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