was made: out
of the death of living creatures, when their little living bodies fell
dead and fell asunder into all sorts of matter and forces and
energies, sun, moons, stars and worlds. So you got the universe. Where
you got the living creature from, that first one, don't ask me. He was
just there. But he was a little person with a soul of his own. He
wasn't Life with a capital L.

If you don't believe me, then don't. I'll even give you a little song
to sing.

"If it be not true to me
What care I how true it be . ."

That's the kind of man I really like, chirping his insouciance. And I
chirp back:

"Though it be not true to thee
It's gay and gospel truth to me. . ."

The living live, and then die. They pass away, as we know, to dust and
to oxygen and nitrogen and so on. But what we don't know, and what we
might perhaps know a little more, is how they pass away direct into
life itself--that is, direct into the living. That is, how many dead
souls fly over our untidiness like swallows and build under the eaves
of the living. How many dead souls, like swallows, twitter and breed
thoughts and instincts under the thatch of my hair and the eaves of my
forehead, I don't know. But I believe a good many. And I hope they
have a good time. And I hope not too many are bats.

I am sorry to say I believe in the souls of the dead. I am almost
ashamed to say, that I believe the souls of the dead in some way
reenter and pervade the souls of the living: so that life is always
the life of living creatures, and death is always our affair. This
bit, I admit, is bordering on mysticism. I'm sorry, because I don't
like mysticism. It has no trousers and no trousers seat: _n'a pas de
quoi_. And I should feel so uncomfortable if I put my hand behind me
and felt an absolute blank.

Meanwhile a long, thin, brown caterpillar keeps on pretending to be a
dead thin beech-twig, on a little bough at my feet. He had got his
hind feet and his fore feet on the twig, and his body looped up like
an arch in the air between, when a fly walked up the twig and began to
mount the arch of the imitator, not having the least idea that it was
on a gentleman's coat-tails. The caterpillar shook his stern, and the
fly made off as if it had seen a ghost. The dead twig and the live
twig now remain equally motionless, enjoying their different ways. And
when, with this very pencil, I push the head of the caterpillar off
from the twig, he remains