"Consider the allegory of the centipede..."

I usually invite students, at the beginning of a new semester, to consider the allegory of the whale: not Herman Melville's, but Douglas Adams's. 

It conveys the human condition as the philosopher knows it, an all-too-fleeting attempt to come to terms with cosmic curiosity and philosophic wonder in the face of our inexorable mortality. Unlike the whale, we know how abruptly that will end. But still we ask our questions.

This semester maybe I'll invite them to consider the peripatetic centipede, as presented by James's student Perry In 1905. I too first discovered myself as one who walks...

"Consider the allegory of the centipede. From the beginning of time he had manipulated his countless legs with exquisite precision. Men had regarded him with wonder and amazement. But he was innocent of his own art, being a contrivance of nature, perfectly constructed to do her bidding. One day the centipede discovered life. He discovered himself as one who walks, and the newly awakened intelligence, first observing, then foreseeing, at length began to direct the process. And from that moment the centipede, because he could not remember the proper order of his going, lost all his former skill, and became the poor clumsy victim of his own self-consciousness. This same self-consciousness is the inconvenience and the great glory of human life. We must stumble along as best we can, guided by the feeble light of our own little intelligence. If nature starts us on our way, she soon hands over the torch, and bids us find the trail for ourselves. Most men are brave enough to regard this as the best thing of all; some despair on account of it. In either case it is admittedly the true story of human life. We must live as separate selves, observing, foreseeing, and planning. There are two things that we can do about it. We can repudiate our natures, decline the responsibility, and degenerate to the level of those animals that never had our chance; or we can leap joyously to the helm, and with all the strength and wisdom in us guide our lives to their destination. But if we do the former, we shall be unable to forget what might have been, and shall be haunted by a sense of ignominy; and if we do the second, we shall experience the unique happiness of fulfilment and self-realization." The Approach to Philosophy by Ralph Barton Perry