The Life of the Fly 



be careful not to do so, for that would be deny- 

 ing the best of all our gifts. 



Let us strive, on the contrary, within the 

 measure of our capacity, to force a gleam of 

 light from the vast unknown; let us examine 

 and question and, here and there, wrest a few 

 shreds of truth. We shall sink under the task; 

 in the present ill-ordered state of society, we 

 shall end, perhaps, in the workhouse. Let us 

 go ahead for all that: our consolation shall be 

 that we have increased by one atom the gen- 

 eral mass of knowledge, the incomparable 

 treasure of mankind. 



As this modest lot has fallen to me, I will 

 return to the pond, notwithstanding the wise 

 admonitions and the bitter tears which I once 

 owed to it. I will return to the pond, but not 

 to that of the small ducks, the pond aflower 

 with illusions : those ponds do not occur twice 

 in a lifetime. For luck like that, you must be 

 in all the new glory of your first breeches and 

 your first ideas. 



Many another have I come upon since that 

 distant time, ponds very much richer and, more- 

 over, explored with the ripened eye of experi- 

 ence. Enthusiastically I searched them with 

 the net, stirred up their mud, ransacked their 

 trailing weeds. None in my memories comes 



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