quaintance with the
Desert, so dangerous to enter, so difficult, as Mahmood subsequently
found, to cross, they discovered, that over and above the plain prosaic
danger, this Waste of Sand laid, like a very demon, goblin snares for
the unwary traveller's destruction, in the form of its Mirage. Ignorant
of "optical phenomena," they gazed at this strange illusion, these
phantom trees and water, these mocking semblances of cities that
vanished as you reached them, with astonishment, and even awe. It struck
their imagination, and they gave to it a name scarcely less poetical
than the thing: calling it "_deer-water_," or the "_thirst of the
antelope_."[1] Nor was this all. For the apparition was a kind of
symbol, made as it were expressly for their own phenomenology: it
contained a moral meaning that harmonised precisely with all their
philosophical ideas. What could be a better illustration of that MAYA,
that metaphysical Delusion, in which all souls are wrapped, which leads
them to impute Reality to the Phantasms, the unsubstantial objects of
the senses, and lures them on to moral ruin as they wander in the waste?
And accordingly, we find the poets constantly recurring to this _thirst
of the gazelle_, as an emblem of the treacherous and bewildering
fascination of the fleeting shadows of this lower life (_ihaloka_;) the
beauty that is hollow, the Bubble of the World. And thus, Disappointment
is of the essence of Existence: disappointment, which can only come
about, when hopes and expectations have been founded on a want of
understanding (_awiweka_;) a blindness, born of Desire, that sets and
keeps its unhappy victims hunting, in vain, for what is not to be found.

[Footnote 1: I am told, by a pundit in these matters, that the term is
found at least as early as Patanjali (the _Mahabhashya_;) that is
probably, the latter half of the second century B.C.: and hence, it must
have originated long before.]

Especially, essentially, in love: love, which has its origin in Dream,
its acme in Ecstasy, and its catastrophe in Disillusion: love, which is
life's core and kernel and epitome, the focus and quintessence of
existence. A life that is without it has somehow missed its mark: it is
meaningless and plotless, "a string of casual episodes, like a bad
tragedy." For what, after all, is Love? Who has given an account of it?
Plato's fable, which makes Love the child of Satiety and Want, or
Poverty and Plenty, is a pretty piece of fancy: