awareness of something
_rising._ The rising of which we are aware is going on in us. But, as
the Reader will remember also, when we are engrossed by
something outside ourselves, as we are engrossed in looking at the
shape (for we can _look_ at only the shape, not the _substance)_ of
that mountain we cease thinking about ourselves, and cease thinking
about ourselves exactly in proportion as we are thinking of the
mountain's shape. What becomes therefore of our awareness of
raising or lifting or _rising?_ What can become of it (so long as it
continues to be there!) except that it coalesces with the shape we are
looking at; in short that the _rising_ continuing to be thought, but no
longer to be thought of with reference to ourselves (since we aren't
thinking of ourselves), is thought of in reference to what we _are_
thinking about, namely the mountain, or rather the mountain's shape,
which is, so to speak, responsible for any thought of rising, since it
obliges us to lift, raise or rise ourselves in order to take stock of
it. It is a case exactly analogous to our transferring the measuring done
by our eye to the line of which we say that it _extends_ from A to B,
when in reality the only _extending_ has been the extending of our
glance. It is a case of what I have called the tendency to merge the
_activities_ of the perceiving subject with the qualities of the
perceived object. Indeed if I insisted so much upon this tendency of
our mind, I did so largely because of its being at the bottom of the
phenomenon of _Empathy,_ as we have just seen it exemplified in
the _mountain which rises._

If this is Empathy, says the Reader (relieved and reassured), am I to
understand that Empathy is nothing beyond _attributing what goes
on in us when we look at a shape to the shape itself?_

I am sorry that the matter is by no means so simple! If what we
attributed to each single shape was only the precise action which we
happen to be accomplishing in the process of looking at it, Empathy
would indeed be a simple business, but it would also be a
comparatively poor one. No. The _rising_ of the mountain is an idea
started by the awareness of our own lifting or raising of our eyes,
head or neck, and it is an idea containing the awareness of that
lifting or raising. But it is far more than the idea merely of that
lifting or raising which we are doing at this particular present
moment and in connexion with this particular mountain. That
pre