Art and Science 



(which it is not), is as near perfect security 

 as we can reach, but it is not the kind of 

 security aimed at by any animal 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 our- 

 selves 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 de- 

 fensive 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 



41 



