365

The Anchorite Speaks once more. We also have intercourse with "men," we also modestly put on the clothes in which people know us (as such) respect us and seek us; and we thereby mingle in society, that is to say, among the disguised who do not wish to be so called; we also do like all prudent masqueraders, and courteously dismiss all curiosity which has not reference merely to our "clothes." There are however other modes and artifices for "going about" among men and associating with them: for example, as a ghost, - which is very advisable when one wants to scare them, and get rid of them easily. An example: a person grasps at us, and is unable to seize us. That frightens him. Or we enter by a closed door, when the lights are extinguished. Or after we are dead. The latter is the artifice of posthumous men par excellence. ("What ?" said such a one once impatiently "do you think we should delight in enduring this strangeness, coldness, death-stillness about us, all this subterranean, hidden, dim, undiscovered solitude, which is called life with us, and might just as well be called death, if we were not conscious of what will arise out of us, - and that only after our death shall we attain to our life and become living, ah! very living! we posthumous men!")