is possible to go beyond even the most advanced of the
modern physicists who hold that force alone exists, that matter is but a
disguise, a shadow and delusion; for we may add that force itself--that
which we call force or energy--is but a semblance and shadow of the
universal soul.

The change in the weather was not sudden; the furious winds dropped
gradually; the clouds floated higher in the heavens, and were of a
lighter grey; there were wider breaks in them, showing the lucid blue
beyond; and the sea grew quieter. It had raved and roared too long,
beating against the iron walls that held it back, and was now spent
and fallen into an uneasy sleep, but still moved uneasily and moaned
a little. Then all at once summer returned, coming like a thief in the
night, for when it was morning the sun rose in splendour and power in
a sky without a cloud on its vast azure expanse, on a calm sea with
no motion but that scarcely perceptible rise and fall as of one that
sleeps. As the sun rose higher the air grew warmer until it was full
summer heat, but although a "visible heat," it was never oppressive; for
all that day we were abroad, and as the tide ebbed a new country that
was neither earth nor sea was disclosed, an infinite expanse of pale
yellow sand stretching away on either side, and further and further out
until it mingled and melted into the sparkling water and faintly seen
line of foam on the horizon. And over all--the distant sea, the ridge
of low dunes marking where the earth ended and the flat, yellow expanse
between--there brooded a soft bluish silvery haze. A haze that blotted
nothing out, but blended and interfused them all until earth and air
and sea and sands were scarcely distinguishable. The effect, delicate,
mysterious, unearthly, cannot be described.

Ethereal gauze...
Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea,
Last conquest of the eye...

Sun dust,
Aerial surf upon the shores of earth,
Ethereal estuary, frith of light....
Bird of the sun, transparent winged.

Do we not see that words fail as pigments do--that the effect is too
coarse, since in describing it we put it before the mental eye as
something distinctly visible, a thing of itself and separate. But it is
not so in nature; the effect is of something almost invisible and is
yet a part of all and makes all things--sky and sea