Ramblings in Cheapside

Walking the other day in Cheapside I saw some turtles in Mr.
Sweeting's window, and was tempted to stay and look at them. As I
did so I was struck not more by the defences with which they were
hedged about, than by the fatuousness of trying to hedge that in at
all which, if hedged thoroughly, must die of its own defencefulness.
The holes for the head and feet through which the turtle leaks out,
as it were, on to the exterior world, and through which it again
absorbs the exterior world into itself--"catching on" through them
to things that are thus both turtle and not turtle at one and the
same time--these holes stultify the armour, and show it to have been
designed by a creature with more of faithfulness to a fixed idea,
and hence one-sidedness, than of that quick sense of relative
importances and their changes, which is the main factor of good
living.

The turtle obviously had no sense of proportion; it differed so
widely from myself that I could not comprehend it; and as this word
occurred to me, it occurred also that until my body comprehended its
body in a physical material sense, neither would my mind be able to
comprehend its mind with any thoroughness. For unity of mind can
only be consummated by unity of body; everything, therefore, must be
in some respects both knave and fool to all that which has not eaten
it, or by which it has not been eaten. As long as the turtle was in
the window and I in the street outside, there was no chance of our
comprehending one another.

Nevertheless I knew that I could get it to agree with me if I could
so effectually button-hole 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
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.