this
in the Middle Ages, and no longer mock ourselves with the weight of
armour that our forefathers carried in battle. Indeed the more
deadly the weapons of attack become the more we go into the fight
slug-wise.

Slugs have ridden their contempt for defensive armour as much to
death as the turtles their pursuit of it. They have hardly more
than skin enough to hold themselves together; they court death every
time they cross the road. Yet death comes not to them more than to
the turtle, whose defences are so great that there is little left
inside to be defended. Moreover, the slugs fare best in the long
run, for turtles are dying out, while slugs are not, and there must
be millions of slugs all the world over for every single turtle. Of
the two vanities, therefore, that of the slug seems most
substantial.

In either case the creature thinks itself safe, but is sure to be
found out sooner or later; nor is it easy to explain this mockery
save by reflecting that everything must have its meat in due season,
and that meat can only be found for such a multitude of mouths by
giving everything as meat in due season to something else. This is
like the Kilkenny cats, or robbing Peter to pay Paul; but it is the
way of the world, and as every animal must contribute in kind to the
picnic of the universe, one does not see what better arrangement
could be made than the providing each race with a hereditary
fallacy, which shall in the end get it into a scrape, but which
shall generally stand the wear and tear of life for some time. "Do
ut des" is the writing on all flesh to him that eats it; and no
creature is dearer to itself than it is to some other that would
devour it.

Nor is there any statement or proposition more invulnerable than
living forms are. Propositions prey upon and are grounded upon one
another just like living forms. They support one another as plants
and animals do; they are based ultimately on credit, or faith,
rather than the cash of irrefragable conviction. The whole universe
is carried on on the credit system, and if the mutual confidence on
which it is based were to collapse, it must itself collapse
immediately. Just or unjust, it lives by faith; it is based on
vague and impalpable opinion that by some inscrutable process passes
into will and action, and is made manifest in matter and in flesh:
it is meteoric--suspended in mid-air; it is the baseless fabric of a
vision so vast, so vivid, and so