humanitarian ever finds himself is whether he should destroy a
spider's web, and so, perhaps, starve the spider to death, or whether
he should leave the web, and so connive at the death of a multitude of
flies. I have long been content to leave Nature to her own ways in
such matters. I cannot say that I like her in all her processes, but I
am content to believe that this may be owing to my ignorance of some
of the facts of the case. There are, on the other hand, two acts of
destruction in Nature which leave me unprotesting and pleased. One of
these occurs when a thrush eats a snail, banging the shell repeatedly
against a stone. I have never thought of the incident from the snail's
point of view. I find myself listening to the tap-tap of the shell on
the stone as though it were music. I felt the same sort of mild thrill
of pleasure the other day when I found a beautiful spotted ladybird
squeezing itself between two apples and settling down to feed on some
kind of aphides that were eating into the fruit. The ladybird, the
butterfly, and the bee--who would put chains upon such creatures?
These are insects that must have been in Eden before the snake.
Beelzebub, the god of the other insects, had not yet any engendering
power on the earth in those days, when all the flowers were as strange
as insects and all the insects were as beautiful as flowers.




XI



VIRTUE