I ask myself if I am not here the victim of an illusion

To show instinct performing on behalf of the egg what reason, ripened by study and experience, would advise is a result of no mean philosophic import; and I find myself seized with a scruple aroused by scientific austerity. Not that I wish to give science a forbidding aspect: I am convinced that one can say excellent things without employing a barbarous vocabulary. Clearness is the supreme politeness of whoso wields a pen. I do my best to observe it. And the scruple that stops me is of another kind. I ask myself if I am not here the victim of an illusion. I say to myself: “The Sacred Beetles and others are manufacturers of balls, of pills. That is their trade, learnt we know not how, prescribed perhaps by their structure, in particular by their long legs, some of which are slightly curved. When working for the egg, what wonder if they continue underground their special craft as ball-making artisans?”