Pygmalion's Spectacles

Pygmalion's Spectacles, by Stanley G. Weinbaum, features a gnomelike man who asks what is reality. Dan Burke, struggling for clarity of thought through the fumes of liquor, stares without comprehension at the tiny figure of his companion, near the tall banks of buildings that loom around Central Park. The talk turns to Bishop Berkeley, the philosopher of Idealism, described as the one who argues that we do not see, feel, hear, taste the object, but that we have only the sensation of seeing, feeling, hearing, tasting.

Dan insists that anybody can tell the difference between a picture and the real thing, or between a movie and life, while the other whispers that the realer the better. A chamber floored with large black and white squares holds exquisite benches of carved marble, and Old Leucon, in a far corner, bends over an intricate, glistening mechanism. A man wakes late in the morning and asks how much was the product of alcohol, or whether old Ludwig had been right and there was no difference between reality and dream.