幽霊

解説

付記

彼は幽霊を見た。 その陰鬱なものが、 彼の進む道をふさいでいた。 逃げ出す間もなく、 地震が目をあざむき、 幽霊の姿は揺らいだ。 彼は倒れ、星々が視界に踊る。 必死に払いのけると―― そこにあったのは電柱だった。 ―― ジャレッド・マクフェスター （幽霊の奇妙な挙動を説明するため、ハイネは「幽霊は我々を恐れている」との説を引用しているが、私の経験によればそうとは言い切れない。裸で現れぬ幽霊を信じるとは、布地に魂が宿ると信じるに等しい。ならば“服だけの幽霊”が歩いてもよいはずだ――これは信仰の根を揺るがす難問である。）

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Original

The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.

Additional notes

He saw a ghost. It occupied—that dismal thing!— The path that he was following. Before he'd time to stop and fly, An earthquake trifled with the eye That saw a ghost. He fell as fall the early good; Unmoved that awful vision stood. The stars that danced before his ken He wildly brushed away, and then He saw a post. Jared Macphester Accounting for the uncommon behavior of ghosts, Heine mentions somebody's ingenious theory to the effect that they are as much afraid of us as we of them. Not quite, if I may judge from such tables of comparative speed as I am able to compile from memories of my own experience. There is one insuperable obstacle to a belief in ghosts. A ghost never comes naked: he appears either in a winding-sheet or "in his habit as he lived." To believe in him, then, is to believe that not only have the dead the power to make themselves visible after there is nothing left of them, but that the same power inheres in textile fabrics. Supposing the products of the loom to have this ability, what object would they have in exercising it? And why does not the apparition of a suit of clothes sometimes walk abroad without a ghost in it? These be riddles of significance. They reach away down and get a convulsive grip on the very tap-root of this flourishing faith.