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me to interpret his expression in that way, but I did. And as Phi-oo
rolled him over into the darkness among the livid fleshiness again I felt
a distinctly unpleasant sensation, although as he rolled the insect in
him was confessed.
"It simply illustrates the unthinking way in which one acquires habits of
feeling. To drug the worker one does not want and toss him aside is surely
far better than to expel him from his factory to wander starving in the
streets. In every complicated social community there is necessarily a
certain intermittency of employment for all specialised labour, and in
this way the trouble of an 'unemployed' problem is altogether anticipated.
And yet, so unreasonable are even scientifically trained minds, I still do
not like the memory of those prostrate forms amidst those quiet, luminous
arcades of fleshy growth, and I avoid that short cut in spite of the
inconveniences of the longer, more noisy, and more crowded alternative.
"
My alternative route takes me round by a huge, shadowy cavern, very
crowded and clamorous, and here it is I see peering out of the hexagonal
openings of a sort of honeycomb wall, or parading a large open space
behind, or selecting the toys and amulets made to please them by the
dainty-tentacled jewellers who work in kennels below, the mothers of the
moon world--the queen bees, as it were, of the hive. They are
noble-looking beings, fantastically and sometimes quite beautifully
adorned, with a proud carriage, and, save for their mouths, almost
microscopic heads.
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