At this point Mary became all tears and disclaimers. “If you do that,” said Thomas, “you really will have to go. I am about to die, and I intend to die my own way, without any weeping females or dear friends. It’s much the same with you that it is with man and the other lower organisms. The good heart generally goes with a bad head; and if you have a good head, you probably--there, I thought so. Do you see? The Dear Friend on the further side of the path has just been trodden on by a passing labourer. If he’d had a little more head, he would have kept out of the way, and then he would not have died. Intellect is practical: spirituality is not. Now that is very curious, for although I have always been a most practical beetle, I have frequently had strong spiritual desires. For instance, I often after supper yearn to leave this gross and uncomely world, and bask in an impossible hereafter.” “Ah!” cried Mary. (She liked the ring of his last sentence.) “Those are beautiful words. If only you would always talk like that, instead of insulting those who only come to do you good. I know the Dear Friend made you angry; but then it’s not so much what he said as what he wanted to say that we must think of.” “Ah, yes, my dear Mary, most moist and muddle-headed, and it is not so much what I am as what I want to be that the deceased bug should have considered. You were born with a wrong head, and so you form wrong judgments. It’s not your fault; nothing’s anybody’s fault. The Dear Friend was good, but it doesn’t matter. I am bad, and that doesn’t matter either. Nothing matters, and I can’t understand anything, and I want to die.” Thomas threw himself on his back and kicked petulantly. Mary entreated him not to give way to temper; however, he declared that he was doing no such thing: that he was trying to think very fast, and that the action of kicking made it possible to think faster. Suddenly he stopped, and recovered his normal position. “Mary,” he said, “it is clear to me, and I will make it clear to you, that nothing matters. Suppose something had an optical delusion, and the optical delusion died, and had a ghost----” “But it couldn’t, Thomas.” “I know that. I am only asking you to suppose it--and the ghost went to sleep, and dreamed that he was dreaming, that he was dreaming----” “Oh, don’t go on! you’ll only make your poor head ache!” “Do you think the something would care very much what happened in its optical delusion’s ghost’s dream’s dream’s dream? Yet the innermost of the three dreams would seem to be perfectly real, and the apparent reality would be due to part of the previous experience of the something, which would be filtered--or, rather, reflected--through the whole series.” “That will do. Please don’t go on. I don’t understand a word of it, and it’s no use. Oh, _do_ let us talk good.”