No doubt you have had the experience, when passing through a country
where you were travelling for the first time, of stopping short, as
you rounded a mountain, before some unknown horizon, and finding it
strangely familiar.
No doubt you have had the experience of arriving at night in a dark
square where you knew you had never been before, and briskly finding
your way through it, just as if you were resuming some old habit.
At times the spectacle of a smiling valley arrests you at the top
of some hill. You thought you knew nothing of this country, and yet
strange and sure impressions guide you; they are like old memories. You
advance, and behold, you are looking at everything as if you recognized
it. That road which winds between the pastures, as supple and sinuous
as a beautiful river of yellow water,--you are almost certain you
have followed it long ago, in some misty, far-off existence which,
nevertheless, is not your own.
There are times, too, when you are dreaming, as you sit alone, and
suddenly a memory passes over you: the memory of some act the man you
are surely never performed. Yet it is not a fabrication, an invention.
You know, you feel, that it is a personal memory. A memory of what
world? Of what life?
Do not reject this shadowy treasure, and do not tremble! Do not
accept complacently the explanations of the superstitious or of the
pseudo-scientists. The flesh of your flesh was not born yesterday.
Something survives in it that is contemporaneous with all the
generations. Many a revelation awaits us. Let us keep for them a soul
that is accessible, experienced, and not too distrustful.