I was one and not another. As for the
name I went by in my own world, I had forgotten it, and did not care to
recall it, for it meant nothing, and what it might be was plainly of
no consequence here. I had indeed almost forgotten that there it was a
custom for everybody to have a name! So I held my peace, and it was my
wisdom; for what should I say to a creature such as this raven, who saw
through accident into entity?

"Look at me," he said, "and tell me who I am."

As he spoke, he turned his back, and instantly I knew him. He was no
longer a raven, but a man above the middle height with a stoop, very
thin, and wearing a long black tail-coat. Again he turned, and I saw him
a raven.

"I have seen you before, sir," I said, feeling foolish rather than
surprised.

"How can you say so from seeing me behind?" he rejoined. "Did you ever
see yourself behind? You have never seen yourself at all!--Tell me now,
then, who I am."

"I humbly beg your pardon," I answered: "I believe you were once the
librarian of our house, but more WHO I do not know."

"Why do you beg my pardon?"

"Because I took you for a raven," I said--seeing him before me as
plainly a raven as bird or man could look.

"You did me no wrong," he returned. "Calling me a raven, or thinking me
one, you allowed me existence, which is the sum of what one can
demand of his fellow-beings. Therefore, in return, I will give you a
lesson:--No one can say he is himself, until first he knows that he IS,
and then what HIMSELF is. In fact, nobody is himself, and himself is
nobody. There is more in it than you can see now, but not more than you
need to see. You have, I fear, got into this region too soon, but none
the less you must get to be at home in it; for home, as you may or
may not know, is the only place where you can go out and in. There are
places you can go into, and places you can go out of; but the one place,
if you do but find it, where you may go out and in both, is home."

He turned to walk away, and again I saw the librarian. He did not appear
to have changed, only to have taken up his shadow. I know this seems
nonsense, but I cannot help it.

I gazed after him until I saw him no more; but whether distance hid him,
or he disappeared among the heather, I cannot tell.

Could it be that I was dead, I thought, and did not know it? Was I in
what we used to call the world beyond the grave? and must I wander about
seeking my place in it? How was I to find