At what particular instant is it really itself? Is it
seized with giddiness when it leaves its lair? Is it we who no
longer hear it, who no longer understand it, as soon as it ceases
to speak in a whisper and to act in the dark recesses of our
life? Are we in regard to it the terrified hive invaded by a huge
and inexplicable hand, the maddened ant-hill trampled by a
colossal and incomprehensible foot? Let us not venture yet to
solve the strange riddle with the aid of the little that we know.
Let us confine ourselves, for the moment, to noting on the way
some other, rather easier questions which we can at least try to
answer.
First of all, are the facts at issue really new? Was it only
yesterday that the existence of our unknown guest and its
external manifestations were revealed to us? Is it our attention
that makes them appear more numerous, or is it the increase in
their number that at last attracts out attention?
It does indeed seem that, however far we go back in history, we
everywhere find the same extraordinary phenomena, under other
names and often in a more glamorous setting. Oracles, prophecies,
incantations, haruspication, "possession," evocation of the dead,
apparitions, ghosts, miraculous cures, levitation, transmission
of thought, apparent resurrections and the rest are the exact
equivalent, though magnified by the aid of plentiful and obvious
frauds of our latter-day supernaturalism.
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