I'm convinced that Keyserling is right and would even add my own unanswerable arguments to his. One of the enjoyable advantages of neurasthenia is precisely the ability it gives one to catch sight of many strange beings. One cannot always see them, but one can hear and, in some measure, feel them. More than once, while writing late into the night, in the silent solitude of my study, I've had the vivid impression that an invisible being was reading over my shoulder the very words that I was writing. This has never frightened me; I experienced only the uncomfortable feeling that I was being spied upon. When this happens, I usually pick up a piece of paper and scribble on it: `Would you be so kind as to stop bothering me?' The invisible being disappears at once. I describe this experience because I know that a lot of people are troubled, in similar circumstances, by the same feeling of being watched.Indeed, sometimes, you can even see them. You only get a brief look and there's nothing terrifying about it, as the cowardly might imagine.
