152 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



with the building business. Who cares if the 

 structure is all to tumble down again ? Not I. 

 Nevertheless the mere building is a pleasure, and 

 the completion of the structure a satisfaction in 

 that it puts something where before there was 

 nothing. The speculative soul which is in man 

 abhors the desert, vacant spaces and waters and 

 islands of nothingness. Thus, to illustrate this 

 little thing by a big thing — the little flickering 

 tongue of the serpent by something so big that it 

 fills the entire universe — the existence of an ethereal 

 medium is possibly no more than a figment of the 

 mind, an invention to get us out of a difficulty, 

 or a ' purely hypothetical supposition,' as was 

 boldly said by one of our greatest physicists. At 

 all events, a lady lean and pale who came at our 

 call, tottering forth wrapped in a gauzy veil — 

 surely the most attenuated and shadowy of all the 

 daughters of Old Father Speculation. But having 

 got her in our arms, thin and pale though she be, 

 we imagine her beautiful and love her dearly, and 

 rest satisfied with the breasts of her consolations, 

 albeit they are of no more substance than thistle- 

 down." 



