Note 32 — Chapter II · THE BAUDDHA SYSTEM.

Cf. Ferrier's Lectures and Remains, vol. i. p. 119.

"Suppose yourself gazing on a gorgeous sunset. The whole western heavens are glowing with roseate hues, but you are aware that within half an hour all these glorious tints will have faded away into a dull ashen grey. You see them even now melting away before your eyes, although your eyes cannot place before you the conclusion which your reason draws. And what conclusion is that? That conclusion is that you never, even for the shortest time that can be named or conceived, see any abiding colour, any colour which truly is. Within the millionth part of a second the whole glory of the painted heavens has undergone an incalculable series of mutations. One shade is supplanted by another with a rapidity which sets all measurement at defiance, but because the process is one to which no measurement applies,... reason refuses to lay an arrestment on any period of the passing scene, or to declare that it is, because in the very act of being it is not; it has given place to something else. It is a series of fleeting colours, no one of which is, because each of them continually vanishes in another."