It astonishes but does not stagger our reason.
But, when it becomes a question of discovering the same picture
in the future, the boldest imagination flounders at the first
step. How are we to admit that there exists somewhere a
representation or reproduction of that which has not yet existed?
Nevertheless, some of the incidents which we have just been
considering seem to prove in an almost conclusive manner not only
that such representations are possible, but that we may arrive at
them more frequently, not to say more conveniently, than at those
of the past. Now, once this representation preexists, as we are
obliged to admit in the case of certain number of premonitions,
the riddle remains the same whether the preexistence be one of a
few hours, a few years or several centuries. It is therefore
possible--for, in these matters, we must go straight to extremes
or else leave them alone--it is therefore possible that a seer
mightier than any of to-day, some god, demigod or demon, some
unknown, universal or vagrant intelligence, saw that procession a
million years ago, at a time when nothing existed of that which
composes and surrounds it and when the very earth on which it
moves had not yet risen from the ocean depths. And other seers,
as mighty as the first, who from age to age contemplated the same
spot and the same moment, would always have perceived, through
the vicissitudes and upheavals of seas, shores and forests, the
same procession going round the same little church that still lay
slumbering in the oceanic ooze and made up of the same persons
sprung from a race that was perhaps not yet represented on the
earth.
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