Nevertheless, I knew that I could get it to agree with me if I could so effectually buttonhole and fasten on to it as to eat it.  Most men have an easy method with turtle soup, and I had no misgiving but that if I could bring my first premise to bear I should prove the better reasoner.  My difficulty lay in this initial process, for I had not with me the argument that would alone compel Mr. Sweeting to think that I ought to be allowed to convert the turtles—­I mean I had no money in my pocket.  No missionary enterprise can be carried on without any money at all, but even so small a sum as half a crown would, I suppose, have enabled me to bring the turtle partly round, and with many half-crowns I could in time no doubt convert the lot, for the turtle needs must go where the money drives.  If, as is alleged, the world stands on a turtle, the turtle stands on money.  No money no turtle.  As for money, that stands on opinion, credit, trust, faith—­things that, though highly material in connection with money, are still of immaterial essence.

The steps are perfectly plain.  The men who caught the turtles brought a fairly strong and definite opinion to bear upon them, that passed into action, and later on into money.  They thought the turtles would come that way, and verified their opinion; on this, will and action were generated, with the result that the men turned the turtles on their backs and carried them off.  Mr. Sweeting touched these men with money, which is the outward and visible sign of verified opinion.  The customer touches Mr. Sweeting with money, Mr. Sweeting touches the waiter and the cook with money.  They touch the turtle with skill and verified opinion.  Finally, the customer applies the clinching argument that brushes all sophisms aside, and bids the turtle stand protoplasm to protoplasm with himself, to know even as it is known.

But it must be all touch, touch, touch; skill, opinion, power, and money, passing in and out with one another in any order we like, but still link to link and touch to touch.  If there is failure anywhere in respect of opinion, skill, power, or money, either as regards quantity or quality, the chain can be no stronger than its weakest link, and the turtle and the clinching argument will fly asunder.  Of course, if there is an initial failure in connection, through defect in any member of the chain, or of connection between the links, it will no more be attempted to bring the turtle and the clinching argument together, than it will to chain up a dog with two pieces of broken chain that are disconnected.  The contact throughout must be conceived as absolute; and yet perfect contact is inconceivable by us, for on becoming perfect it ceases to be contact, and becomes essential, once for all inseverable, identity.  The most absolute contact short of this is still contact by courtesy only.  So here, as everywhere else, Eurydice glides off as we are about to grasp her.  We can see nothing face to face; our utmost seeing is but a fumbling of blind finger-ends in an overcrowded pocket.