I understand. I'm a realist myself. I don't necessarily mean souls in the mystical sense; if there's somewhere our consciousness goes when we die, I don't know anything about it.

[ He waves a hand to dismiss the idea before it can get its hooks in him and make him melancholy. ]

But that sense of connection, that I understand. I felt it most strongly when I was traveling in Egypt — that sense, you might say, of history being a tangible thing.