The fly, my dear sir, has one striking feature; its wings are typical
of the aerial powers of the psychic faculties. The ancients did well
when they typified the soul as a butterfly!
I thought I would push his analogy to its utmost logically, so I said
quickly:--
Oh, it is a soul you are after now, is it? His madness foiled his
reason, and a puzzled look spread over his face as, shaking his head
with a decision which I had but seldom seen in him, he said:--
Oh, no, oh no! I want no souls. Life is all I want. Here he brightened
up; I am pretty indifferent about it at present. Life is all right; I
have all I want. You must get a new patient, doctor, if you wish to
study zoophagy!
This puzzled me a little, so I drew him on:--
Then you command life; you are a god, I suppose? He smiled with an
ineffably benign superiority.
Oh no! Far be it from me to arrogate to myself the attributes of the
Deity. I am not even concerned in His especially spiritual doings. If I
may state my intellectual position I am, so far as concerns things
purely terrestrial, somewhat in the position which Enoch occupied
spiritually! This was a poser to me. I could not at the moment recall
Enoch s appositeness; so I had to ask a simple question, though I felt
that by so doing I was lowering myself in the eyes of the lunatic:--
And why with Enoch?
Because he walked with God. I could not see the analogy, but did not
like to admit it; so I harked back to what he had denied:--
So you don t care about life and you don t want souls. Why not? I put
my question quickly and somewhat sternly, on purpose to disconcert him.
The effort succeeded; for an instant he unconsciously relapsed into his
old servile manner, bent low before me, and actually fawned upon me as
he replied:--
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