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which they actually became shortly after the film had been shot. We were seized with terror at the sight of them, because we were not yet accustomed, as are people today, to seeing living shadows without living bodies, and so at that moment we did not know if the shadows that were marching towards us were actually those of fallen soldiers. In one or another of the spectators this might have awakened the memory of the biblical scenes they had just viewed, that is, the breasts of the bathing Egyptian girls. And since the latter, as every child had to know, were dead and decaying for thousands of years, this understanding helped confirm that the shadows were those of dead soldiers.
    So the true wonder, which uplifts us or flushes us with a fervent bliss, is different from the so-called technological wonder, which merely terrifies or amazes us or fills us with arrogance about the progress we have achieved. For we know that the latter was achieved through ‘natural things’. So we quickly recover from our fear and astonishment (while our arrogance increases), and we think about it and come to the conclusion that the bathing Egyptians are our living contemporaries who have set aside their clothing and sold the shadows of their naked bodies for money; shadows that were paid for just as real bodies are paid for in this world. But if this was the case with the girls, how was it with the soldiers? Surely they had not sold their shadows for money. And what an injustice, what a special injustice, even compared with the injustices that we have become used to in this world and which we have gradually come to perceive as right. The girls had been given money merely for doing healthful and pleasant work – for bathing in a river. On the other hand, the soldiers, who were marching to their deathsand were about to become true shadows, had not been paid a penny for giving up their shadows. Yes, at the moment they were off to meet their suffering, in the last hour of their lives, their shadows had been stolen at a moment when they could not think of asking for money. We, however, were paying for them with our entry fee, in other words, in order to see them heading to their deaths (just as we had paid to see naked, bathing Egyptians). And because the soldiers had not requested payment for their shadows, it was really
they
who were paying for the shadows of the bathing girls! Even if the film producer was committing a base fraud by pretending to show the discovery of Moses when in reality he only showed a tiny box (but life-sized shadows of women), yet at least he had invested money in
this
sham – money that even the law says justifies this or that. But the soldiers who were going to their deaths had received no payment from the man. He had stolen their shadows. And even in our world, in which money plays a role in justice, theft is punished. However, the man who animated the cinema with shadows could not be punished since otherwise it would not be possible to charge an entrance fee to exhibit the product of his crime. If only he had stolen the shadows of soldiers heading towards their deaths to demonstrate how many men must die for a cause that has no concern with any individual among them – but, no, he had actually stolen their shadows for the very same reason that he had bought those of the naked girls. For he knew that we were human, and he offered to us both the lust of the flesh and the horrors of death. He was deliberately playing on our sensuality, directed equally towards the flesh of our living brothers and living sisters as towards the horrible destruction of our neighbour. He exploited our human frailty, through theft if possible, and when he could not steal, through money. And so he put on a so-called ‘programme’ such as is still shown in all the cinemas of the world today.
    To whom can it be due that a fruit of human reason, and therefore of divine grace, has been utilized, from the very first instant