s.
Besides which, in thus dealing with the mountain as a _thing,_ we
are presented with a series of totally different aspects or shapes,
some of which suggest empathic activities totally different from that
of rising. And the mountain in question, seen from one double its
height, will suggest the empathic activity of _spreading itself out._
Moreover practical life hustles us into a succession of more and
more summary perceptions; we do not actually see more than is
necessary for the bare recognition of whatever we are dealing with
and the adjustment of our actions not so much to what it already is,
as to what it is likely to become. And this which is true of seeing
with the bodily eye, is even more so of seeing, or rather _not_ seeing
but _recognising,_ with the eye of the spirit. The practical man on
the hill, and his scientific companion, (who is merely, so to speak, a
man _unpractically_ concerned with practical causes and changes)
do not thoroughly see the shapes of the landscape before them; and
still less do they see the precise shape of the funiculars, tramways,
offices, cheques, volcanoes, ice-caps and prehistoric inhabitants of
their thoughts. There is not much chance of Empathy and Empathy's
pleasures and pains in their lightning-speed, touch-and-go visions!

But now let us put ourselves in the place of their aesthetically
contemplative fellow-traveller. And, for simplicity's sake, let us
imagine him contemplating more especially one shape in that
landscape, the shape of that distant mountain, the one whose
"rising"--came to an end as soon as we set to climbing it. The
mountain is so far off that its detail is entirely lost; all we can see is
a narrow and pointed cone, perhaps a little _toppling_ to one side, of
uniform hyacinth blue _detaching_ itself from the clear evening sky,
into which, from the paler misty blue of the plain, it _rises,_ a mere
bodiless shape. It _rises._ There is at present no doubt about its
_rising._ It rises and keeps on rising, never stopping unless _we_
stop looking at it. It rises and never _has_ risen. Its drama of two
lines _striving_ (one with more suddenness of energy and purpose
than the other) to _arrive_ at a particular imaginary point in the sky,
_arresting_ each other's _progress_ as they _meet_ in their
_endeavour,_ this simplest empathic action of an irregular and by no
means rectilinear triangle, goes on repeating itself, like the parabola
of a steadily spirting founta