January 2

THE house in which she lives is for the orderly soul which does not live on blindly before her, but is ever, out of her passing experiences, building and adorning the parts of a many-roomed abode for herself, only an expansion of the body; as the body is but an expansion of the soul. For such an orderly soul, as she lives onward, all sorts of delicate affinities establish themselves, between her and the doors and passage-ways, the lights and shadows of her outward abode, until she seems incorporate into it—till at last, in the entire expressiveness of what is outward, there is for her, to speak properly, no longer any distinction between outward and inward at all; and the light which creeps at a particular hour on a wall, the scent of flowers in the air at a particular window, become to her, not so much apprehended objects, as themselves powers of apprehension, and doorways to things beyond—seeds or rudiments of new faculties, by which she, dimly yet surely, apprehends a matter lying beyond her actually attained capacity of sense and spirit.

WALTER PATER, Marius the Epicurean

AND A PRESENCE