...pasteboard mask.

"All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event -- in the living act, the undoubted deed -- there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. -Herman Melville, novelist and poet (1 Aug 1819-1891)

The physical world is a pasteboard mask put up over the spiritual world, the world of meaning, and what tortures Ahab is that he cannot know what is in that world, because all his knowledge comes from this one. ".....from Moby Dick.

Are humans but pasteboards of a reality not, that we have managed to somehow  convince ourselves in?... or is it the fear of what we know to be real thus the pasteboard required...? RB.