(_ββ_) And, furthermore, man's _ordinary_ consciousness has nothing to do with what we call the ideal principle of association, the essential core of facts, their bases, causes, ends, and so forth. It rests satisfied with the acceptance of the mere fact that something exists or happens as distinct from something else; or, in other words, with its insignificant contingency. It is no doubt true that the unity of life is not, in such a case, deliberately cancelled by any express separation; that unity, I mean, in which the intuition of the poet arrests the ideal _rationale_ of the fact, its expression and determinate existence. What, however, is absent here, is just that flash of insight into this core of reason and significance, which becomes consequently for our intelligence a thing essentially vacant, possessing no further claim on our minds to a rational interest. The comprehension of a rational cosmos; and its relations is exchanged then and there for a mere flux and contiguity of indifference, which it is true may possess a large expanse of external animation, but which none the less suffers the profounder impulse of reason[4] to remain unsatisfied. True vision, no less than soul-life in its full vigour, can only obtain satisfaction, where such are made aware in phenomena, through feeling no less than contemplation, of the reality in its essence and truth which is compatible with such a world. The life which is a mere external show is defunct to our deeper sense, if all that is ideal and intrinsically rich in significance fails to shine through as the very soul thereof.