is to the Steam-engine; a
power whereby Cotton might be spun, and money and money's worth
realised.

'Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou find the potency of
Names; which indeed are but one kind of such custom-woven,
wonder-hiding Garments. Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work,
and Demonology, we have now named Madness and Diseases of the Nerves.
Seldom reflecting that still the new question comes upon us: What is
Madness, what are Nerves? Ever, as before, does Madness remain a
mysterious-terrific, altogether _infernal_ boiling-up of the Nether
Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which
swims thereon, which we name the Real. Was Luther's Picture of the
Devil less a Reality, whether it were formed within the bodily eye, or
without it? In every the wisest Soul lies a whole world of internal
Madness, an authentic Demon Empire; out of which, indeed, his world of
Wisdom has been creatively built together, and now rests there, as on
its dark foundations does a habitable flowery Earth-rind.

* * * * *

'But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for
many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping
Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from
before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and
yet to blind it,--lie all embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp
and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence,
weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you
endeavour