Any creature on
getting what the turtle aimed at would overreach itself and be
landed not in safety but annihilation. It should have no communion
with the outside world at all, for death could creep in wherever the
creature could creep out; and it must creep out somewhere if it was
to hook on to outside things. What death can be more absolute than
such absolute isolation? Perfect death, indeed, if it were
attainable (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 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.
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