than such absolute isolation? Perfect death, indeed, if it were
attainable (which it is not), is as near perfect security as we can
reach, but it is not the kind of security aimed at by any animal that is
at the pains of defending itself. For such want to have things both
ways, desiring the livingness of life without its perils, and the safety
of death without its deadness, and some of us do actually get this for a
considerable time, but we do not get it by plating ourselves with armour
as the turtle does. We tried 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