Page:The Life of the Spider.djvu/38

The Life of the Spider attentive silence which is dominant in the best minds of the day. There are those who say:

'Now that you have reaped a plentiful harvest of details, you should follow up analysis with synthesis and generalize the origin of instinct in an all-embracing view.'

To these he replies, with the humble and magnificent loyalty that illumines all his work:

'Because I have stirred a few grains of sand on the shore, am I in a position to know the depths of the ocean?

'Life has unfathomable secrets. Human knowledge will be erased from the archives of the world before we possess the last word that the Gnat has to say to us....

'Success is for the loud talkers, the self-convinced dogmatists; everything is admitted on condition that it be noisily proclaimed. Let us throw off this sham and recognize that, in reality, we know nothing about anything, if things were probed to the bottom. Scientifically, Nature is a riddle without a definite solution to satisfy man's curiosity. Hypothesis follows on hypothesis; the theoretical rubbish-heap accumulates; and truth ever 34