ider
succession of items and perspectives presented to the eyes of their
spirit: the practical man's mental eye seeing not only the hills, plain,
and town with details not co-existing in perspective or even in time,
but tram-lines and funiculars in various stages of progress,
dairy-products, pasture, houses, dynamos, waterfalls, offices,
advertisements, cheques, etc., etc., and the scientific man's inner
vision glancing with equal speed from volcanoes to ice-caps and
seas in various stages of geological existence, besides minerals
under the microscope, inhabitants in prehistoric or classic garb, let
alone probably pages of books and interiors of libraries. Moreover,
most, if not all these mental images (blocking out from attention the
really existing landscape) could be called images only by courtesy,
swished over by the mental eye as by an express train, only just
enough seen to know what it was, or perhaps nothing seen at all,
mere words filling up gaps in the chain of thought. So that what
satisfaction there might be in the case was not due to these rapidly
scampered through items, but to the very fact of getting to the next
one, and to a looming, dominating goal, an ultimate desired result, to
wit, pounds, shillings, and pence in the one case, and a coherent
explanation in the other. In both cases equally there was a
kaleidoscopic and cinematographic succession of aspects, but of
aspects of which only one detail perhaps was noticed. Or, more
strictly speaking, there was no interest whatever in aspects as such,
but only in the possibilities of action which these aspects implied;
whether actions future and personally profitable, like building
tram-lines and floating joint-stock companies, or actions mainly past and
quite impersonally interesting, like those of extinct volcanoes or
prehistoric civilisations.

Now let us examine the mental attitude of the third man, whom the
two others had first mistaken for an artist or writer, and then
dismissed as an aesthetic person.

CHAPTER III

ASPECTS _VERSUS_ THINGS

HAVING settled upon a particular point of view as the one he liked
best, he remained there in contemplation of the aspect it afforded
him. Had he descended another twenty minutes, or looked through
powerful glasses, he would have seen the plain below as a
juxtaposition of emerald green, raw Sienna, and pale yellow,
whereas, at the distance where he chose to remain, its colours fused
into indescribably lo