day-fly, its existence being
terminated by the shades of night."

"I was certain of it," said Willis.

"Certain of what?"

"That it died of grief at being on land. When one has been accustomed
to the water, you see, under such circumstances life is not worth the
having."

"The day-fly," continued Becker, "is an epitome of those men who
spend a life-time hunting after wealth and glory, and who perish
themselves at the moment they reach the pinnacle of their ambitious
desires. Whence I conclude, my dear children, that there are nothing
but beginnings and endings of unhappiness in this world, and that true
felicity is only to be hoped for in another sphere."

"What a curious series of transformations! First an aquatic insect,
next amphibious, then throwing away the organs for which it has no
further use, and becoming provided with those suited to its new
state!"

"Yes, my dear Fritz; and yet those complicated and beautiful
operations of Nature have not prevented philosophers from asserting
that the world resulted from _floating atoms_, which, by force of
combination, and after an infinity of blind movements, conglomerate
into plants, animals, men, heaven, and earth."

"I am only a plain sailor," said Willis "yet the eye of a worm teaches
me more than these philosophers seem to have imagined in their
philosophy."

"Such a system could only have originated in Bedlam or Charenton."

"No, Ernest, it is the system of Epicurus and Lucretius. Without going
so far back, there are a thousand others quite as ridiculous, with
which it is unnecessary to charge your young heads."

"All madmen are not in confinement, and it may be that Epicurus and
Lucretius had arrived at those limits of human reason, where genius
begins in some and folly in others."

"It is not that, Fritz; but if men, says Malebranche somewhere,[A] are
interested in having the sides of an equilateral triangle unequal, and
that false geometry was as agreeable to them as false philosophy, they
would make the problems equally false in geometry as in morality, for
this simple reason, that their errors afford them gratification,
whilst truth would only hurt and annoy them."

"Very good," observed Willis; "this Malebranche, as you call him, must
have been an admiral?"

"No, Willis, nothing more than a simple philosopher, but one of good
faith, like Socrates, who admitted that what he knew best was, that he
knew nothing."

The sun had gradually disappear