According to Sir
Oliver Lodge, it is that part of our being that has not become
carnate; according to Gustave Le Bon, it is the "condensed" soul
of our ancestors, which is true, beyond a doubt, but only a part
of the truth, for we find in it also the soul of the future and
probably of many other forces which are not necessarily human.
William James saw in it a diffuse cosmic consciousness and the
chance intrusion into our scientifically organized world of
remnants and bestiges of the primordial chaos. Here are a number
of images striving to give us an idea of a reality so vast that
we are unable to grasp it. It is certain that what we see from
our terrestrial life is nothing compared with what we do not see.
Besides, if we think of it, it would be monstrous and
inexplicable that we should be only what we appear to be, nothing
but ourselves, whole and complete in ourselves, separated,
isolated, circumscribed by our body, our mind, our consciousness,
our birth and our death. We become possible and probable only on
the conditions that we project beyond ourselves on every side and
that we stretch in every direction throughout time and space.
10
But how shall we explain the incredible contrast between the
immeasurable grandeur of our unknown guest, the assurance, the
calmness, the gravity of the inner life which it leads in us and
the puerile and sometimes grotesque incongruities of what one
might call its public existence? Inside us, it is the sovereign
judge, the supreme arbiter, the prophet, almost the god
omnipotent; outside us, from the moment that it quits its shelter
and manifests itself in external actions, it is nothing more than
a fortune-teller, a bone-setter, a sort of facetious conjuror or
telephone-operator, I was on the verge of saying a mountebank or
clown.
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