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Yes, but the miracle comes as such a surprise that, the moment we
set foot in it, a sort of instinctive aberration seizes us,
refusing to accept the evidence and compelling us to search in
every direction to see if there is not another outlet. Even in
the presence of those astounding horses and while they are
working before our eyes, we do not yet sincerely believe that
which fills and subdues our gaze. We accept the facts, because
there is no means of escaping them; but we accept them only
provisionally and with all reserve, putting off till later the
comfortable explanation which will give us back our familiar,
shallow certainties. But the explanation does not come; there is
none in the homely and not very lofty regions wherein we hoped to
find one; there is neither fault nor flaw in the mighty evidence;
and nothing delivers us from the mystery.
It must be confessed that this mystery, springing from a point
where we least expected to come upon the unknown, bears enough
within itself to scatter all our convictions. Remember that,
since man appeared upon this earth, he has lived among creatures
which, from immemorial experience, he thought that he knew as
perfectly as he knows an object fashioned by his hands. Out of
these creatures he chose the most docile and, as he called them,
the most intelligent, attaching in this case to the word
intelligence a sense so narrow as to be almost ridiculous.
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