He that has a seed of this kind before his eyes, sees things as they are, and he cannot be imposed upon by chimæras. What used to appear to him _great_, is prodigiously lessened, and what appeared to him _little_, is magnified in the same proportion; so that to his eyes, every thing is upon a level or nearly so.
In general, men appear to him very little, and those lords over others, whom he beheld before as colossuses, seem to him so little above the rest, that he hardly perceives the difference.
He sees the extent of human knowledge, and finds it so near to ignorance, that he does not conceive how learning can breed vanity, or ignorance cause shame.
He sees without disguise the phantom of immortality, the idol of the great and the jest of the wise. He sees the celebrated names penetrate a little more or less into futurity; and then stop like the rest and sink into eternal oblivion.
He sees what is low in the most sublime; the dark part of what casts the most lustre, the weak side in what appears the strongest: And his imagination presents to him nothing dazzling, but wherein his reason discovers all the defects.
He sees the earth, as a point in the boundless space; the series of ages, as an instant in eternal duration; and the chain of human actions, as the traces of a cloud of flies in the aerial plains.
In fine, he respects virtue; and, as to the rest, whatever he perceives all around him, even to the most minute things, seems to him all alike. He esteems nothing, he despises nothing, he prefers nothing, and accommodates himself to every thing.
Such a man cannot be conceived to be susceptible of all those little sallies of joy which affect others, but then he is screened from those little mortifications which trouble them so much, and in my opinion, he is a gainer.
I have one thing more (said the Prefect) to show thee; prepare thy eyes and thy ears; and be frightened at nothing.
The rivulet, by the side of which we walked to the Fantastical Tree, receives several streams as it flows along; and, as if it left with regret so beautiful a residence, after forming a thousand serpentine windings in the meadow, it glides gently towards its mouth. In that place, a hole, formed by an opening of the earth, receives and transmits it through subterraneous channels.