It is ourselves we encounter whenever we invent fictions.

I noticed affixed to a laboratory door the following words: Les théories passent. Le Grenouille reste. [The theories pass. The frog remains.] &mdashJean Rostand, Carnets d'un biologiste. There is a risk that in the less severe discipline of criticism the result may turn out to be different the theories will remain but the frog may disappear.