The gecko lumbers after them, rearing its head from side to side and snapping, such that its body recovers its initial illusion of hugeness. Its body even appears monstrous. Watching all these motes explode outward, like a sneezing, and watching their ruthless pursuit by a reptile whose own body is incalculable orders of magnitude larger than all of theirs combined, I am momentarily able to see the gecko through the mites’ eyes: to regard it as the gigantic and terrible lizard that, to them, it must appear. A great pity for the fleeing mites surges through me. And yet when I say that I am ‘seeing the gecko through the mites’ eyes,’ I’m presupposing that the mites actually have eyes, or else (since surely they must have something that could be anatomically classified as ‘eyes’) that they have something that I would recognize as an eye. In short I am presupposing that the mites can see the gecko through something like my eyes: not through photoreceptive pinholes that would merely register its motion overhead, identifying that darkling light condition as a threat (and thus not even seeing the gecko as a ‘gecko,’ just as an indistinct blurring above); but instead through foveal eyes like mine, which would take in the sight of the gecko, the full welter of its visual detail (its neonpink skin and spade-shaped face, its four legs, its tapering tail). And since the mites themselves are microscopically small, I am further presupposing that their eyes would appreciate the sublime size of the gecko. The mites’ eyes (I am presupposing) would render all the details of its body monstrous. So: no longer an indistinct blur (from the mites’ point-of-view), nor just a regularly sized gecko (from my own), this behemoth lumbering after them would appear (through the mixture of our visions) to be all thick and thundering tree-trunk legs, and the whiplash swishing of an infinite tail, and the death-dealing snap of a grave-digging snout, and, finally, the awful whiteness of that eye, hanging as full and as huge, in the darkness above them, as a moon. This is the image of the gecko that I see through the mites’ eyes, and that makes me feel pity for the mites, when I presuppose that they are seeing it also. But I am presupposing more even than this, I realize. For I must additionally imagine that the mites’ eyes are connected up to a more or less sentient brain, generating thoughts in its little mite mind, which mite mind might, it follows, be able to register the presence of this gecko, and not only that, but also experience fear, panic, and dread of death at the sight of it. Yet can I actually imagine—as I watch the dispersal of the little graynesses on my windowpane—that thinking is going on inside one or another of them? What’s likeliest is that the mites aren’t conscious at all (or at least not as complexly conscious as other creatures [not even as complexly conscious, for instance, as the gecko ((within whose shrewd, mucronate skull—behind whose lidless, milky eye—I can very well imagine all sorts of thinking going on [[or perhaps only one sort of thinking, cynegetic thinking, death’s-head thinking, the strategies and calculations and constant readjustments in timing that are required if it is to succeed at hunting mites]]))]).