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the reality sees itself, a perspective, perhaps one of an infinite number in which the reality chooses to reveal itself. Thus, I see no complete and categorical distinction between ourselves and the reality. Indeed, the distinction itself seems relativized to our modes of consciousness. In the reality itself such a distinction would be, one supposes, meaningless.”
    William had shaken his head.
    “Oh, we are quite reap” had laughed Herjellsen. “We are as real as anything that is real; it is only that there are other manifestations, other truths, other dimensions, that are quite as real as ours.”
    “How do you know?” demanded William.
    “I do not,” said Herjellsen. “But it seems to be likely. It seems implausible, does it not, that our handful of categories, our tiny, evolving package of sensibilities, our tiny phenomenal island of awareness, emerging from sensed, but uncharted seas, should be unique.” Herjellsen had then leaned back. “Rich as we are, I suspect,” he had said, “we are only one penny in the riches of reality.”
    “What is the reality in itself?” demanded William.
    “We are one thing, I suspect,” had said Herjellsen, “that the reality is in itself-but what other things the reality may be in itself I do not know.” “Is the reality to be distinguished,” had asked Gunther, “from the totality of its diverse phenomenal representations or manifestations?”
    “I think so,” whispered Herjellsen. “I think that it is in itself these manifestations, but that it is, in itself, too, more.”
    “This seems contradictory,” said William.
    “I do not think so,” said Herjellsen. “Representations or manifestations are not like shells or costumes in which something else hides; they area way in which reality, in itself, truly, has its being; they are not other than the reality but a way in which it is; but, too, it seems probable that reality’s riches, in their unmanifested profundity, exceed phenomenal expressions. It is not that the phenomena are not reality, but that there are realities beyond phenomena. Reality contains, I suspect, depths and inexpressibilities beyond those of any set of. phenomenal configurations.”
    “This is hard to understand,” said William.
    “The words `in itself’ are hard to understand, perhaps unintelligible,” said Herjellsen. “Perhaps they are misleading. Let us forget them. Let us think what might be meant, not trouble ourselves with a particular semantic formulation. I am saying that there is no adequate distinction, in this matter, between real and unreal. All that exists is equally real. All that I wish to say is that there is a reality-doubtless identical with all that exists-but that this reality far exceeds our perspectives upon it, or those of other perspectives. It is, perhaps, infinitely profound and inexhaustible. There is more to it than we see. It is not that it is not as we see it, but that it is also other than we see it. And perhaps, if we held other perspectives, we would see that it was also other than we conceived it.”
    “Granted these things, supposing them intelligible,” said William, “is it not your belief that in extraphenomenal reality, reality as it is apart from our particular, or some particular, mode of experience, time and space do not exist?”
    “Certainly not as we conceive of them,” said Herjellsen. “Time and space, as we conceive of them, are irrational. It seems irrational both that space should be infinite, that it should have no end, and irrational, too, that it should at some boundary terminate, for what would be on the other side?”
    “What of an expanding, finite space?” asked William. Hamilton’s mind had swept to a speculative conjecture common in astrophysics.
    “Irrational,” said Herjellsen. “What is it expanding into?”
    William looked angry.
    “What if it were closed and static?” asked William.
    “What would lie outside its sphere?” asked Herjellsen.
    “That