It lives under our reason, in
a sort of invisible and perhaps eternal palace, like a casual
guest, dropped from another planet, whose interests, ideas,
habits, passions have naught in common with ours. If it seems to
have notions on the hereafter that are infinitely wider and more
precise than those which we possess, it has only very vague
notions on the practical needs of our existence. It ignores us
for years, absorbed no doubt with the numberless relations which
it maintains with all the mysteries of the universe; and, when
suddenly it remembers us, thinking apparently to please us, it
makes an enormous, miraculous, but at the same time clumsy and
superfluous movement, which upsets all that we believed we knew,
without teaching us anything. Is it making fun of us, is it
jesting, is it amusing itself, is it facetious, teasing, arch, or
simply sleepy, bewildered, inconsistent, absent-minded? In any
case, it is rather remarkable that it evidently dislikes to make
itself useful. It readily performs the most glamorous feats of
sleight-of-hand, provided that we can derive no profit from them.
It lifts up tables, moves the heaviest articles, produces flowers
and hair, sets strings vibrating, gives life to inanimate objects
and passes through solid matter, conjures up ghosts, subjugates
time and space, creates light; but all, it seems, on one
condition, that its performances should be without rhyme or
reason and keep to the province of supernaturally vain and
puerile recreations.
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