38 A GREAT CONFESSION CHAP. 



edges are seen to be as unsteady as at 

 first they appeared to be enduring. If 

 we attempt to draw them we find that 

 they melt into each other, and that not a 

 single outline is steady for a second. In 

 a few minutes whole masses which had 

 filled the eye with their majesty, and 

 with impressions as of the everlasting 

 hills, dissolve themselves into vapour 

 and melt away. 



Such are the cloud-castles which 

 mount upon the intellectual horizon as 

 we scan it in the representations of the 

 mechanical philosophy. Nothing can be 

 more fallacious than the habit of building 

 up definitions out of words so vague and 

 abstract that they may signify any one 

 of a dozen different things, and the 

 whole plausibility of which consists in 

 the ambiguity of their meanings. It is 

 a habit too which finds exercise in the 

 alternate amusement of wiping out of 



