Page:The Life of the Spider.djvu/14

The Life of the Spider that had lost its course and died demented in space. In vain does it seize upon life with an authority, a fecundity unequalled here below; we cannot accustom ourselves to the idea that it is a thought of that nature of whom we fondly believe ourselves to be the privileged children and probably the ideal to which all the earth's efforts tend. Only the infinitely small disconcerts us still more greatly; but what, in reality, is the infinitely small other than an insect which our eyes do not see? There is, no doubt, in this astonishment and lack of understanding a certain instinctive and profound uneasiness inspired by those existences incomparably better-armed, better-equipped than our own, by those creatures made up of a sort of compressed energy and activity in whom we suspect our most mysterious adversaries, our ultimate rivals and, perhaps, our successors.

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But it is time, under the conduct of an admirable guide, to penetrate behind the scenes of our fairy play and to study at close quarters the actors and supernumeraries, loathsome or 10