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. 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?