On the magical quality of philosophical phrases: "They have something, a sort of magic — I don't know what — that makes like rich and exciting to me.  . . . I think we're thrilled by the weight of history that lies behind each one of these phrases.  It isn't just the world itself, or just its immediate meaning.  It's a long, trailing margin of human sensations, life by life, century by century, that gives us this peculiar thrill.  . . .  I know they're absurd, these phrases . . . Words like 'pluralism' and 'dualism' and 'monism.'  But what they make me think of is just a particular class of vague, delicious, physical sensations!  And it's the idea of there having been feelings like these, in far-off, long-buried human nerves, that pleases.  . . .  It makes life seem so thick and rich and complicated."  —John Cowper Powys, Wolf Solent