se from this life the being I had known scarce a month had just before
so appalled me, I should thus complacently sit down to prove that,
according to the laws of the nature which my passion obeyed, I must
lose for eternity the blessing I now hoped I had won to my life! But how
distinctly dissimilar is man in his conduct from man in his systems!
See the poet reclined under forest boughs, conning odes to his mistress;
follow him out into the world; no mistress ever lived for him there!(2)
See the hard man of science, so austere in his passionless problems;
follow him now where the brain rests from its toil, where the heart
finds its Sabbath--what child is so tender, so yielding, and soft?

But I had proved to my own satisfaction that poet and sage are dust,
and no more, when the pulse ceases to beat. And on that consolatory
conclusion my pen stopped.

Suddenly, beside me I distinctly heard a sigh,--a compassionate,
mournful sigh. The sound was unmistakable. I started from my seat,
looked round, amazed to discover no one,--no living thing! The windows
were closed, the night was still. That sigh was not the wail of the
wind. But there, in the darker angle of the room, what was that? A
silvery whiteness, vaguely shaped as a human form, receding, fading,
gone! Why, I know not--for no face was visible, no form, if form it
were, more distinct than the colourless outline,--why, I know not, but
I cried aloud, "Lilian! Lilian!" My voice came strangely back to my own
ear; I paused, then smiled and blushed at my folly. "So I, too, have
learned what is superstition," I muttered to myself. "And here is an
anecdote at my own expense (as Muller frankly tells us anecdotes of the
illusions which would haunt his eyes, shut or open),--an anecdote I may
quote when I come to my chapter on the Cheats of the Senses and Spectral
Phantasms." I went on with my book, and wrote till the lights waned in
the gray of the dawn. And I said then, in the triumph of my pride, as
I laid myself down to rest, "I have written that which allots with
precision man's place in the region of nature; written that which
will found a school, form disciples; and race after race of those
who cultivate truth through pure reason shall accept my bases if they
enlarge my building." And again I heard the sigh, but this time it
caused no surprise. "Certainly," I murmured, "a very strange thing is
the nervous system!" So I turned on my pillow, and, wearied out, fell
asleep.