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It is the consciousness of nothing, upon which all consciousness of something enriches itself, takes on meaning and shape. 6 · Strange Chords· Masterful Geometries Ruskin, whose modified persona of Theseus without an Exit that is more than "nothing" had only shortly before, on the seventeenth, come close to being a mad Hamlet who loved his Ophelia more than "forty thousand brothers," paced cold floors (the night was bitter even for February), marching in a "condition" that was naked (shortly before, of course, close to a quarter to one, he had praised a naked foot, shining like snow), his clothes discarded with a conviction uncomplicated by full possession of his faculties.

And finally, "worn out with bodily fatigue, with walking and waiting and watching," his "mind racked with ecstasy and anguish," his "body benumbed with the bitter cold of a freezing February night," he collapsed upon the bed, which had not been slept in during the night of awaited contention, and he was found in the morning entirely "bereft" of his senses (xxxvm, 172)—an authentically mad Hamlet, who, in shifting allusions and tones, had only shortly before scolded Blake in that final diary entry before the White Silence of "nothing" (or less than "nothing"): And when Gold and Gems adorn the plough!

5 See R. H. Wilenski, John Ruskin: An Introduction to Further Study of His Life and Work (London, 1933), p. 146. " The "Evil One," unlike Poe's one-eyed black cat that is the demonic self that it sees, is of no certain "categorical" category, beginning or demise. The vantage point aspires toward the affiliation with a focal point (at least before the focal point "returns" the reflection of an eye of evil) that possesses, initially, before mirrors, a fond, perhaps nostalgic, memory of original peace.