xxxii The Life of the Spider 



spiritual food, not the lethargy, but the active 

 life of the Scorpion and of the young of the 

 Lycosa and the Clotho Spider. He does not 

 attempt to explain them by one of those 

 generally-acceptable theories such as that of 

 evolution, which merely shifts the ground of 

 the difficulty and which, I may mention in 

 passing, emerges from these volumes in a some- 

 what sorry plight, after being sharply con- 

 fronted with incontestable facts. 



Waiting for chance or a god to enlighten us, 

 he is able, in the presence of the unknown, to 

 preserve that great religious and 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 ? 



