It finds itself,
in a word, in the position of the man who, in the midst of
peaceful, happy and unsuspecting folk, alone knows some bad news.
He is neither able nor willing to announce it nor yet to hide it
completely. He hesitates, delays, makes more or less transparent
allusions, but does not either say the last word that would, so
to speak, let loose the catastrophe in the hearts of the people
around him, for to those who do not know of it the catastrophe is
still as though it were not there. Our subconsciousness, in that
case, would act towards the future as we act towards the past,
the two conditions being identical, so much so that it often
confuses them, as we can see more particularly in the celebrated
Marmontel case, where it evidently blunders and reports as
accomplished an incident that will not take place until several
months later. It is of course impossible for us, at the stage
which we have reached, to understand this confusion or this
coexistence of the past, the present and the future; but that is
no reason for denying it; on the contrary, what man understands
least is probably that which most nearly approaches the truth.
20
Lastly, to complicate the question, it may be very justly
objected that, though premonitions in general are useless and
appear systematically to withhold the only indispensable and
decisive words, there are, nevertheless, some that often seem to
save those who obey them.
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