“Well answered!” he rejoined. “Tell me, then, who you are--if you happen to know.” “How should I help knowing? I am myself, and must know!” “If you know you are yourself, you know that you are not somebody else; but do you know that you are yourself? Are you sure you are not your own father?--or, excuse me, your own fool?--Who are you, pray?” I became at once aware that I could give him no notion of who I was. Indeed, who was I? It would be no answer to say I was who! Then I understood that I did not know myself, did not know what I was, had no grounds on which to determine that I was one and not another. As for the name I went by in my own world, I had forgotten it, and did not care to recall it, for it meant nothing, and what it might be was plainly of no consequence here. I had indeed almost forgotten that there it was a custom for everybody to have a name! So I held my peace, and it was my wisdom; for what should I say to a creature such as this raven, who saw through accident into entity? “Look at me,” he said, “and tell me who I am.” As he spoke, he turned his back, and instantly I knew him. He was no longer a raven, but a man above the middle height with a stoop, very thin, and wearing a long black tail-coat. Again he turned, and I saw him a raven. “I have seen you before, sir,” I said, feeling foolish rather than surprised. “How can you say so from seeing me behind?” he rejoined. “Did you ever see yourself behind? You have never seen yourself at all!--Tell me now, then, who I am.” “I humbly beg your pardon,” I answered: “I believe you were once the librarian of our house, but more WHO I do not know.” “Why do you beg my pardon?” “Because I took you for a raven,” I said--seeing him before me as plainly a raven as bird or man could look. “You did me no wrong,” he returned. “Calling me a raven, or thinking me one, you allowed me existence, which is the sum of what one can demand of his fellow-beings. Therefore, in return, I will give you a lesson:--No one can say he is himself, until first he knows that he IS, and then what HIMSELF is. In fact, nobody is himself, and himself is nobody. There is more in it than you can see now, but not more than you need to see. You have, I fear, got into this region too soon, but none the less you must get to be at home in it; for home, as you may or may not know, is the only place where you can go out and in. There are places you can go into, and places you can go out of; but the one place, if you do but find it, where you may go out and in both, is home.” He turned to walk away, and again I saw the librarian. He did not appear to have changed, only to have taken up his shadow. I know this seems nonsense, but I cannot help it. I gazed after him until I saw him no more; but whether distance hid him, or he disappeared among the heather, I cannot tell.