peasants and this sky and sea. But, since you have this theory of life,
you may not despise any one or any thing, not even a skittle-alley, for
they are all threaded to you, and to despise them would be to blaspheme
against continuity, and to blaspheme against continuity would be to deny
Eternity. Love you cannot help, and hate you cannot help; but contempt
is--for you--the sovereign idiocy, the irreligious fancy!"

There was a bee weighing down a blossom of thyme close by, and underneath
the stalk a very ugly little centipede. The wild bee, with his little
dark body and his busy bear's legs, was lovely to me, and the creepy
centipede gave me shudderings; but it was a pleasant thing to feel so
sure that he, no less than the bee, was a little mood expressing himself
out in harmony with Designs tiny thread on the miraculous quilt. And I
looked at him with a sudden zest and curiosity; it seemed to me that in
the mystery of his queer little creepings I was enjoying the Supreme
Mystery; and I thought: "If I knew all about that wriggling beast, then,
indeed, I might despise him; but, truly, if I knew all about him I should
know all about everything--Mystery would be gone, and I could not bear to
live!"

So I stirred him with my finger and he went away.

"But how"--I thought "about such as do not feel it ridiculous to despise;
how about those whose temperaments and religions show them all things so
plainly that they know they are right and others wrong? They must be in a
bad way!" And for some seconds I felt sorry for them, and was
discouraged. But then I thought: "Not at all--obviously not! For if
they do not find it ridiculous to feel contempt, they are perfectly right
to feel contempt, it being natural to them; and you have no business to
be sorry for them, for that is, after all, only your euphemism for