Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

PULVIS ET UMBRA
life ; seized through all its atoms with a pediculous
malady ; swelling in tumours that become in-
dependent, sometiiiies even (by an abhorrent prodigy)
locomotory ; one splitting into millions, millions
cohering into one, as the malady proceeds through
varying stages. This vital putrescence of the dust,
used as we are to it, yet strikes us with occasional
disgust, and the profusion of worms in a piece of
ancient turf, or the air of a marsh darkened with
insects, will sometimes check our breathing so that
we aspire for cleaner places. But none is clean :
the moving sand is infected with lice ; the pure
spring, where it bursts out of the mountain, is a
mere issue of worms ; even in the hard rock the
crystal is forming.
In two main shapes this eruption covers the
countenance of the earth : the animal and the
vegetable : one in some degree the inversion of the
other : the second rooted to the spot ; the first
coming detached out of its natal mud, and scurrying
abroad with the myriad feet of insects or towering
into the heavens on the wings of birds : a thing so
inconceivable that, if it be well considered, the heart
stops. To what passes with the anchored vermin,
we have little clue : doubtless they have their joys
and sorrows, their delights and killing agonies : it
appears not how. But of the locomotory, to which
we ourselves belong, we can tell more. These share
with us a thousand miracles : the miracles of sight,
of hearing, of the projection of sound, things that
bridge space ; the miracles of memory and reason,
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