“I refuse to believe,” he said to himself, “and I never will believe, until the day Nature kills me, that there’s such a thing as ‘reality,’ apart from the mind that looks at it! Jason’s stripping himself bare is his way⁠ ⁠… that’s all⁠ ⁠… what he sees when he’s like that is no less of an illusion than what I see when I’m plastered with armour. The ‘thing in itself’ is as fluid and malleable as these trees⁠ ⁠… I’m a sharded beetle and he’s one of those naked little green things that live in the centre of cuckoo-spit!”

This comparison cheered Wolf’s mind a good deal; and his fingers tightened once more upon the handle of his stick. “These trees, this old-man’s-beard, these dark ditch-plants⁠ ⁠… they all see what they’ve the nature to see.⁠ ⁠… No living thing has ever seen reality as it is in itself. By God! there’s probably nothing to see, when you come to that!”