He had a sentiment about a rose: he was still glad it had fragrance or atmosphere; though he remembered with a slight discomfort that it had thorns.
But what bothered him about it was that it was impossible.
And what made him think it impossible was it was inconsistent with everything else.

It was one solitary and monstrous exception to the sort of rule that ought to have no exceptions.
Science did not convince him that there were few miracles, but that there were no miracles; and why should there be miracles only in Palestine and only for one short period?
It was a single and senseless contradiction to an otherwise complete cosmos.
For the furniture fitted in bit by bit and better and better; and the bedroom seemed to grow more and more solid.
The man recognised the portrait of himself over the mantelpiece or the medicine bottles on the table, like the dying lover in Browning.
In other words, science so far had steadily solidified things; Newton had measured the walls and ceiling and made a calculus of their three dimensions.

Darwin was already arranging the animals in rank as neatly as a row of chairs, or Faraday the chemical elements as clearly as a row of medicine bottles.
From the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth, science was not only making discoveries, but all the discoveries were in one direction.

Science is still making discoveries; but they are in the opposite direction.
For things are rather different when the man in the bed next looks at the bedroom.

Not only is the rose-bush still very obvious; but the other things are looking very odd.
The perspective seems to have gone crooked; the walls seem to vary in measurement till the man thinks he is going mad.