204 Shadowings 



and eddyings, all strengthening or weakening 

 according to the tide-rise or tide-ebb of the city's 

 sea of toil. But the attraction of the greater 

 spectacle for us is not really the mystery of 

 motion: it is rather the mystery of man. As 

 outside observers we are interested chiefly by 

 the passing forms and faces, by their intima- 

 tions of personality, their suggestions of sym- 

 pathy or repulsion. We soon cease to think 

 about the general flow. For the atoms of the 

 human current are visible to our gaze: we see 

 them walk, and deem their movements suffi- 

 ciently explained by our own experience of 

 walking. And, nevertheless, the motions of the 

 visible individual are more mysterious than those 

 of the always invisible molecule of water. I 

 am not forgetting the truth that all forms of 

 motion are ultimately incomprehensible: 1 am 

 referring only to the fact that our common rela- 

 tive knowledge of motions, which are supposed 

 to depend upon will, is even less than our pos- 

 sible relative knowledge of the behavior of the 

 atoms of a water-current. 



Every one who has lived in a great city is 

 aware of certain laws of movement which regu- 



