{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_46428/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_46428","id":"gutenberg_46428","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46428","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Gender & Sexuality Studies","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Psychiatry/Psychology","Category: Science - Biology","Reproduction"],"text":"THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY\n\nOF LOVE\n\nBY\n\nREMY DE GOURMONT\n\nTranslated with a Postscript By\n\nEZRA POUND\n\nBONI AND LIVERIGHT\n\nPublishers\n\nNew York\n\n1922\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n      I. The Subject of an Idea\n\n      Love's general psychology.--Love according to natural laws.\n      --Sexual selection.--Man's place in Nature.--Identity of\n      human and animal psychology.--The animal nature of love.\n\n      II. The Aim of Life\n\n      The importance of the sexual act.--Its ineluctable character.\n      --Animals who live only to reproduce themselves.--The strife\n      for love, and for death.--Females fecundated at the very\n      instant of birth.--The maintenance of life.\n\n      III. Scale of Sexes\n\n      Asexual reproduction.--Formation of the animal colony.\n      --Limits of asexual reproduction.--Coupling.-- Birth\n      of the sexes.--Hermaphrodism and parthenogenesis.\n      --Chemical fecundation.--Universality of parthenogenesis.\n\n      IV. Sexual Dimorphism\n\n      1. Invertebrates: formation of the male.--Primitivity of\n      the female.--Minuscule  males: the bonellie.--Regression\n      of the male into the male organ: the rirripedes.--Generality\n      of sexual dimorphism.--Superiority of the female in most\n      insect species.--Exceptions.--Numeric dimorphism.--Female\n      hymenoptera.--Multiplicity of her activities.--Male's purely\n      sexual r\u00f4le.--Dimorphism of ants and termites.--Grasshoppers\n      and crickets.--Spiders.--Coleoptera.--Glow-worm.--Cochineal's\n      strange dimorphism.\n\n      V. Sexual Dimorphism\n\n      2. Vertebrates:--Unnoticeable in fish, saurians, reptiles.\n      --The bird world.--Dimorphism favourable  to males: the\n      oriole, pheasants, the ruff.--Peacocks and turkey-cocks.\n      --Birds of paradise.--Moderate dimorphism of mammifers.\n      --Effects of castration on dimorphism.\n\n      VI. Sexual Dimorphism\n\n      3. Vertebrates (Continued):--Man and woman.--Characteristics\n      and limits of human dimorphism.--Effects of civilization.\n      --Psychologic dimorphism.--The insect world and the human.\n      --Modern dimorphism, basis of the pair.--Solidarity of the\n      human pair.--Dimorphism and polygamy.--The pair favours the\n      female.--Sexual \u00e6sthetics.--Causes of the superiority of\n      feminine beauty.\n\n      VII. Sexual Dimorphism and Feminism\n\n      Inferiority and superiority of the female as shown in animal\n      species.--Influence of feeding on the production of sexes.\n      --The female would have sufficed.--Feminism absolute, and\n      moderate.--Pipe-dreams: elimination of the male and human\n      parthenogenesis.\n\n      VIII. Love-Organs\n\n      Sexual dimorphism and parallelism.--Sexual organs of man and\n      of woman.--Constancy of sexual parallelism in the animal\n      series.--External sexual organs of placentary mammifera.\n      --Form and position of the penis.--The penial bone.--The\n      clitoris.--The vagina.--The teats.--Forked prong of marsupials.\n      --Sexual organs of reptiles.--Fish and birds with a penial\n      organ.--Genital organs of arthropodes.--Attempt to classify\n      animals according to the disposition, presence, absence of\n      exterior organs for reproduction.\n\n      IX. The Mechanism of Love\n\n      1. Copulation: Vertebrates.--Its very numerous varieties and\n      its specific fixity.--The apparent  immorality of Nature.\n      --Sexual ethnography.--Human mechanism.--Cavalage.--The form\n      and duration of coupling in divers mammifers.--Aberrations of\n      sexual surgery, the ampallang.--Pain as a bridle on sex.\n      --Maidenhead.--The mole.--Passivity of the female.--The ovule,\n      psychological figure of the  female.--Mania of attributing\n      human virtues to animals.--The modesty of elephants.--Coupling\n      mechanism in whales, seals, tortoises.--In certain ophidians\n      and in certain fish.\n\n      X. The Mechanism of Love\n\n      2. Copulation (Continued)--Arthropodes.--Scorpions.--Large\n      aquatic crustaceans.--Small crustaceans.--The hydrachne.\n      --Scutilary.--Cockchafer.--Butterflies.--Flies, etc.--Variation\n      of animals' sexual habits.\n\n      XI. The Mechanism of Love p. 98\n\n      3. Of birds and fish.--Males without penis.--Coupling by simple\n      contact.--Salacity of birds.--Copulation  of batrachians:\n      accoucheur toad, aquatic toad, earth  toad, pipa toad.--F\u0153tal\n      parasitism.--Chastity of fish.--Sexes separated in love.\n      --Onanistic fecundation.--Cephalopodes, the spermatophore.\n\n      XII, The Mechanism of Love\n\n      4. Hermaphrodism.--Sexual life of oysters.--Gasteropodes.\n      --The idea of reproduction and the idea of pleasure.--Mechanism\n      of reciprocal reproduction: helices.--Spintrian habits.\n      --Reflection on hermaphrodism.\n\n      XIII. The Mechanism of Love\n\n      5. Artificial fecundation.--Disjunction of the secreting\n      apparatus from the copulating apparatus.--Spiders.--Discovery\n      of their copulative method.--Brutality of the female.--Habits\n      of the epeire.--The argyronete.--The tarantula.--Exceptions:\n      the reapers.--Dragonflies (libellule).--Dragonflies (demoiselle)\n      virgins and \"jouvencelle.\"--Picture of their love affairs.\n\n      XIV. The Mechanism of Love\n\n      6. Cannibalism in sex.--Females who devour the male, those\n      who devour the spermatophore.--Probable use of these\n      practices.--Fecundation by the whole male.--Loves of the\n      white foreheaded dectic.--The green grasshopper.--The Alpine\n      analote.--The ephippigere.--Further reflections on the\n      cannibalism of sex.--Loves of the praying mantis.\n\n      XV. The Sexual Parade\n\n      Universality of the caress, of amorous preludes.--Their r\u00f4le\n      in fecundation.--Sexual games of birds.--How cantharides\n      caress.--Males' combats.--Pretended combats of birds.--Dance\n      of the tetras.--Gardener bird.--His country house.--His taste\n      for flowers.--Reflections on the origin of his art.--Combats\n      of crickets.--Parade of butterflies.--Sexual sense of\n      orientation.--The great-peacock moth.--Animals' submission to\n      orders of Nature.--Transmutation of physical values.--Rutting\n      calendar.\n\n      XVI. Polygamy\n\n      Rarity of monogamy.--Taste for change in animals.--R\u00f4les\n      of monogamy and polygamy in the stability or instability\n      of specific types.--Strife of the couple against polygamy.\n      --Couples among insects.--Among fish, batrachians, saurians.\n      --Monogamy of pigeons, of nightingales.--Monogamy in carnivora,\n      in rodents.--Habits of the rabbit.--The ichneumon.--Unknown\n      causes of polygamy.--Rarity and superabundance of males.\n      --Polygamy in insects.--In fish.--In gallinace\u00e6, in web-footed\n      birds.--In herbivora.--The antelope's harem.--Human polygamy.\n      --How it tempera the couple among civilized races.\n\n      XVII. Love among Social Animals\n\n      Organization of reproduction among hymenoptera.--Bees.--Wedding\n      of the queen.--Mother bee, cause and consciousness of the hive.\n      --Sexual royalty.--Limits of intelligence among bees.--Natural\n      logic and human logic.--Wasps.--Bumble-bees.--Ants.--Notes on\n      their habits.--Very advanced state of their civilization.\n      --Slavery and parasitism among ants.--Termites.--The nine\n      principal active forms of termites.--Great age of their\n      civilization.--Beavers.--Tendency of industrious animals to\n      inactivity.\n\n      XVIII. The Question of Aberrations\n\n      Two sorts of sexual aberration.--Sexual aberrations of animals.\n      --Those of men.--Crossing of species.-- Chastity.--Modesty.\n      --Varieties and localizations of sexual bashfulness.--Artificial\n      creation of modesty.--Sort of modesty natural to all females.\n      --Cruelty.--Picture of carnage.--The cricket eaten alive.\n      --Habits of carabes.--Every living creature is a prey.\n      --Necessity to kill or to be killed.\n\n      XIX Instinct\n\n      Instinct.--Can one oppose it to intelligence?--Instinct in man.\n      --Primordiality of intelligence.--Instinct's conservative r\u00f4le.\n      --Modifying r\u00f4le of intelligence.--Intelligence and consciousness.\n      --Parity of animal and human instinct.--Mechanical character of\n      the instinctive act.--Instinct modified by intelligence.--Habit\n      of work creates  useless work.--Objections to the identification\n      of instinct and intelligence taken from life of insects.\n\n      XX. Tyranny of the Nervous System\n\n      Accord and discord between organs and acts.--Tarses and sacred\n      scarab.--The hand of man.--Mediocre fitness of sexual  organs for\n      copulation.--Origin of \"luxuria.\"--The animal is a nervous system\n      served by organs.--The organ does not determine the aptitude.\n      --Man's hand inferior to his genius.--Substitution of one sense\n      for another.--Union and r\u00f4le of the senses in love.--Man and\n      animal under the tyranny of the nervous system.--Wear and tear\n      of humanity compensated by\u00b2 acquisitions.--Man's inheritors.\n\n      Translator's Postscript\n\n      Bibliography: Practical Works Consulted\n\n      THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE SUBJECT OF AN IDEA\n\n\n      Love's general psychology.--Love according to natural\n      laws.--Sexual selection.--Man's place in Nature.--\n      Identity of human and animal psychology.--The animal\n      nature of love.\n\n\nThis book, which is only an essay, because its subject matter is so\nimmense, represents, nevertheless, an ambition: one wanted to enlarge\nthe general psychology of love, starting it in the very beginning of\nmale and female activity, and giving man's sexual life its place in the\none plan of universal sexuality.\n\nCertain moralists have, undeniably, pretended to talk about \"love in\nrelation to natural causes,\" but they were profoundly ignorant of\nthese natural causes: thus S\u00e9nancour, whose book, blotted though it be\nwith ideology, remains the boldest work on a subject so essential that\nnothing can drag it to triviality. If S\u00e9nancour had been acquainted\nwith the science of his time, if he had only read R\u00e9aumur and Bonnet,\nBuffon and Lamarck; if he had been able to merge the two ideas, man and\nanimal into one, he, being a man without insurmountable prejudices,\nmight have produced a still readable book. The moment would have\nbeen favorable. People were beginning to have some exact knowledge\nof animals' habits. Bonnet had proved the startling relationships\nof animal and vegetable reproduction; the essential principle of\nphysiology had been found; the science of life was brief enough to be\nclear; one might have ventured a theory as to the psychological unity\nof the animal series.\n\nSuch a work would have prevented numerous follies in the century then\nbeginning. One would have become accustomed to consider human love as\none form of numberless forms, and not perhaps, the most remarkable of\nthe lot, a form which clothes the universal instinct of reproduction;\nand its apparent anomalies would have found a normal explanation amid\nNature's extravagance. Darwin arrived, inaugurated a useful system, but\nhis views were too systematized, his aim too explanatory and his scale\nof creatures with man at the summit, as the culmination of universal\neffort, is of a too theologic simplicity. Man is not the culmination\nof nature, he is in Nature, he is one of the unities of life, that\nis all. He is the product of a partial, not of total evolution; the\nbranch whereon he blossoms, parts like a thousand other branches\nfrom a common trunk. Moreover, Darwin, truckling to the religiose\npudibundery of his race, has almost wholly neglected the actual facte\nof sex; this makes his theory of sexual selection, as the principle\nof change, incomprehensible. But even if he had taken account of the\nreal mechanism of love, his conclusions, possibly more logical, would\nstill have been inexact, foi if sexual selection has any aim it can be\nbut conservation Fecundation is the reintegration of differentiated\nelements into a unique element, a perpetual return to the unity.\n\nIt is not particularly interesting to consider human acts as the fruits\nof evolution, for upon animal branches as clearly separate as those of\ninsect and mammifer one finds sexual acts and social customs sensibly\nanalogous, if not identical in many points.\n\nIf insects and mammifers have any common ancestor, save the primordial\njelly, there must indeed have been very different potentialities in its\namorphous contours to lead it here into being bee and there into being\ngiraffe. An evolution leading to such diverse results has interest only\nas a metaphysical idea, psychology can get from it next to nothing of\nvalue.\n\nWe must chuck the old ladder whose rungs the evolutionists ascended\nwith such difficulty. We will imagine, metaphorically, a centre\nof life, with multiple lives diverging from it; having passed the\nunicellular phase, we will take no count of hypothetic subordinations.\nOne does not wish to deny, one wishes rather not to deny, either\ngeneral or particular evolutions, but the genealogies are too uncertain\nand the thread which unites them too often broken: what, for example,\nis the origin of birds, organisms which seem at once a progress and\na retrogression from the mammifer? On reflection, one will consider\nthe different love-mechanisms of all the dioicians as parallel and\ncontemporary.\n\nMan will then find himself in his proper and rather indistinct place\nin the crowd, beside the monkeys, rodents and bats. Psychologically,\none must quite often compare him with insects, marvellous flowering of\nthe life force. And what clarity from the process, lights showering\nin from all corners. Feminine coquetry, the flight before the male,\nthe return, the game of yes and no, the uncertain attitude seeming\nat once cruel and amorous, and not peculiar to the female human?\nNot at all. C\u00e9lim\u00e8ne is of all species, and heteroclite above all;\nshe is both mole and spider, she is sparrow and cantharide, she is\ncricket and adder. A celebrated author in a play called, I think, La\nFille Sauvage, represents feminine love as aggressive. An error! The\nfemale attacked by the male thinks always of retreat, she never, never\nattacks, save in certain species which appear to be very ancient and\nwhich have persisted to our time only by prodigies of equilibrium. Even\nthere one must make reserves, for when one sees the female aggressive,\nit is perhaps at the second or fourth phase of the game, not at the\nbeginning. The female sleeps until the male arouses her, then she gives\nin, plays, or takes flight. The virgin's reserve before man is but a\nvery moderate bashfulness if compared with the pell-mell flight of a\nyoung mole intacta.\n\nThis is but one fact of a thousand. There is not one way of instinctive\nman with a maid which is not findable in one or other animal species;\nthis is perfectly comprehensible seeing that man is an animal,\nsubmitted to the essential instincts which govern all animality; there\nbeing everywhere the same matter animate with the same desire: to live,\nto perpetuate life. Man's superiority is in the immense diversity of\nhis aptitudes. Animals are confined to one series of gestures, always\nthe same ones, man varies his mimicry without limit; but the target is\nthe same, and the result is the same, copulation, fecundation and eggs.\n\nBelief in liberty has been born from the diversity of human aptitude,\nfrom man's power to reach the necessary termination of his activity by\ndifferent routes, or to dodge this termination and suicide in himself\nthe species whose future he bears. It, this liberty, is an illusion\ndifficult not to have, an idea which one must shed if one wants to\nthink in a manner not wholly irrational, but it is recompensingly\ncertain that the multiplicity of possible activities is almost an\nequivalent of this liberty. Doubtless the strongest motive always wins,\nbut today's stronger is tomorrow's weaker, hence a variety of human\ngaits feigning liberty, and practically resulting therein. Free will\nis only the faculty of being guided successively by a great number\nof different motives. When choice is possible, liberty begins, even\nthough the chosen act is rigorously determined and when there is no\npossibility of avoiding it. Animals have a smaller liberty, restricted\nin proportion as their aptitudes are more limited; but when life begins\nliberty begins. The distinction, from this view-point, between man and\nanimal is quantitative, and not qualitative. One must not be gulled by\nthe scholastic distinction between instinct and intelligence; man is as\nfull of instincts as the insect most visibly instinctive; he obeys them\nby methods more diverse, that is all there is to it.\n\nIf it is clear that man is an animal, it is also clear that he is a\nvery complex one. One finds in him most of the aptitudes which are\ndistributed one by one among beasts. There is hardly one of his habits,\nof his virtues, of his vices (to use the conventional terms) which\ncan not be found either in an insect, a bird or a mammifer: monogamy,\nadultery, the \"consequences\"; polygamy, polyandry, lasciviousness,\nlaziness, activity, cruelty, courage, devotion, any of these are common\nto animals, but each as the quality of an whole species. In the state\nof differentiation to which superior and cultivated human species have\nattained, each individual forms surely a separate variety determined\nby what is called, abstractly, \"the character.\" This individual\ndifferentiation, very marked in mankind, is less marked in other animal\nspecies. Yet we note quite distinct characters in dogs, in horses and\neven in birds of the same race. It is quite probable that all bees have\nnot the same character, since, for example, they are not all equally\nprompt to use their stings in analogous circumstances. Even there the\ndifference between man and his brothers-in-life and in sensibility is\nbut a difference of degree.\n\n\"Solidarity\" is but an empty ideology if one limit it to human species.\nThere is no abyss between man and animal; the two domains are separated\nby a tiny rivulet which a baby could step over. We are animals, we live\non animals, and animals live on us. We both have and are parasites. We\nare predatory, and we are the living prey of the predatory. And when\nwe follow the love act, it is truly, in the idiom of theologians, more\nbestiarum. Love is profoundly animal; therein is its beauty.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE AIM OF LIFE\n\n\n      The importance of the sexual act.--Its ineluctable\n      character.--Animals who live only to reproduce\n      themselves.--The strife for love, and for death.\n      --Females fecundated at the very instant of birth.\n      --The maintenance of life.\n\n\nWhat is life's aim? Its maintenance.\n\nBut the very idea of an aim is a human illusion. There is neither\nbeginning, nor middle, nor end in the series of causes. What is has\nbeen caused by what was, and what will be has for cause the existent.\nOne can neither conceive a point of rest nor a point of beginning.\nBorn of life, life will beget life eternally. She should, and wants\nto. Life is characterized on earth by the existence of individuals\ngrouped into species, that is to say having the power, a male being\nunited with a female, to reproduce a similar being. Whether it be the\ninternal conjoining of protozoaires, or hermaphrodite fecundation, or\nthe coupling of insects or mammifers, the act is the same: it is common\nto all that lives, and this not only to animals but to plants, and\npossibly even to such minerals as are limited by a non-varying form. Of\nall possible acts, in the possibility that we can imagine, the sexual\nact is, therefore, the most important of all acts. Without it life\ncomes to an end, and it is absurd to suppose its absence, for in that\ncase thought itself disappears.\n\nRevolt is useless against so evident a necessity. Our finikin scruples\nprotest in vain; man and the most disgusting of his parasites are the\nproducts of an identical sexual mechanism. The flowers we have strewn\nupon love may disguise it as one disguises a trap for wild beasts; all\nour activities man\u0153uvre along the edge of this precipice and fall over\nit one after another; the aim of human life is the continuation of\nhuman life.\n\nOnly in appearance does man escape this obligation of Nature. He\nescapes as an individual, and he submits as a species. The abuse of\nthought, religious prejudices, vices sterilize a part of humanity;\nbut this fraction is of merely sociological interest; be he chaste\nor voluptuary, miserly or prodigal of his flesh, man is in his whole\ncondition subject to the sexual tyranny. All men do not reproduce their\nspecies, neither do all animals; the feeble and the late-comers among\ninsects die in their robe of innocence, and many nests laboriously\nfilled by courageous mothers are devastated by pirates or by the\ninclemency of the sky. Let the ascetic not come boasting that he has\nfreed his blood from the pressure of desire; the very importance which\nhe ascribes to his victory but affirms the same power of the life-will.\nA young girl, before the slightest love affair, will, if she is\nhealthy, confess naively that she \"wants to marry to have children.\"\nThis so simple formula is the legend of Nature. What an animal seeks\nis not its own life but reproduction. Doubtless many animals seem,\nduring a relatively long existence, to have but brief sexual periods,\nbut one must make allowance for the period of gestation. In principle\nthe sole occupation of any creature is to renew, by the sex act,\nthe form wherewith it is clothed. To this end it eats, to this end\nbuilds. This act is so clearly the aim, unique and definite that it\nconstitutes the entire life of a very great number of animals, which\nare, notwithstanding, extremely complex.\n\nThe ephemera is born in the evening, and copulates, the female lays\neggs during the night, both are dead in the morning, without even\nhaving looked at the sun. These little animals are so little destined\nfor anything else save love that they have not even mouths. They eat\nnot, neither do they drink. One sees them hovering in clouds above\nthe water, among the reeds. The males, although more numerous than\nthe females, perform a multiple duty, and fall exhausted. The purity\nof such a life is to be admired in many butterflies: the silk-moths,\nheavy and clumsy, shake their wings for an instant at birth, couple\nand die. The Great Peacock or Oak Bombyx, much larger than they, eats\nno more than they do: yet we see him traverse leagues of country in\nhis quest of the female. He has only a rudimentary proboscis and a\nfake digestive apparatus. Thus his two or three days' existence passes\nwithout one egoistic act. The struggle for life, much vaunted, is here\nthe struggle to give life, the struggle for death, for if they can live\nthree days in search of the female they die as soon as the fecundation\nis accomplished.\n\nAmong all solitary bees, scolies, masons, bembex, and anthopores,\nthe males born soonest, range about the nests awaiting the birth of\nthe females. As soon as these appear they are seized and fecundated,\nknowing, thus, life and love in the same shiver. The female osmies and\nother bees are keenly watched by the males who nab and mount them as\nthey emerge from the natal tube, the hollow stalk of a reed, flying\nat once with them into the air where the love-feast is finished. Then\nwhile the male, drunk with his work, continues his death-flight, the\nfemale feverishly hollows the house of her offspring, partitions it,\nstores the honey for the larv\u00e6, lays, whirls for an instant and dies.\nThe year following: the same gestures above the same reeds split by\nthe reed-gatherers; and thus in years following, the insect permitted\nnever the least design save the conservation of one fragile form; brief\napparition over flowers.\n\nThe sitaris is a coleopterous parasite in the nests of the anthopore.\nCopulation takes place on hatching. Fabre noticed a female still in her\nwrappings, whom a male already free was helping to get loose, waiting\nonly the appearance of the extremity of the abdomen, to hurl himself\nthereupon. The sitaris' love lasts one minute, long season in a short\nlife: the male drags on for two days before dying, the female lays on\nthe very spot where she has been fecundated, dies, having known nothing\nbut the maternal function in the strictest limit of her birthplace.\n\nNo one has ever seen the female palingenia. This butterfly is\nfecundated before even getting rid of her nymph's corset, she dies with\nher eyes still shut, mother, at once, and infant in swaddling clothes.\nMoralists love bees from whom they distil examples and aphorisms. They\nrecommend us work, order, economy, foresight, obedience and divers\nvirtues other. Abandon yourself boldly to labour: Nature wills it.\nNature wills everything. She is complacent to all the activities; to\nour imaginings there is no analogy that she will refuse, not one. She\ndesires the social constructions of bees; she desires also the Life All\nLove of the \"Great Peacock,\" of the osmie, of the sitaris. She desires\nthat the forms she has created shall continue indefinitely, and to this\nend all means are, to her, good. But if she presents us the laborious\nexample of the bee, she does not hide from us the polyandrous example,\nnor the cruel amours of the mantis. There is not in the will to live\nthe faintest trace of our poor little human morality. If one wishes an\nunique sole morality, that is to say an universal commandment, which\nall species may listen to, which they can follow in spirit and in\nletter, if one wishes in short to know the \"aim of life\" and the duty\nof the living, it is necessary, evidently, to find a formula which will\ntotalize all the contradictions, break them and fuse them into a sole\naffirmation. There is but one, we may repeat it, without fear, and\nwithout allowing any objection: the aim of life is life's continuation.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nSCALE OF SEXES\n\n\n      Asexual reproduction.--Formation of the animal colony.\n      --Limits of asexual reproduction.--Coupling.--Birth of\n      the sexes.--Hermaphrodism and parthenogenesis.--Chemical\n      fecundation.--Universality of parthenogenesis.\n\n\nThe primitive mode of reproduction is asexual, or what one will so\nconsider provisorily, in comparison with more complex mechanism. In the\nfirst living forms there are neither sexual organs nor differentiated\nsexual elements. The animal reproduces itself by scissiparity or by\nbudding; the individual divides itself in two parts, or a protuberance\ndevelops, forms a new being and then separates.\n\nScissiparity is an inexact term, for the division is transversal, and\nthe two parts far from equal; it occurs in protozoaires, and further\nin worms, star-fish and polyps. Budding is common to protozoaires,\ninfusoria, c\u0153lenterata, to fresh-water polyps and to nearly all\nvegetables. A third primitive mode, sporulation, consists in the\nproduction inside the organism of particular cells, spores, which\nseparate and become individuals; this occurs in protozoaires, as well\nas in ferns, alg\u00e6 and mushrooms.\n\nThe first two modes, division and budding, serve also for the formation\nof animal colonies, when the new individual retains a point of contact\nwith the generating individual. It is by this notion of colony that\none explains complex beings, and even superior animals, in considering\nthem as reunions of simple primitive beings which have differentiated\nthemselves and still retained a solidarity, sharing the physiological\nwork between them. Colonies of protozoaires are formed of individuals\nhaving identical functions, living in perfect equality, despite\nthe hierarchy of position; colonies of metazoaires are composed of\nspecialised members whose separation may be a cause of death for the\ntotal individual. There is then, in the latter case, a new being\ncomposed of distinct elements which, retaining a certain essential\nautonomy, have become the organs of a new entity.\n\nThe first living organisms formed their hierarchies thus: individual\nunicellular, or plastide; group of plastides or meride. The merides,\nas the protozoaires, can reproduce themselves asexually, or by\ndivision or budding. They may separate completely or remain attached\nto their generator. If they remain attached one has mounted a step and\nattained the zoide. Thence, by colonies of zoides one gets individuals\nstill more complex, called demes. None of these terms is much more\nthan a convenience for memory. The nomenclature stops, as does the\nprogression, at a certain moment, for the evolution has its limit, its\nfinality, as does even the milieu in which life continues to evolve.\nOne might say that heaving up from the obscure vital centre, the new\nanimal-shoots branch upward until they knock their heads upon an ideal\nor imaginary roof which prevents any further climbing. This is the\ndeath of the species, and Nature contemptuously abandoning her work,\nbegins to mate yet another mould of the initial ooze, to derive from\nit a new form. The dream of an unlimited transformation of actual\nspecies is pure chim\u00e6ra; they will disappear one by one, according to\ntheir order of primogeniture, according to their faculty for adapting\nthemselves to the changing milieu, and one might foresee, if the earth\nlasts, in a distant time an unimaginable fauna replacing the present\nfauna, and even replacing man.\n\nMan is a metazoaire, that is to say an animal with differentiated\npluricellules, like the sponge, the wheel animals, and the annelids.\nHe belongs to the artizoaire series: a head, belly, back, bilateral\nsymmetry; to the vertebrate branch: internal skeleton, cartilaginous\nand osseous; to the class of mammifers, to the sub-class of\nplacentaires; to the group of primates not far from the chiroptera\n(bats) and the rodents.\n\nIn regard to the life-transmitting mechanism the animals are\ndivided somewhat differently. On one side budding and division, or\nscissiparity, is prolonged rather far into the metazoaire series\nconcurrent with sexual reproduction; on the other hand there are, among\nprotozoaires, phenomena of coupling, unions of cellules which resemble\nveritable fecundation and perform its r\u00f4le; without the nuclear\nregeneration which is the aim and consequence, neither segmentation\nnor budding can take place, at least not indefinitely. In sum, the\nreproduction of beings is always sexual; only in the one case, the\nprotozoaires, it is produced by non-differentiated elements; and in\nthe other, the metazoaires, by differentiated elements, a male and a\nfemale. If one clips off bits of a sponge, a hydra, one obtains as many\nnew individuals, which when they have grown one may again divide, and\nso on repeatedly, but not indefinitely. At a variable instant, after\na certain number of generations by fragmentation, senescence appears\namong the so produced individuals; the clipped morsels remain inert.\nThus this sort of artificial virgin birth has a limit, as has normal\nparthenogenesis, and in order that the individuals may regain their\nparthenogenetic force one must give them time to regenerate their\ncellules by the coupling which fecundates them.\n\nFecundation is in all cases, doubtless, merely a rejuvenation, thus\nconsidered it is uniform not only throughout the animal series, but\nthroughout the vegetable. One ought to experiment in slip-cutting, and\ndiscover at what point the slip cut from a slip begins to diminish\nin vitality. Coupling and fecundation have the same result: it is\nnecessary that cellules A unite with cellules B (macro-nucleus and\nmicro-nucleus among protozoaires; ovule and spermatozoid among\nmetazoaires), in order that the organism may usefully exteriorize a\npart of its substance. When the too complex organism has lost the\nprimitive faculty of segmentation, it makes use, directly, to reproduce\nitself, of certain cellules differentiated for that purpose: it is\nthese cellules united into a whole, which reintegrate and give birth to\na double of the generating individual or individuals. From the top to\nthe bottom of the sexual scale the new being springs invariably from\na duality. The multiplication takes place only in space. In time the\nproduct is a contraction, two giving one.\n\nScissiparity is compatible with the existence of separate sexes, as in\nthe starfish. This fantastic animal with no instrument save its suckers\nopens oysters, envelops them with its stomach which it unbellies\n(vomits), devours them. It is not less curious in reason of its variety\nof reproductive mode, serving itself of sexual apparatus, or budding,\nor casting an arm which becomes a new creature. Thus it is difficult to\nclass animals according to their manner of reproduction; hermaphrodism\nis another block. This mode is doubtless primitive, since it is of\nthe type of protozoaire coupling, but it is greatly complicated when\nit persists, for example up to the moment where it disappears in the\nmollusk series, whereof some possess so luxurious a love-organism. The\nsimple and very naive form, that in which the sperm and the eggs are\nproduced simultaneously inside the same individual, is found only in\ninferior organisms. Normal parthenogenesis belong equally to summary\nand to complicated animals, to wheel-animals and to bees. Among\narthropodes, that is to say among insects in general, the sexes are\nalways separate, save in certain tardigrade arachnids, but these are\nthe ones which offer the finest cases of parthenogenesis, generation\nwithout aid of the male. The term need not be taken literally. For\nas there is no indefinite scissiparity without coupling, there is no\nunlimited parthenogenesis without fecundation: the female is fecundated\nfor several generations which transmit this power, but there comes\na day when the female who has not encountered a male gives birth to\nmales and females. They couple and produce females parthenogenetically\nendowed. This has been for long time a mystery,--it is still a mystery,\nfor side by side with normal parthenogenesis there is irregular\nparthenogenesis, there are cases where non-fecundated eggs behave\nexactly as fecundated eggs, without anyone's knowing why.\n\nThe virgin-begotten cycle of plant-lice is famous, that of\nwheel-animals not less entertaining. The males, smaller than the\nfemales, live but two or three days, couple and die. The fecundated\nfemales lay eggs whence come nothing but females, unless the eggs are\nsubjected to a temperature above 18 degrees (centigrade); above that\nthe eggs hatch out males. Between the periods of coupling there are\nlong stretches of virgin-birth, nothing but females producing females,\nuntil the temperature permits a male hatch. In two years the plant\nlouse runs through ten or twelve parthenogeneses; in July of the second\nyear, there appear winged individuals, these are still female, but\ndouble size, and they lay two sets of eggs, whereof the smaller hatch\nmale (the male is three or four times smaller than the female), the\nlarger eggs hatch female; there is coupling and the cycle begins again.\n\nFor long people believed the plant louse truly androgynous. R\u00e9aumur\nand Bonnet, having seen isolated plant-lice reproduce themselves were\nconvinced of this, when Trembley, a man of genius, celebrated also for\nhis observations of hydra, threw out the idea: Who knows whether a\ncoupling of these lice does not fecundate them for several generations?\nHe had discovered the basis of parthenogenesis. Facts upheld him.\nBonnet described the male and female, and noted even the genital ardour\nof this sticking leaf-louse, this milch-cow of the ants.\n\nParthenogenesis is a sign-post. Nothing more clearly demonstrates the\nimportance of the male or the precision of his function. The female\nappears to be the whole show, without the male she is nothing. She\nis the machine and has to be wound up to go. The male is merely the\nkey. People have tried to obtain fecundation by false keys. Eggs of\nsea-anemones, and star-fish have been hatched by contact with exciting\nchemicals, acids, alkalines, sugar, salt, alcohol, ether, chloroform,\nstrychnine gas, carbonic acid. But one has never been able to bring\nthese scientific larv\u00e6 to maturity, and everything leads one to believe\nthat if one succeeded, and that if these artificial beings were\ncapable of reproduction, it would be but for a limited period. This\nprovoked parthenogenesis is neither more nor less interesting than\nthe normal. It is doubtless abnormal, but abnormal parthenogenesis\nis not infrequent in nature; eggs of the bombyx, of star-fish, and\nof frogs, hatch sometimes without fecundation, and very probably\nbecause they have accidentally come up against the very stimulant\nwhich the excellent experimenters have lavished on them. Whether\nsperm acts as an \"excitant\" or as fecundator, the action is no easier\nto understand by one label than by another. The queen bee lays both\nfecundated and non-fecundated eggs; the first hatch female, the second\ninvariably male, here the male element would seem to be the product\nof parthenogenesis and the female to require previous fecundation. In\ncontrast, among plant-lice, the generations of female continue for\nnearly two years. There is an order in these things, as in all things,\nbut it is not yet apparent; one notes only, that however long and\nvaried be the parthenogenetic period, it is limited somewhere by the\nnecessity of the female principle being united with the male principle.\nAfter all, hereditary fecundation is no more extraordinary than\nparticular fecundation, it is a mode of perpetuating life which the\nexercise of one's reason should make one consider as perfectly normal.\n\nOne ought, at the end of this summary chapter, to be courageous enough\nto say that fecundation, as vulgarly understood, is merely an illusion.\nTaking man and woman (or no matter what dioic metazoaire) the man\ndoes not fecundate the woman; what happens is at once more mysterious\nand more simple. From the male A, the great Male, and from the great\nFemale B are born without any fecundation whatever, spontaneously,\nlittle males a and little females 6. These little males are called\nspermatozoides, and the little females, ovules; it is between these new\ncreatures, between these spores, that the fecundating union occurs. One\nthen observes that _a_ and _b_ resolve themselves into a third animal\n_x_, which by natural growth becomes either A or B. Then the cycle\nbegins again. The union between A and B is merely a preparation; A and\nB are nothing but channels carrying _a_ and _b_, carrying them often\nfar beyond themselves. Like the plant-lice or drones, the mammifers\ncalled man are subject to alternate generation, one parthenogenesis\nalways separating the veritable conjunction of the differentiated\nelements. Coupling is not fecundation; it is merely the mechanism; its\nutility is merely in that it puts two parthenogenetic products into\nrelation. This relation occurs inside the female, or outside the female\n(as in case of fishes); the milieu has an importance of fact, not of\nprinciple.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nSEXUAL DIMORPHISM\n\n\n      I. Invertebrates: formation of the male.--Primitivity\n      of the female.--Minuscule males: the bonellie.\n      --Regression of the male into the male\n      organ: the cirripedes.--Generality of sexual\n      dimorphism.--Superiority of the female in\n      most insect species.--Exceptions.--Numeric\n      dimorphism.--Female hymenoptera.--Multiplicity\n      of her activities.--Male's purely sexual r\u00f4le.--\n      Dimorphism of ants and termites.--Grasshoppers\n      and crickets.--Spiders.--Coleoptera.--Glow-worm.\n      --Cochineal's strange dimorphism.\n\n\nI. Invertebrates.--At a moment fairly undecided in the general\nevolution the male organ specializes into the male individual.\nReligious symbolisms may or might have been intended to mean this.\nThe female is primitive. At the third month, the human embryo has\nexternal uro-genital organs clearly resembling the female organs. To\narrive at complete female estate they need undergo but a very slight\nmodification; to become male they have to undergo a considerable\nand very complex transformation. The external genital organs of\nthe female are not, as has been often said, the product of an\narrested development; quite the contrary, the male organs undergo a\nsupplementary development, which is moreover useless, for the penis is\na luxury and a danger: the bird who does without it is no less wanton\nthereby.\n\nOne finds general proof of the female's primitivity in the extreme\nsmallness of certain male invertebrates, so tiny indeed that one\ncan only consider them as autonomous masculine organs, or even as\nspermatozoides. The male of the syngames (an internal parasite of\nbirds) is less a creature than an appendix; he remains in constant\ncontact with the organs of the female, stuck obliquely into her side,\nand justifying the name \"two-headed worm\" which has been given to this\nwretched and duplex animalculus. The female bonellie is a sea worm\nshaped like a sort of cornucopia sack fifteen centimetres in length:\nthe male is represented by a minuscule filament of about one or two\nmillimetres, that is to say about one-thousandth her size. Each female\nsupports about twenty. These males live, first in the \u0153sophagus, then\ndescend into the oviduct where they impregnate the eggs. Only their\nvery definite function clears them from the charge of being parasites;\nin fact they were long supposed to be parasites, while men sought\nvainly for the male of the prodigious bonellie.\n\nSide by side with males who are merely individualized sexual organs,\none sees males who have lost nearly all organs save the male organ\nitself. Certain hermaphrodite cirripedes (mollusks attached by a\npeduncle [stalk]) cling as parasites to the coat of other cirripedes:\nwhence a diminution of volume, a regression of ovaries, abolition of\nnutritive functions; the stalk takes root in the living, nourishing\nmilieu. But one organ, the male one, persists in these diminished\ncirripedes, and takes on enormous proportions, absorbing the whole\nof the animal. With only a slight further change one would see the\ntransformation of male into male organ completely accomplished, as one\ndoes, moreover, in the hydraria. Become again an integral part of an\norganism from which it had formerly separated to become an individual,\nthe male merely returns, to its origins and clearly certifies what they\nwere.\n\nThe bonellie, which is one of the most definite examples of dimorphism,\nis also an example of the singular feminism which one normally finds in\nnature. For feminism reigns there, especially among inferior species\nand in insects. It is almost only among mammifers and in certain\ngroups of birds that the male is equal or superior to the female.\nOne would say that he has slowly attained a first place not intended\nby nature for him. It is probable that, relieved of all care, after\nthe fecundation, he has had more leisure than the female wherein to\ndevelop his powers. It is also possible, and more probable, that\nthese extremely diverse cases of resemblance and dissemblance are due\nto causes too numerous and too varied for us to seize their logical\nsequence. The facts are obvious: the male and the female differ nearly\nalways, and differ often profoundly. Many insects vulgarly supposed\nto be different species are but males and females of one race seeking\neach other for mating. It needs some knowledge to recognize a pair of\nblackbirds, the male black all over, and the female brown-backed with\ngrey throat and russet belly.\n\nWhile hermaphrodism demands a perfect resemblance of individuals--save\nin cases like the cirripedes, where there is a male supplementary\nparasite--the separation of the sexes leads, in principle, to\ndimorphism, the r\u00f4le of the male, his modes of activity differ from\nthose of the female; a difference found also among dioic plants. Hemp\nis a well known case, although the taller shoots which the peasants\ncall male are in exact contrary, the females. The small garden-loving\nnettle has two sexes on the same stalk; the greater nettle, found in\nuncultivated land, is dioic: the male stalk has very long flopping\nleaves and flowers hanging along the stem; the leaves and flowers\nof the female stalk are short and stand almost upright. Here the\ndimorphism is not in favour of the female, but impartial.\n\nOf insects the female is nearly always the superior individual. It is\nnot this marvellous small creature, nature's divergent and minuscule\nking who offers us the spectacle of the bilhargie, spearwort, whereof\nthe female, mediocre blade, lives, like a sword sheathed in the hollow\nstomach of the male. This timid life and its perpetual amours would\nhorrify the bold female scarab\u0153a, adroit chalicodomes, cold wise\nlycoses, and proud, terrible, amazonian mantes. In the insect world the\nmale is the frail elegant sex, gentle and sober, with no employment\nsave to please and to love. To the female the heavy work of digging, of\nmasonry, and the danger of hunt and of war.\n\nThere are exceptions, but found chiefly among parasites, among the\ndegraded, like the xenos which lives without distinction upon wasps,\ncoleoptera, and neuroptera. The male is provided with two large wings;\nthe female has neither wings, feet, eyes, nor antenn\u00e6; is a small worm.\nAfter metamorphosis the male emerges, flies a little, then returns to\nthe female who has remained inside the nymphal envelope, and fecundates\nher in her wrappings.\n\nOther exceptions, this time normal, are furnished by butterflies, that\nis to say by a sort of insect which is very placid, and which, at least\nin the winged form, is addicted neither to hunting nor to any trade\nor business function. One gives the name \"psyche\" to a very small\nbutterfly which flutters out rather clumsily in the morning; it is\nthe male. The female is a huge worm, fifteen times as long, ten times\nas fat. The lovers are in the proportion of a cock to a cow. Here the\nfeminism is wholly ludicrous. There is the same disproportion in the\nmulberry bombyx, of which the female is much heavier than the male; she\nflies with difficulty, a passive beast who submits to a fecundation\nlasting several hours; likewise in the autumn butterfly, cheimatobia,\nthe male sports two pairs of fine wings on a spindle body, the female\nis a gross fat keg with rudimentary wings, incapable of flight; she\nclimbs difficultly into trees on whose buds her caterpillar feeds\nitself; in the case of another butterfly which one calls, absurdly,\nthe orgye, the male has all the characteristics of lepidoptera, the\nfemale is almost wingless with a heavy and swollen body and a carriage\nabout as pleasing as that of a monstrous wood-louse; there is the same\ndisproportion in the graceful, agile and delicate liparis, known as the\nzig-zag because of his wing-markings; he would hardly discover his mate\nwithout aid from instinct, she being a whitish beast with heavy abdomen\nruminating motionless in the tree-bark. Neighbouring species, the monk,\nthe brown-rump, the gold-rump show hardly any sexual differences.\n\nNumeric dimorphism follows dimorphism of mass; the family of one sort\nof butterfly of the Marquesas Islands is composed of one male and of\nfive females all different, so different that one long supposed them\ndistinct species. Here the advantage is obviously on the side of the\nmale lord of this splendid harem. Nature, profoundly ignorant of our\nsniveling ideas of justice and equality, vastly pampers certain animal\nspecies, while showing herself harsh and indifferent to others; now\nthe male is favoured, now the female, upon whom the greatest mass of\nsuperiorities is heaped, and upon whom likewise all the cruelties and\ndisdains. The hymenoptera include bees, bumble-bees, wasps, scolies,\nants, masons, sphex, bembex, osmies, etc. The place of these among\ninsects is analogous to that of the primates or even of man among\nmammifers. But while woman, not animally inferior to her male, remains\nbelow him in nearly all intellectual activities, among the hymenoptera\nthe female is both brain and the tool, the engineer, the working-staff,\nthe mistress, mother, and nurse unless, as in the case of bees,\nshe casts upon a third sex all duties not purely sexual. The males\nmake love. The male of the tachyte, a sort of wasp rather like the\nsphex, is about eight times smaller than the female, but he is a very\nardent small lover, marvellously equipped for the amorous quest; his\ncitron-coloured diadem is made of eyes, is a girdle of enormous eyes, a\nlighthouse whence he explores his horizon, ready to fall like an arrow\nupon the loitering female. When fecundated, the she-tachyte constructs\na cellular nest which she packs with the terrible mantis, of whom\nshe is the always victorious enemy; for knowing by incomprehensible\ninstinct whether she is about to lay a male or a female egg, she\naugments or diminishes, according to its sex, the larder for the larv\u00e6\nthe tiny male is allotted a dwarf provision.\n\nThe male hornet is notably smaller than the female, and the neuter\nhornet still smaller. The male pine lophyr is black, the female\nyellow. The male of the chalicodome or mason-bee is russet, the far\nmore beautiful female is a fine velvety black with deep violet wings.\nWhile the male loafs and bumbles she artfully and patiently rears the\nbig-domed clay nest where her offspring pass their larv\u00e6 days. This bee\nlives in colonies but the labour is individual, each doing her work\nwithout bothering about that of her neighbour, unless it be to rob her\nor spoil her construction, as in a civilization not unknown to us. The\nfemale mason is armed, but by no means aggressive.\n\nIn many hymenoptera only the female carries the sword, as in the case\nof the gilded wasp, gold-striped over blue or red, who can project a\nlong needle from her abdomen; the female philanthe, who is carnivorous,\nwhile the puerile unarmed male lives upon flower-pollen. Not\ndisdaining this natural dessert, the female philanthe will attack the\nnectar-loaded bee with her great dart, stab him and pump out his crop.\nOne may see the ferocious small animal knead the dead bee for half an\nhour, squeeze him like a lemon, drink him out like a gourd. Charming\nand candid habits of these winged topazes whirring among the flowers!\nFabre has excused this sadique gourmandizing: the philanthe kills bees\nin order to feed her larv\u00e6, who have, however, so great a repugnance\nfor honey that they die upon contact with it; it is therefore out of\nsheer maternal devotion that she intoxicates herself with this poison!\nAll things are, in nature, possible. But it might not be unreasonable\nto say that if the larv\u00e6 of the philanthe hate honey, it is because\ntheir greatly honey-loving mother has never allowed them a drop of it.\n\nOne of the rare cases of hymenoptera where the female appears inferior\nto the male is the mutille or ant-spider. The male is larger, has wings\nand lives on flowers. The female is apteral, but provided with a noisy\napparatus for attracting the male's attention. The male of the cynips\nof the oak-apple, the terminal cynips, has a blond body with large\ndiaphanous wings, the brown and black female is wingless. The male\nyellow cimbex slender, and brown with a spot of yellow, is so different\nfrom the round female with yellow belly and black head, that they were\nlong thought of different species.\n\nAnts like all social hymenoptera are, as one knows, divided into three\nsexes, winged males and females and wingless neuters. Fecundation takes\nplace in the air; the lovers fly up, join, fall enlocked, a golden\ncloud which the death of the males disperses, while the females, losing\ntheir wings, re-enter the house for egg-laying. The workers or neuters\nare generally smaller, as noticeably in the great red wood-ants, who\ndig their shelters in stumps. White ants or termites[1] show very\naccentuated dimorphism; the female or queen having a head almost as\nlarge as that of a bee, a belly the thickness of one's finger, long in\nproportion, and growing to be fifteen times as large as the rest of\nher body. This sexual tub lays continuously without any let-up at the\nspeed of an egg per second. The male, as in Baudelaire's vision of the\ngiantess, lives in the shadow of this formidable mountain of female\npower and luxury. Among the termites there is not a fourth sex but a\nfourth way of being sexless. There are soldiers as well as workers, the\nsoldiers having powerful mandibles mounted on enormous heads. All the\ntermite customs are extraordinary, and their conic nests reach a height\nhaving a relation to them that a house five or six hundred metres high\nwould have to us.\n\nOf mosquitoes and maringouin mosquitoes and all insects of that sort,\nthe females alone prick and suck the blood of mammifers. The males\nlive on flowers and tree-trunks. One sees them in forest alleys and\nclearings, moving regularly as in army man\u0153uvres, they are scouting,\nwatching for females; as soon as a male has caught one he seizes\nher, and disappears up into the air where the union is accomplished.\nOnly the male cricket has a noise-machine, only the female a hearing\nmechanism, situated in her front legs. Likewise it is the male\ngrasshopper who sounds. A love-call? People say so, but there is no\nproof. Grasshoppers live, male and female in complete promiscuity\nlined up on the tree-bark; such a quantity of music is unnecessary,\nand moreover if the female grasshopper isn't deaf, she has an almost\ninsensible hearing. It is probable that the song of insects and birds,\nif it is sometimes a love-call, is more often only a physiological\nexercise, at once necessary and disinterested. Fabre, who lived all\nhis life among the implacable noises of the Proven\u00e7al country-side,\nsees in \"the violin of the locust, in the bag-pipe of the tree-toad,\nin the cymbals of the cacan only a means suitable to expressing the\njoy of living, the universal joy which each animal species celebrates\nin its own fashion.\"[2] Why then is the female mute? It is certainly\nabsurd and profoundly useless to summon, in almost uninterrupted song,\nfrom morn till eve, a companion whom one sees seated beside one pumping\nthe juice out of a plane-tree; but it has perhaps not always been\nso. The two sexes may have had, in the past, habits more divergent.\nThe plane-tree which unites them in the same feeding-ground has not\nalways grown in Provence. The unending song may have been useful\nat a time when the sexes lived separate, and may have remained as\nevidence of ancient customs. It is moreover a commonly observed fact\nthat activities long survive the period of their utility. Man and all\nanimals are full of maniac gestures whose movement is only explicable\non the hypothesis that it had once a different intention.\n\nThe female spider is nearly always superior to the male in size,\nindustry, activity, and means of defence and attack. We will note their\nsexual habits later, but must observe here their particular cases of\ndimorphism. The Madagascar she-epeire is enormous, very handsome,\nblack, red, silver and gold. She rigs up a formidable web in her tree,\nnear which one sees always a modest and puerile skein, the work of a\nminuscule male keeping an anxious eye on the chance of sidling up to\nhis terrible mistress, and risking his wedding-death. The argyronete or\nwater-spider, returns the balance to the male, who is fatter, larger,\nand provided with longer limbs.\n\nThe male triumphs again, and more frequently, among coleoptera. The\nnasicom scarab, so called most aptly because he carries on his head a\nlong back-bending arched horn, has all his chest solidly armoured; the\nfemale has neither horn nor cuirass. Everyone knows the flying-stag or\nlucane (stag-beetle, bull-fly), enormous coleoptera which flies through\nthe summer evening buzzing like a top. He is feared for the bold\nappearance of his long mandibles which branch like stag's horns and\nwhich the uninstructed take for dangerous pincers. He is the male, his\nwar-gear pure ornament, as he lives inoffensively by sucking tree-sap.\nThe much smaller females are devoid of warlike apparatus, they are very\nfew in number, and it is in the excitement of searching for them that\nthe male, whose life is short and who knows it, whirls like a maniac,\nand bangs himself into our trembling ears. Here again one divines\nanimals who have changed their habits more quickly than their organs.\nThe old pirate has kept his daggers and axes, but abandoned, no one\nknows why, to vegetarian diet, he has lost all power to use them, he\nis merely a stage-super. But maybe this gear impresses the female?\nShe cedes more willingly to this hector who gives her the illusion of\nstrength, that is of the male's beauty.\n\nThe glow-worm is a real worm, but a larva rather than a definitive\nanimal. The male of this female is a perfect insect, provided with\nwings which he uses to seek in the darkness the female who shines more\nbrightly as she more desires to be looked at and mounted. There is a\nkind of lampyre of which both sexes are equally phosphorescent, one in\nthe air, the male, the other on the ground where she awaits him. After\ncoupling they fade as lamps when extinguished. This luminosity is,\nevidently, of an interest purely sexual. When the female sees the small\nflying star descend toward her, she gathers her wits, and prepares\nfor hypocrite defence common to all her sex, she plays the belle and\nthe bashful, exults in fear, trembles in joy. The fading light is\nsymbolic of the destiny of nearly all insects, and of many animals\nalso; coupling accomplished, their reason for being disappears and life\nvanishes from them.\n\nThe male cochineal has a long body with very delicate wings,\ntransparent and which at a distance look like those of a bee; he is\nprovided with a sort of tail formed of two silky strands. One sees\nhim flying over the nopals, then suddenly alighting on a female, who\nresembles a fat wood-louse round and puffy, twice as stout as the\nmale, wingless. Glued by her feet to a branch, with her proboscis\nstuck into it, continually pumping sap, she looks like a fruit, like\nan oak-apple or oak-gall on a peduncle for which reason R\u00e9aumur called\nher picturesquely the gall-insect. In certain species of cocides the\nmale is so small that his proportion is that of an ant strolling over\na peach. His goings and comings are like those of an ant hunting for\na soft spot to bite, but he is seeking the genital cleft, and having\nfound it, often after long and anxious explorations, he fulfills his\nfunctions, falls off and dies.\n\n\n[1] These are neuroptera or pseudo-neuroptera, but their habits bring\nthem noticeably near to social hymenoptera.\n\n[2] Souvenirs entomologiques, tome V. p. 256.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nSEXUAL DIMORPHISM\n\n\n      _II. Vertebrates:--Unnoticeable in fish, saurians,\n      reptiles.--The Bird World.--Dimorphism favourable to\n      males: the oriole, pheasants, the ruff.--Peacocks\n      and turkey-cocks.--Birds of paradise.--Moderate\n      dimorphism of mammifers.--Effects of castration on\n      dimorphism._\n\n\nII. Vertebrates.--Sexual differences are generally unnoticeable\nin fish, reptiles and saurians. They are accentuated when we come\nto superior vertebrates, to birds and mammals, but without ever\nattaining the extreme difference which characterizes a great number\nof arthropodes. In birds the disparity may be of colouring, size, or\nlength, form and curliness of the feathers; among mammals, of shape,\nhair, beard or horns. Sometimes the female bird is finer and stronger;\nthus stronger and of more powerful wing-spread in the case of the\nsecretary, the buzzard, the falcon, the ash-coloured vulture and many\nbirds of prey; more beautiful as in the Indian tumices.[1] One of them,\nthe gray phalarope, solves woman's dream in favour of the female,\nleaving her the brilliant colours; the male contents himself with more\nsober clothing and, not being able to lay, assumes at least the further\nmaternal cares: sitting on the eggs.\n\nIn general, nature is, in the bird world, favourable to the male.\nHe is a prince whose wife appears morganatic. Often smaller, as the\nfemale canepetiere (a sort of bustard), while the female garden\nwarbler is nearly always clothed as Cinderella. The birds which women\nhave massacred in millions in order to deck themselves as parrots and\njays, are male birds for the most part; their sisters bear more modest\nclothing, and one would say that this humility, become favourable to\ntheir species, had been developed by nature in provision of human\nstupidity and badheartedness. The gold-yellow oriole with black wings\nand tail, has for mate a brown sparrow with grey and greenish touches.\nThe silver pheasant (a false pheasant) has a black tuft standing up\nfrom his silver-white nape, his neck and back are of the same metal;\nhis dark belly has a blue shimmer, his beak is blue, his cheeks\nred, and his feet, red. The smaller female covers her belly sadly\nin a whitish chemise, her back is russet. In the true pheasant the\ndimorphism is still more marked. The large, proud male (we are dealing\nwith the common pheasant) who has no objection to being admired, is\ndeep green on nape and neck, copper-red with violet shimmer on back,\nflanks, belly and breast; his tail russet with black bands, a reddish\nbrown tuft spreads from his head, and the eye-circle is vivid red.\nThe much smaller female has an earthy plumage speckled with black.\nThe fair Golden Pheasant is really all golden over green. His yellow\ntail and wings and his saffron red belly complete this marvellous\nmasculine splendour. The female must content herself with burnt sienna\nback-covering which comes down onto her ochre-coloured belly.\n\nA little head projecting from an enormous neck-circle of white\nout-puffing feathers, middle sized body, and long legs. It is the\ncombatant (ruff-bird). One must add a tapering beak, ornamented at\nthe base by a sort of red grape. One can't say what colour the male\nis, he is of all colours. One leaves him white, and finds him red; he\nwas black, and is violet; later he will be speckled or banded in most\nvaried hues. His ruff is an ornament and a defence; he loses both it\nand his red grape with the passing of his fighting and loving season.\nThis instability of feathering accords curiously with the instability\nof his character; no animal is more irritable or cantankerous. One\ncan not keep him captive save solitary and in obscurity. The female,\nsomewhat less turbulent never changes her vestment, an invariable gray,\nwith a small amount of brown on the back.\n\nPeacocks and turkey-cocks alone can spread wheel-wise their fan-tails,\nas also the cock bustard; they alone are provided with great wattles.\nThe menure hen lifts, as the cock, a lyre of feathers, but it is a\ntarnished and mediocre imitation of her master's, which glistens in all\nshades rising and curving with such paradoxical grace.\n\nThe dimorphism of birds of paradise is even more marked than in the\npreceding cases. Nape citron-yellow, throat green, forehead black, back\nin burnt chestnut, the cock's tail has two long plumes, his flanks\ntwo fine tapering feathers of yellow-orange marked in red, which he\ncan spread branching or draw in at will; the dim female is without\nornament. The sifilet, a bird related to the birds of paradise has,\nfixed between eye and ear a pair of fine plumes twice the length of his\nbody, which float as he walks like white blue-shimmering streamers.\nIt is a lover's paraphernalia, which the female in consequence does\nwithout, while the male loses his after mating.\n\nThe dissemblance of barnyard cock and hen are well enough known to give\neveryone a clear idea of dimorphism in birds and to show difference of\ncharacters parallel with difference of form.\n\nThe dimorphism of mammals is even less often favourable to the\nfemale than is that of birds. One can cite but the sole example of\nthe American tapir where the male is smaller than the female.[2] The\ncontrary is nearly always the case. Sometimes the two sexes have an\nidentical appearance: cougars, cats, panthers, servals. If there is\na rule, it is difficult to formulate, for side by side with these\nfelines without sexual dimorphism, the sex of lions and tigers clearly\ndetermines their forms.\n\nAmong mammifers there are bizarre resemblances and baroque differences.\nThe he and she mole, at first sight, appear the same even to their\nexterior sexual organs, the female's clitoris is, like the male's\npenis, perforated to let the ureter pass through it. But here, as we\nshall see later, the morphologic resemblance by no means indicates\nsimilarity of characters; the female mole is excessively female.\nThere is baroque difference of sexes in the capped seal of Greenland\nand Terra Nova. The male can puff out his head-skin into an enormous\nhelmet. To what purpose? Possibly to scare na\u00efve enemies. True to her\nr\u00f4le of prot\u00e9g\u00e9 the female can not throw this bluff, which is used by\nChinese warriors, by certain insects like the mantis and by the cobra\namong serpents.\n\nShe-brown bears and she-kangaroos are smaller than males. In all the\ndeer tribes save reindeer the male alone is horned, and this is the\nby no means ridiculous origin of a very old joke, for the does are\nlascivious and are pleased to receive the attentions of a number of\nmales. The difference of bull and cow is distinct enough, that of\nstallion and mare less so, diminishing still further between dog\nand bitch, and being almost null among cats. In all cases where the\ndimorphism is slight, and is the direct consequence of the possession\nof sexual organs, castration inclines the male toward the female\ntype.[3] This is as apparent in cattle as in eunuchs or gelded horses.\nOne may see in this yet another proof of the primitivity of the female,\nsince the abstraction of testicles suffices to give the male that\nsoftness of form and character which typifies females. Masculinity\nis an augmentation, an aggravation of the normal type represented by\nfemininity; it is a progress, and in this sense it is a development.\nBut this reasoning, good for mammals, would be detestable among\ninsects, where the accentuation of type is nearly always furnished by\nthe female. There are no general laws in nature, unless they be those\nwhich regulate all matter. With the birth of life, the unique tendency\ndiverges at once upon multiple lines. Perhaps we must throw this point\nof divergence still further back, for a metal like radium seems to\ndiffer from other metals as much as an hymenopter from a gasteropod.\n\n\n[1] Bird, rather like quail.\n\n[2] Translator's note. O sinistre continent.\n\n[3] Castration of females seems, at least, among humans, to bring\nthem nearer the male type. Effects of castration vary, necessarily,\naccording to the age of the subject.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nSEXUAL DIMORPHISM\n\n\n      _III. Vertebrates (continued).--Man and\n      woman.--Characteristics and limits of human\n      dimorphism.--Effects of civilization.--Psychologic\n      dimorphism.--The insect world and the human.--Modern\n      dimorphism, basis of the pair.--Solidarity of the\n      human pair.--Dimorphism and polygamy.--The pair\n      favours the female.--Sexual \u00e6sthetics.--Causes of the\n      superiority of feminine beauty._\n\n\nIII. Vertebrates (_continued_)--_Man and woman_.-- Among primates\nsexual dimorphism is but little accentuated, especially when the male\nand female live the same life in the open air and share the same\nlabours. The male gorilla, very strong and very pig-headed, flees from\nno enemy; the female on the contrary is almost timid: when surprised\nin company with the male, she cries out, gives the alarm and escapes.\nBut attacked when alone with her offspring, she resists. One can easily\ndistinguish the male and female orang-outang, the male is larger with\nlonger more bristling hair, he alone has a Horace Greeley beard; in the\nfemale the patches of bald skin are much less callous. But the great\ndifference between the sexes in gorilla and orang-outang is in the\nmales having vocal sacks descending over the chest to the arm-pits.\n\nThanks to these air-reservoirs, these bag-pipe bags, inflatable at\nwill, the male can howl for a very long time and with great violence;\nthe females' sacks are very small. Other monkeys, notably howling\napes, are provided with these air-chambers, as are also certain other\nmammifers well known for the extravagance of their cries: polecats and\npigs. Birds and batrachians have analogous organs.\n\nDimorphism of men and women varies according to race or rather\naccording to species. Very feeble in most blacks and reds it is\naccentuated among Semites, Aryans, and Finns. But in man as in all\nanimals of separate sexes one must differentiate between the primary\ndimorphism, which is necessary and produced by the specialization of\nsexual organs, and the secondary dimorphism with which the relation\nof sex is less evident or wholly uncertain. Limited to the non-sexual\nelements, human dimorphism is very feeble. Almost null in infancy, it\ndevelops with approaching puberty, is maintained during the genital\nperiod, and diminishes, sometimes almost to vanishing point, in\nold age. It varies individually, even during the years of greatest\nreproductivity, in males feebly sexed and in women heavily sexed: that\nis to say there are men and women whose type closely approaches the\ntype-ideal formed by the fusion of sexes; neither one nor the other\nescapes the radical dimorphism imposed by the difference of sexual\norgans.\n\nLeaving aside exceptions, one observes a mediocre and constant\ndimorphism between men and women, which may be expressed as follows,\ntaking the male for type: the female is smaller and has less muscular\nforce, she has longer head hair, but in contrast the hair-system\nis very little developed over the rest of her body, excepting in\nthe armpits and pubis; aside from the teats, belly and hips, whose\nform is sexual, she is normally fatter than the male, and in direct\nconsequence of this, her skin is finer; her skull-capacity is\ninferior by about 15% (man=100; woman=85) and her intelligence, less\nspontaneous, inclines in general to activities entirely practical.\nThere is hardly any difference in the male and female skulls of every\ninferior human species, the contrary is true of civilized races.\nCivilization has certainly accentuated the initial dimorphism of man\nand woman--at least unless one of the very conditions of civilizations\nbe not precisely a notable difference, morphologic and psychologic,\nbetween the two sexes. In that case civilization has but accentuated\na native dimorphism. This is more probable, for one does not see how\ncivilization could have caused the dimorphism, not at least unless it\nhad already existed as a very strong tendency. Identical work, the\nsame utilization of instinctive activities have managed greatly to\nreduce dimorphism of forms, for example, in dogs and horses, but this\nhas had no influence on the psychologic dimorphism. Cultivation of\ninstinct has never been able to efface, in the most specialized breeds\nof dogs, the peculiar tonality which instinct receives from sex. It is\nimprobable that intellectual culture could fashion women in such a way\nas to rid them of the characteristic colour which sex imparts to their\nintelligence.\n\nOne uses the words instinct and intelligence to flatter prejudiced\npeople. Instinct is merely a mode of intelligence.\n\nDimorphism is a constant fact in the animal series. Favourable to\nthe male, favourable to the female, indifferent, it starts always\nfrom sexual necessity. There is a job to be done: nature divides it\nequally, or not, between male and female. She knows neither justice\nnor equality, and lays heavy burdens upon some, even to mutilation\nand premature death, while she gives to others liberty, leisures, and\nlong hours of pleasant life. It is necessary that the couple reproduce\na certain number of beings, equals of the unities of which itself is\nformed: all means are good which attain this end, and which attain\nit most speedily and most surely. Nature who is pitiless, is also\nin a hurry. Her imagination, always active, invents, ceaselessly,\nnew forms which she casts into life, in measure as the earlier born\nfinish their cycle. In superior mammals, and particularly in human\nspecies, division of labour is the means used by nature to insure the\nperpetuity of types. The female insect (leaving aside for the moment\nsocial hymenoptera) is provided at once with the organs of her sex and\nwith tools of her trade, with arms for guarding the race; the female\nhuman has ceded to man the tools and weapons, here merged in the one\ninstrument, muscle. Or rather, keeping her rights to the instrument,\nshe gives up the use of it. She is neither warrior, huntress, nor\nmason, nor butcher; she is the female, and the male is the rest. The\ndivision of labour supposes community. In order that the female may\ncede the cares for subsistence and defence to the male, the couple\nmust be established and permanent. The male osmie (sort of solitary\nbee) sees the light before his female; he could prepare the nest,\nor at least choose its situation, guide the female to it, work or\nwatch; but he belongs to a series of animals in which the males are\nmerely male organs, and all his r\u00f4le is contained in the gestures of\nmating. The couple is not yet formed. When it is formed, as in other\nkinds of insects, scarabs, copris, sisyphs, geotrupes, the work is\nequally shared between the two sexes. Here the parallel ends, for the\nsocial evolution of the insect has led to functional differentiations\nextremely complicated, and if not unknown, at least abnormal, to\nhumanity. Bee society has the female for base, human society has the\ncouple. They are organisms so different that no comparison of them is\npossible, or even useful. Only in ignorance of them, can one envy bees;\na community without sexual relations is really without attraction for a\nmember of the human community. The hive is not a society but a hatchery.\n\nThe couple is only possible with a dimorphism, real but moderate.\nThere must be a difference, especially of strength, in order for\nthere to be a true union, that is to say subordination. A couple\nformed of equal elements, like a society of equal elements, would be\nin a state of permanent anarchy; two creatures suffice for anarchy,\nas for war. A couple formed of elements too unequal, would, by the\ncrushing of the weaker, find itself reduced to tyrannized unity. Man\nand woman, as is the case with other primates and the carnivora (for\nmost herbivora are polygamous) represent two sexes made to live united\nand to share jointly in the cares for their offspring. The state of\ncouple, demanding a certain dimorphism, assures by it, its perpetuity.\nWhen the couple is dissolved, be it by polygamy or by promiscuity,\nas has happened among Mohammedans, and among Christians (a religion,\nlong powerful, functions both as race and as milieu) the dimorphism is\naccentuated, each of the elements escapes, in some measure, the strict\ninfluence of the other sex. Likewise if, in consequence of identical\neducation, the psychologic dimorphism is attenuated, even slightly--it\nnever is attenuated more than slightly--or if physical games reduce a\nlittle the physical differences, the couple is less easily formed and\ngrows less stable: hence adultery, divorces, excess of prostitution.\nIn all monogamous society, prostitution is the strict consequence: it\ndiminishes more or less in polygamous societies where the free women\nare rarer, it would only disappear completely in promiscuity, that is\nto say in universal prostitution.\n\nPolygamy, apart from its indirect influence, has, by the internment\nof women, a direct one on the dimorphism. Set apart from the active\nlife of the outer world, and even from the air and light, the female\nof the male polygamous human becomes whiter, whatever may have been\nher initial colour, fatter, heavier, and also more stupid and more\naddicted to all sorts of onanism. Among Indian Mussulmen the man and\nwoman appear to belong to different species, the man being so tanned,\nand the woman so colourless. Shut-in prostitutes of the Occident also\nlose colour, and one would with difficulty recognize two sisters in\nthe soft, bleached whore and the sun-reddened, hardy cow-girl. Woman's\nliberty also accentuates the dimorphism but by another process. Freed\nfrom the bridle of necessity, from the need of pleasing, woman escaped\nfrom the couple, exaggerates her feminism, she becomes again the female\nin excess, since it is in being more and more female that she has most\nchances of seducing the male, who is insensible to all other merit.\nAnd, inversely, a woman having man's education is, given equal beauty,\nless than any other a seductress.\n\nThus, while the disintegration of the couple augments the feminine\ndimorphism, the diminution of the natural dimorphism renders the\ntransformation of the couple more uneasy and more precarious. The\nhuman couple is an harmony difficult to realize, very easy to destroy,\nbut in measure as one destroys it one frees the elements which will,\nnecessarily, re-create it. (We will return later to polygamy, human\nand animal; but must here examine its relation to dimorphism. All the\nquestions treated in this book are, moreover, so interlocked, that it\nwill be difficult to prevent one or other of them from cropping up\napropos no matter what other. If the method is less clear it is perhaps\nmore loyal. Far from wishing to impart human logic to nature, one\nattempts here to introduce a little natural logic into the old classic\nlogic.)\n\nThe sole aim of the couple is to free the female from all care that is\nnot purely sexual, to permit her the most perfect accomplishment of her\nmost important function. The couple favours the female, but it favours\nalso the race. It is fully beneficial when the woman has acquired the\nright of maternal laziness. There is another reason for believing in\nthe legitimacy of such a sharing of useful work between the two members\nof the couple, it is that masculine work diminishes its femininity,\nwhile feminine work feminizes the males. In order that the necessary\nand moderate dimorphism persist it would be necessary if the woman is\nto take up male exercises that the male should assume all the accessory\nlabours of maternity. This would not be contrary to supple natural\nlogic; there are examples of it among batrachians and among birds. But\none does not see clearly either the utility or the possibility of such\na reversal of r\u00f4les in the human species. The duty of a being is to\npersevere in its being and even to augment the characteristics which\nspecialize it. The duty of woman is to keep and to accentuate her\n\u00e6sthetic and her psychologic dimorphism. The \u00e6sthetic viewpoint obliges\none for the thousandth time to put, but, happily, not to resolve the\nagreeable question of woman's beauty. One may judge when it is a matter\nof shape, of muscular energy, of respiratory amplitude: these can be\nmeasured and set down in figures. When it comes to beauty, it is a\nmatter of feeling, that is to say of what is at once deepest and most\npersonal in each one of us, and which is most variable between one man\nand another. However, the sexual element which enters into the idea\nof beauty, being here at its very root, since it is the question of\nwoman, the opinion of men is nearly unanimous: in the human couple, it\nis woman who represents beauty. All contrary opinion will be for ever\nconsidered as a paradox or as the most boring of sexual aberrations. A\nfeeling does not adduce its reasons, it has none. It has to have them\nlent to it. The superiority of feminine beauty is real, it has a sole\ncause, the unity of line. What makes woman the more beautiful is the\ninvisibility of her genital organs. The male organ, which is sometimes\nan advantage, is always a load, and always a blemish; it is made for\nthe race, not for the individual. In the male human, and precisely\nbecause of its erect attitude, the sex is the sensitive point par\nexcellence, and the visible point, it is the point of attack in hand to\nhand struggle, point of aim for the jet, obstacle for the eye, be it as\na roughness of surface, be it as a break in the middle of the line. The\nharmony of the female body is then geometrically, much more perfect,\nespecially if one consider the male and the female at the very hour\nof desire, at the moment, that is, when they present the most intense\nand most natural expression of life. In the woman, all movements are\ninterior, or visible only in the undulation of her curves, conserving\nthus her full \u00e6sthetic value, while the man, seeming at once to recede\ntoward the primitive states of animality, appears reduced, putting off\nall beauty, to the bare and simple condition of genital organ. Man,\nit is true, has his \u00e6sthetic compensation during pregnancy and its\ndeformations.\n\nOne must admit also that the human form has grave defects of\nproportion, and that they are more accentuated in the female than in\nthe male. In general the trunk is too long, and the legs, consequently,\ntoo short. One says that there are two \u00e6sthetic types in Aryan\nraces: one with long limbs and one with short limbs. Both types are\nindeed, easy enough to distinguish, but they rarely present their\ncharacteristics with sufficient distinction, moreover the first\nis rather rare: it is the one which sculptors have vulgarized by\namelioration. Compare a series of photographs of art with a series of\nphotos from the nude, and you have proof enough that the beauty of the\nhuman body is an ideologic creation. Take away the egoistic sentiment\nof the race, and the sexual delirium, and man would appear very\ninferior in harmonic plentitude to most of the mammifers; the monkey,\nhis brother, is, frankly, in\u00e6sthetic.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nSEXUAL DIMORPHISM AND FEMINISM\n\n\n      _Inferiority and superiority of the female\n      as shown in animal species.--Influence of\n      feeding on the production of sexes.--The female\n      would have sufficed.--Feminism absolute, and\n      moderate.--Pipe-dreams: elimination of the male and\n      human parthenogenesis._\n\n\nOnly after serious study of sexual dimorphism in the animal series\nmay one venture a few reflections on feminism. One has noticed, in\ncertain species, the female more beautiful, stronger, more active,\nmore intelligent; and one has noticed the opposite. One has seen the\nmale larger, or smaller; one has seen and will see him parasite, or\nprovider, permanent master of the couple or the group, fugitive lover,\na slave sacrificed by the female after the completion of her pleasure.\nAll attitudes, and the same ones, are attributed by nature to either of\nthe sexes; there is not, apart from the specific functions, a male or a\nfemale r\u00f4le. Both or either according to the decalogue of their specie\nput on the same costume, don the same mask, wield the same boar-spear,\ntool or sabre without one's being able to discover, at least not\nwithout going back to the beginning of things and digesting the\narchives of life, which of them is disguised and which acts \"according\nto nature.\"\n\nThe abundance of food, especially nitrogenized (? azotized) will\nproduce a greater number of females. With certain animals at\ntransformation one may act directly on individuals: tadpoles gorged\non mixed food, vegetables, larv\u00e6, chopped meat, have given an excess\nof females approaching totality (95 females to 5 males). On the other\nhand over-feeding tends to abolish stamens in plants, the stamens turn\ninto petals, suralimentation even moults the petals into leaves and\nthe buds into shoots. Richness of means, well-being, intensive feeding\nabolish sex, but the last to be affected is the female, which in sum,\nperseveres obscurely in the unsexed plant, forced back to its primitive\nmeans of reproduction, or to reproduction by slip cutting. If excessive\nalimentation tends to suppress the male, it would then appear that the\nseparation into two sexes is a means of diminishing the costs of the\ntotal being. The monoic type is a step toward this simplification of\nlabour; the female at a given moment eliminates her male organ, refuses\nto feed it, frees herself from the burden which has only a momentary\nutility. And, following this, provided in herself with an overabundance\nof all that maintains life, she divests herself of the specialized\nsexual apparatus, unsexes herself, that is to say, the identity of\ncontraries being here evident, she is sexed throughout all her parts:\n_tota femina sexus_.\n\nThe male is an accident: the female would have sufficed. Brilliant as\nare, in certain animal species, the destinies of the male, the female\nis primordial. In civilized humanity she is born in proportion greater\nas the civilization approaches a greater plenitude; and this very\nplenitude diminishes, proportionately, the general fecundity: whether\nwe treat of man or of apple-trees, the male element in- or de-creases\naccording to famine or abundance of nourishment. But the human race is\nnot sufficiently plastic for the variation of births to be ever very\ngreat between the two sexes; and no warm-blooded animal is sufficiently\nplastic for this cause, so active among vegetables, ever to lead to\nthe dissolution of the male. There are no natural laws, there are\ntendencies, there are limits: the fields of oscillation are determined\nby the pasts of species, trenches curving into cloisters which close,\nin nearly all directions, the alleys of the future.\n\nIt is a fact, from henceforth hereditary, that the male of the human\nspecies has centralized in himself most of the activities independent\nof the sexual motor. He alone is capable of disinterested works, that\nis to say of aims unconnected with the physical conservation of the\nrace, but without which civilization would be impossible, or at least\nvery different from what it is and from the idea which we have of its\nfuture. Doubtless in humanity, as in the rest of nature, the female\nrepresents the important sex. In utter need, as with the mason bee, she\ncould serve for the absolutely necessary work, to build the shelter,\nto gather the food, and the male might, without essential damage be\nreduced to the r\u00f4le of mere fecundating apparatus. The number of males\ncould, and even should in such case, diminish with due rapidity, but\nthen human society would in- or decline toward the type represented\nby that of social bees: continual labour being incompatible with\nthe periods of maternity, the feminine sex would atrophy, a single\nfemale would be elevated to the dignity of queen and mother, the\nrest of the population would work stupidly for an ideal exterior to\nits own sensibility. Even more radical transformations would not be\nanti-natural. Virgin-birth might establish itself: certain males could\nbe born in each century, as happens in the intellectual order, and they\ncould fecundate the generation of loins, as genius fecundates the\ngeneration of minds. But humanity, by the richness of its intelligence,\nis less than other animal species submitted to causal necessity; by\nconstant squirming in its nets, it has managed to displace a cord here\nand there, and makes now and again the unexpected movement. The coming\nof males once in a century would be unnecessary if some mechanical\ndevice were found for exciting the life of woman's eggs, as one excites\nthose of the sea-anemone. If a few males were born from time to time, by\nan atavistic quirk of nature, they could be exhibited as curiosities,\nas we now exhibit hermaphrodites.\n\nThe feminist ideal leads us to these pipe-dreams. But if it comes\nto destroying the couple and not to re-forming it, if it comes to\nestablishing a vast social promiscuity, if feminism resolves itself\ninto the formula: free-woman in free-love, it is even more chimerical\nthan all the chimzera which have at least their analogy in the\ndiversity of animal habits. Human parthenogenesis is less absurd: it\noffers an order, and promiscuity is a disorder. But social promiscuity\nis impossible by the further reason that woman, the more feeble,\nwould be crushed by it. She struggles against man only, thanks to the\nprivileges which man concedes her, when troubled by sexual inebriety,\nintoxicated and drowsy with the fumes of desire. The factitious\nequality which she claims would re-establish her ancient slavery, on\nthe day when most or all women wish to enjoy it: that is still another\npossible solution of the feminist crisis. However one looks at it, one\nsees the human couple re-establish itself ineluctably.\n\nIt is very difficult, from the standpoint of natural logic, to\nsympathize with moderate feminism, one could more easily accept\nfeminism in excess. For if there are in nature numerous examples of\nfeminism, there are very few of an equality of the sexes.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nLOVE-ORGANS\n\n\n      _Sexual dimorphism and parallelism.--Sexual\n      organs of man and of woman.--Constancy of sexual\n      parallelism in the animal series.--External\n      sexual organs of placentary mammifera.--Form and\n      position of the penis.--The penial bone.--The\n      clitoris.--The vagina.--The teats.--Forked prong\n      of marsupials.--Sexual organs of reptiles.--Fish\n      and birds with a penial organ--Genital organs of\n      arthropodes.--Attempt to classify animals according\n      to the disposition, presence, absence of exterior\n      organs for reproduction._\n\n\nSexual dimorphism, physic as well as psychic, has evidently one sole\ncause, sex; nevertheless the organs which differ least from male and\nfemale among species which differ most, are precisely the sexual\norgans. That is, they are rigorously made the one for the other, and\nthe accord in this case must be not only harmonic, but mechanical\nand mathematical. They are cog-wheels which must bite one on the\nother with exactitude, be it, as in birds, that there is but an\nexact superposition of two orifices, be it, as in mammals that the\nkey must enter the keyhole. There is a dimorphism, but it is that of\nthe mould to the cast, of the scabbard to the blade; for the parts\nwhere the contact is less strict, the parallelism is nevertheless\nquite sensible and quite apparent. This similitude in difference\nhas struck philosophers as well as anatomists in all ages from the\nlogical insinuations of Aristotle to Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's theory\nof analogies. Galien had already noted certain analogies, more or less\nexact: greater labia, and foreskin, ovaries and testicles, scrotum and\nmatrice. He says, textually: \"All parts of man are found in woman;\nthere is but one point of difference, woman's parts are interior, man's\nexterior, parting from the perineal region. Imagine those which first\npresent themselves to mind, no matter which, unfold woman's or fold\nman's inward and you will find either a replica of the other. Suppose\nfirst man's organs pushed into him and extending interiorly between the\nrectum and the vessie; in this supposition the scrotum would occupy\nthe place of the matrice, with the testicles placed at each side of\nthe exterior orifice. The prong of the male would become the throat\nof the cavity thus produced, and the skin of the prong's extremity,\ncalled the foreskin would form the vagina. Suppose, inversely, that\nthe matrice should turn inside out and fall outside, would not its\ntesticles (ovaries) of necessity, find themselves inside its cavity and\nwould not it envelop them as a scrotum? Would not the throat, hidden up\nto the perineum, become the male member, and the vagina, which is but\na cutaneous appendix of the throat, the foreskin?\" This is the passage\nwhich Diderot has transposed and put _au courant_ with science in his\n_R\u00eave d'Alembert_. This page of literary anatomy retains its expressive\nvalue: \"Woman has all man's parts, the sole difference is like that\nbetween a purse hanging outside and a purse stuffed inside; a female\nfoetus resembles a male foetus, so as to deceive anyone; the part which\noccasions the error, sinks in the female foetus in measure as the purse\nextends inward; it is never obliterated to the point of losing its\nprimitive form; it also is the mover of pleasure, it has its gland, its\nforeskin, and one notes at its extremity a point which appears to have\nbeen the orifice of a urinary canal which has closed; there is in man\nfrom the anus to the scrotum, the interval called the perin\u00e6um, and\nfrom the scrotum to the end of the prong, a seam which looks like the\nresewing of a basted vulva; women with excessive clitoris, have beards,\neunuchs have not, their thighs increase, their hips widen, their knees\nround out, and in losing the characteristic organization of one sex\nthey seem to return to the characteristic conformity of the other....\"\nIn terms less literary, one considers as homologous, in man and woman,\nthe ovary and the testicle, lesser labia, clitoridian cap and sheath,\nthe hanging foreskin; the greater labia and the envelope of the\nscrotum; clitoris and penis; the vagina and the prostatic utricle. One\nwill find the details of these analogies in special works, they can not\nbe given here with scientific precision. The sole point to hold on to\nis that the two sexes not only in man, and not only in mammifers, but\nin nearly all the animal and vegetable series, are but a repetition of\nthe same creature with specialization of function. This specialization\nmay extend to functions other than sexual, to work (bees, ants) to war\n(termites). The soldier termite is extraordinary; he is not more so\nthan the male.\n\nThe sexual parallelism is constant among nearly all vertebrates and\narthropodes; it extends to identity among hermaphrodite mollusks if one\nthen compare not two sexes but two individuals. It extends, for each\nsex considered separately, along the whole zo\u00f6logical chain. Parting\nfrom link animals which separate into two parts, one sees the sexual\norgans design themselves in the form wherein they arrive in higher\nanimals of great complexity, such that, in acquiring differences of\nform and position they retain a remarkable stability of structure; one\nwould say almost of identity in marsupials, reptiles, fish, birds. For\nclarity one must proceed from the known to the unknown; man is the\nfigure to whom one may compare necessarily the observations on other\nanimals.\n\nThere is no lack of point in knowing the normal love-mechanism, since\nmoralists pretend to regulate its movements. Ignorance is tyrannic; the\ninventors of natural ethics knew very little of nature: this permitted\nthem to be severe; for no definite piece of knowledge interfered with\nthe certitude of their gestures. One becomes more discreet when one\ncontemplates the prodigious picture of the erotic habits of the animal\nworld, and even entirely incompetent to decide flatly, yes or no,\nwhether a fact is natural or unnatural.\n\nMan is a placentary mammifer: by this title his genital organs and\ntheir mode of employ are common to him and to all hairy animals having\nteats and an umbilicus. He is not normally covered all over with hair,\nbut there is hardly a spot on his body where hairs may not sprout,\nand both sexes are hairy often with extreme abundance in pubis and\narm-pits. The male and active organ of mammifers is the penis, usually\ncompleted exteriorily by the testicles. The penis is, at once, the\nexcreting _conductor_ of urine and sperm; an analogous relation exists\nin the female, and it is with exactitude that these mingled organs\nhave been called genito-urinary or more recently, uro-genital; it is\nthe same in all the animal series, the urethra opens exteriorily or it\nends, as in birds, in a cloaca, vestibule, for all the excretions.\n\nThe penis of two-handed (bimanous) creatures descends freely, it hangs\nbefore the pubis in quadrumanes, and in chiroptera (bats). The bat\nis strangely like man, and like primates in general: five fingers\nto the hand, one a thumb, five fingers on the foot, pectoral teats,\nmensual flux, free penis; it is a little caricature of man, abrupt and\nfrightened in its evening flight about houses. Among flesh-eaters,\nruminants, pachyderms, solipedes and several other families of\nmammals, the penis is sheathed in a scabbard which stretches along the\nbelly; thus preserved against accidents and insect stings, while its\nsensibility is maintained intact. Voyagers, according to Buffon, have\nseen Patagonians trying to get like results by tying the 'foreskin\nabove the gland, like a bag with a cord. Thus man's hand permits him\nto improve or mutilate his body. Mutilation and sexual deformations,\ncircumcision among Semites and savages, excision of Russian illuminati,\ntransversal perforation of the gland, surgical flattening of the\nprong, are very frequent. The hand of the chiroptera is shackled, that\nof quadrumanes has only one sexual r\u00f4le, masturbation. It may also\nserve as a shield against external danger; many quadrumanes, better\nprotected, make the same use of their tail when they curl it between\ntheir legs, this is sometimes a psychological gesture, female modesty\nor refusal, sometimes a gesture of preservation. The movements of\nVenus modest, of man coming naked from his bath, have no other origin.\nMonkeys when they stop moving about, place their hands on their sexual\nparts. The Polynesians, before Christianity, had the custom when\nstanding upright, of holding their scrotum in both hands with the prong\nhanging between the fingers: the posture of the wild dandy. Certain\nspecies lack scrotum as Pliny had already remarked: _Testes elephanto\nocculti_. In camels the testicles roll beneath the skin of the groin;\nrats' testicles are internal, but emerge in the rutting season and\nassume an enormous development. Apes often have the pouch-skin blue,\nred or green, like the other bald parts of their bodies.\n\nCamels, dromedaries and cats have the end of the penis bent backward\n(this explains the tom-cat's manner of urination), the tip does not\nstraighten itself or point forward save in erection. Not only the prong\nbut the sheath of rodents points backward and ends near the anus, and\nin front of it. The penis is slender in ruminants, and in wild boar;\nthick and round in solipedes, elephant, lamentin (sea-cow, manatee);\nthick and conic in the dolphin, cylindrical in rodents and primates.\nThe gland, which takes all intermediary forms between ball and point,\nhas in the rhinoceros the shape of a gross fleur-de-lys. In the cats\nsmall spikes rise and point toward the base, and in agouti and gerboa\nthere are holding flanges which grip the organs of the female.\n\nThe prong of many mammifers, a real member, is held up by an interior\nbone, formed at the cost of the conjunctive partition which separates\nthe two hollow chambers. This penial bone is found in many quadrumanes,\nchimpanzees, orang-outangs, most carnivora, dogs, wolves, felines,\nmartin, otter, badger, among rodents, beaver, seal, and cetaceous\nanimals; it is lacking in ruminants, pachyderms, insectivora, toothless\nanimals. In man one sometimes finds a trace of it in the form of a\nslender prismatic cartilage. In the enormous penis of the whale it\nresembles a bell-clapper. The penial bone diminishes the erectile\ncapacity of the prong in stopping the development of the hollow\nchambers, but it assures the rigidity of the member, obtained in the\nother penial type by the inflow of blood which causes the swelling.\nMan ought to have the penial bone; he has lost it in the course of\nages, and this is doubtless fortunate, for a permanent rigidity, or one\ntoo easily obtained would have increased, to madness, the salacity of\nhis species. It is perhaps for this reason that great apes are rare,\nalthough they are strong and agile. This view would be confirmed if the\npenial cartilage were found regularly in very lustful men or with a\ncertain frequency among human races most addicted to eroticism.\n\nThe penis is found in woman in the form of clitoris. This is almost as\nvoluminous as a true penis in quadrumanes; it is atrophied in other\nspecies. It varies individually in women, certain of them being in\nthis respect quadrumanes. Sometimes the clitoris is pierced for the\npassage of the urethra (certain apes and the mole); a slight trace of\nthis meatus is seen at the head of the woman's clitoris. In species\nwhose males possess a penial bone the female has often a clitoridian\nbone; nothing more clearly affirms the parallelism of these two organs,\nwhereof one serves only for pleasure, after having been, perhaps in a\nlong distant era, when man romped among marine invertebrates, a real\ninstrument of fecundation. The greater labia, limiting the general\norifice of the vulva, exist only in woman and, less markedly, in the\nfemale orang-outang. Circular in rodents, transversal in the unique\ncase of the hyena, a heteroclite animal, the vulva is longitudinal in\nall other mammifers. Completely imperforate in the mole the vagina is\nmore or less closed by a membrane, which the male penis tears in first\nencounter, in women, and several quadrumanes, certain small monkeys,\nthe marmoset, certain carnivora, the bear, hyena, white-bellied seal,\nthe daman (nailed); it is replaced in dog, cat, ruminants by an annular\ngripping between the vagina and the vestibule. The maidenhead is,\ntherefore, not peculiar to human virgins, and there is no glory in a\nprivilege which one shares with the marmoset.\n\nMenstruation is found in quadrumanes, in bats; other female mammals\nshow an emission of blood, which is, however, limited to the rutting\nseason. The position of teats is variable, as also their number, they\nare in the groin in ruminants, solipedes, cetaces; ventral in dogs,\npigs; pectoral and always two in nearly all primates, chiroptera,\nelephants, and sirenians, who for this reason, doubtless, reminded the\nsailors of the ancient world of their women.\n\nOther particularities and correspondences are examined in the next\nchapter which deals with the mechanism of love, and the method used by\ndivers animals to make use of their organs according to the commandment\nof nature. There remain for consideration the lesser mammals and other\nvertebrates whose fecundatory instruments resemble those of mammifera.\n\nIn man and other placentaires, the forked prong is a teratological fact\nonly encountered in incomplete double monsters. It is, on the contrary,\nthe most general form among marsupials. A double vagina corresponds\nto this penis, double at least from the gland, thus in kangaroo and\nopossum. This original biparity is found regularly in the uterus of\ncertain placentaires, hares, rats, bats, carnivora. The uterus of\nmarsupials is simple without narrowing of the throat. One knows that\ntheir young stay there but a short time, that they are born not as\nfoetus but as germs, and complete their development in the marsupial\npouch. An opossum, destined to attain about the size of a cat, is at\nbirth about bean-size. These animals, therefore, differ profoundly from\nother mammifera.\n\nSome reptiles, like crocodiles and most chelonians, have only a\nsimple prong; some tortoises have a forked tip to the penis, it is\nmany-branched in the trionix, carnivorous tortoise rightly called\nferocious. The saurians and ophidians can deploy outside the cloaca\ntwo erectile prongs; in saurians, lizards, they are short, round and\nbristle with prickles. The females have no clitoris save when the male\nhas a single prong; at least the clitoris is only well constituted in\ncrocodilians and chelonians.\n\nCopulation is unknown to batrachians, whose contact is nevertheless\nvery dose; it is unknown to most fish, whose amours are without even\ncontact. Certain selacians however (dogfish, skates), and perhaps also\none or two teleostians (bony fish), and the lamprey, have a copulating\norgan which really enters the organ of the female.\n\nThe birds which have a penis or an erectile and retractile tubercle\nwhich serves, are the ostrich, the cassowary, the duck, the swan,\nthe goose, the bustard, the mandou and certain neighbouring species;\ntheir hens have a ditoridian organ. The ostrich has a true prong, five\nor six inches in length, cut by a groove which serves as conduit for\nthe seminal liquor; it is enormous in erection and tongue-shaped. The\nostrich hen has a clitoris and coition occurs exactly as among mammals.\nThe swan and duck are also very well provided with an erectile tubercle\nsuited for copulation, and this explains at once the story of Leda, the\nlibidinous reputation of the duck, and his exploits in the barn-yards,\nveritable abbeys of Th\u00e9l\u00e8me.\n\nOne can not here describe the copulative organs of arthropodes,\ncomprising insects properly so-called. Enough to note that, however\nvaried their forms, they behave very much as those of superior\nmammifers and are composed of two essential parts, the penis, sheathed\nin a penial scabbard, and the vagina, prolonged by the copulative pouch\nwhich receives the penis. Fish and birds, lacking external apparatus\nare reduced to methods which will be later examined. Hermaphrodite\nmollusks, with a marvellously complicated sexual apparatus, ought also\nto be studied separately. Finally, the amorous habits of insects form a\nseries of illustrative chapters.\n\nFrom here, taking count only of exterior male organs or of organs\nwhich, internal when at rest, emerge at the moment of coition, one may\nattempt a vague and new classification of animal series.\n\n1. Presence of penis, or of an erectile copulating tubercle: placentary\nmammals from man to marsupials exclusively; certain runners and\npalmipedes; crocodilians, chelonians, certain selacians, arthropodes,\nthe rotifera.\n\n2. Presence of a forked penis: marsupials, saurians, chelonians;\nscorpionides.\n\n3. Disjunction of the secreting apparatus from the copulating\napparatus: spiders, dragon-flies.\n\n4. Absence of penis, copulation by contact: monotremes (omithoryncus),\nbirds, batrachians, crustaceans.\n\n5. No copulation; exterior fecundation of eggs: fish, echinoderms.\n\n6. Indirect transmission of sperm with or without contact (by the\nspermatophore): cephalopodes, orthoptera.\n\n7. Hermaphrodism: mollusks, tuniciers, worms.\n\n8. Monagamous reproduction: protozoaires, and certain of the last\nmetazoaires.\n\nOne needs many discriminations and exceptions to make this table more\nprecise. It is however, not untrue, although incomplete and lacking\nnuances, and it permits one to see: that the separation of sexes\nby well characterized copulating apparatus is not a sign of animal\nsuperiority, although it is found among the most gifted animals; that\nbirds with their genital system merely sketched in, seem to represent\na type elevated in nature by the simplicity of organs and it means:\nthat the sexes in animals who are without copulation either profound\nor superficial, tend, as in fish, to remain without difference; that\nall other modes of copulation are attributed exclusively to inferior\nspecies; that hermaphrodism was but a trial limited to a category of\ncreatures lacking everything not exclusively designed for the process\nof reproduction; that the absence of sex characterizes only the\nearliest forms of life.\n\nIf one considers no longer the mode of copulation but the apparatus\nitself, with the male part, penis, and the female part, vagina, one\nsees clearly that these extremely particular organs are hardly found\nwell designed save in two great branchings where the intelligence is\nmost developed: mammifera and the arthropodes. There might be, perhaps,\na certain correlation between complete and profound copulation and the\ndevelopment of the brain.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nTHE MECHANISM OF LOVE\n\n\n      1. _Copulation: vertebrates.--Its very numerous\n      varieties and its specific fixity.--The apparent\n      immorality of Nature.--Sexual ethnography.--Human\n      mechanism.--Cavalage.--The form and duration of\n      coupling in divers mammifers.--Aberrations of\n      sexual surgery, the ampallang.--Pain as a bridle\n      on sex.--Maidenhead.--The mole.--Passivity of\n      the female.--The ovule, psychological figure of\n      the female.--Mania of attributing human virtues\n      to animals.--The modesty of elephants.--Coupling\n      mechanism in whales, seals, tortoises.--In certain\n      ophidians and in certain fish._\n\n\n1. COPULATION: VERTEBRATES.--Forberg's \"Figur\u00e6 Veneris\" exhausts\nin forty-eight illustrations the manners of coupling accessible\nto the human species; the erotic manuals of India imagine certain\nfurther variants and voluptuous perfectionings, but many of these\njuxtapositions are unfavourable to fecundation, and a majority of\nthem have only been invented in order to escape too logical and too\nmaterial a result. Animals surely, the most liberated as well as the\nmost stupid, are ignorant of all modes of conjugal fraud; needless to\nsay no dissociation can be made in their rudimentary minds between\nthe sexual sensation and the maternal, between sexual and paternal\nsensation, much less. The ingenuity of each specie is small, but the\nuniversal ingenuity of total fauna is immense, and there are few human\nimaginings among those which we term perverse and even monstrous which\nare not the right and the norm in one or another region of animal\nempire. Practices very analogous to (although very different in aim\nfrom) divers onanist practices, to spermatophagia, even to sadism are\nimposed on innocent beasts and represent for them familial virtue\nand chastity. A physician, who has not obtained much glory thereby,\ninvented or proposed artificial fecundation: he was imitating spiders\nand dragon-flies; M. de Sade liked to imagine ruttings where blood and\nsperm flowed simultaneously; mere kindergarten manual (Berquinade) if\none contemplate, not without bewilderment, the habits of an ingenious\northopter, the praying mantis, the insect which prays to God, la\nprego-Diou as the Proven\u00e7als call her, the prophetess as the Greek\nsaid! Baudelaire's verses ridiculing those who wish\n\n    \"aux choses de l'amour m\u00ealer l'honn\u00eatet\u00e9\"\n    Mix seemliness into affairs of Love\n\nhave a value not only moral but scientific. In love everything is just,\neverything is noble, as soon as, among the maddest animals, it is a\nplay moved by the desire of creating. It is more difficult doubtless to\njustify fantasies which are merely for the purpose of avoiding trouble,\nespecially if one allow oneself to be blinded by the idea of specific\nfinality; one may however affirm, and one will say nothing more about\nthe matter, that animals are not ignorant either of sodomy or of\nonanism and that they cede to them by necessity, in the absence of\nfemales. S\u00e9nancour has written wise and bold pages upon these practices\namong humans.\n\nSexual ethnography hardly exists. The scattered data on this subject,\nthough extremely important, have not been co-ordinated. That would be\na small matter. They have not even been verified. One knows nothing of\ncoital practices save what life teaches one, questions of this sort\nbeing difficult to ask, and answers being always equivocal. There is\nhere an entire science which has been corrupted by Christian prudery.\nAn order was issued long ago and is still obeyed; one has concealed\nall that unites, sexually, man and animal, everything that proves\nthe unity of origin for all that lives and feels. Physicians who\nhave studied this question have known only the abnormal, the malady:\nit would be imprudent to base conclusions on general practices from\ntheir observations. The best source, at least for Europeans, is still\nthe casuist writings. From the enumeration of sins against chastity\ngathered by professional confessors, one could, after some study,\ndeduce the secret sexual habits of civilized humanity. But one must\ntake care not to retain either the old idea of sin, or the idea of the\nsame under modern cloak, of fault, crime or error. Practices common to\nan entire ethnic group can not be judged to be other than normal, it\nmatters little whether they have been stigmatized by the apologists of\nright living. What is good is what is and what will continue to be. It\nis known that bimanes and quadrumanes are very libertine, and that this\nis in accord with their physical suppleness and their intelligence.\nIt is a fact undeniable and insurmountable, even if annoying. The\nhuman couple has drawn from this tendency a thousand erotic fantasies,\nwhich, in being disciplined have ended in the creation of a veritable\nsexual method, be it disinterested pleasure, be it preservation\nagainst fecundity; is this of no importance? How can one lecture about\ndepopulation if one lose sight of this primordial fact? What can\nnormal or patriotic reasoning do against an instinct which has become\nor rebecome an intelligent and conscious practice, bound to what is\ndeepest in human sensibility? It is very difficult, especially when\ndealing with man, to distinguish between normal and abnormal. What is\nthe normal; what the natural? Nature ignores this adjective, and one\nhas dragged out of her bosom many illusions, perhaps in irony, perhaps\nin ignorance.\n\nIt is not perhaps very useful to describe human cavalage, which is not\nstrictly a cavalage, as the woman is attacked from the front. Veritable\ncavalage has been, as one knows, praised by Lucretius, although, it\nhas, and this detracts nothing from its merits, an air frankly animal;\nit is the form of love called by the theologians _more bestiarum_ and\nby Lucretius _more ferarum_ which is the same thing:\n\n    Et quibus ipsa modis tractetur blanda voluptas,\n    Quoque permagni refert; nam more ferarum,\n    Quadrupedumque magis ritu, plerumque putantur\n    Concipere uxores, quia sic loca sumere possunt,\n    Pectoribus positis, sublatis semina lumbis.\n\nThis mode, considered by Lucretius as the more favourable to\nfecundation, is that of most mammifers, of nearly all insects and\nof many animal families. Apes great and small know no other. The\narchitecture of their bodies would make face to face copulation very\ndifficult. One must not forget that their upright position is never\nmore than momentary, even in orangs and chimpanzees; they are not\nmuch better equilibrated than bears, much less so than kangaroos,\nmarmosets[1] and squirrels; even when they stand up one feels that\nthey have four feet. Love among them is not free from the seasons,\nand although they are libidinous all the year, they do not seem fit\nfor generation save through the weeks of their rutting time: then\ntheir genital organs acquire a permanent rigidity; the udders of the\nfemales, ordinarily as small as those of the males, only swell during\nthis period. There is, therefore, a vast difference, from the sexual\nstandpoint, between man and the great apes, his anatomic neighbours.\nMan even in the humblest species has mastered love and made it his\ndaily slave, at the same time that he has varied the accomplishments\nof his desire and made possible its renewal after brief interval. This\ndomestication of love is an intellectual work, due to the richness and\npower of our nervous system, which is as capable of long silences as of\nlong physiological discourses, of action and of reflection. The brain\nof man is an ingenious master which has managed, without possessing any\nvery evident superiority, to get out of the other organs work of the\nmost complicated sorts, and most finely-sharpened pleasures; its (the\nbrain's) mastery is very feeble in quadrumanes and other animals; it is\nvery strong in insects as will be explained in a following chapter.\n\nOne need not wait for a minute description of the exterior love\nmechanism of all animal species. It would be long, difficult and\nboresome. A few characteristic examples will be enough. The duration\nof the coition is extremely variable, even in superior mammals. Very\nslow for dogs, coupling is but a thunderclap for the bull, the ram's is\ncalled the \"lutte\" (strife). The bull merely enters and leaves, and it\nis a spectacle for philosophers, for one understands immediately that\nwhat drives the fiery beast at his female is not the lure of a pleasure\ntoo swift to be deeply felt, but a force exterior to the individual\nalthough included in his organism. By its long grievous duration the\ncoition of dogs leads to analogous reflections\n\n    In triviis quum s\u00e6pe canes discedere aventes\n    Diversi cupidine summis ex viribus tendunt.\n                                         --LUCRETIUS.\n\nThis is because the dog's penis contains a hollow bone giving passage\nto the urethra. Around this bone are gathered the erectile tissues\nwhereof one, the node of the prong, swells disproportionately during\ncoition and prevents the separation of the two animals after the act is\naccomplished. They remain a long time uncomfortable, not managing to\nfree themselves until long after their desire has turned to disgust,\ngrotesque and lamentable symbol of many a human liaison.\n\nOur other familiar animal, the cat, is not more happy in his\naffections. His penis is indeed furnished with thorns, with homy\npapilla toward the tip, and the intromission as well as the separation\nis only accomplished with groans. What one hears at night are not\ncries of voluptuousness but of suffering, the bowlings of a beast\nwhom nature has caught in the trap. This does not prevent the female\nfrom being very enterprising; responding to the cries of the pursuing\nmale she excites him in a hundred ways, biting at neck and belly\nwith an insistence which has, they say, provided a metaphor in the\nerotic vocabulary. Biting the neck is much more curious, as it is of\na much less direct intention. Bitches also bite the neck of the dog\nin prelude. For near the neck is situated the bulb, original knot of\nnerves governing the secret parts and the genital region.\n\nThe pain which accompanies sexual acts ought to be differentiated,\nwith precision, from passive suffering. It is very possible (women can\ntestify to the fact) that sighs and even cries emitted at such time are\nthe expression of a mixed sensation, wherein joy has almost as great\na part as suffering. We must not judge feline exclamations from the\nshrillness of timbre; tortured by the male prong the she-cats howl, but\nthey await the supreme benediction. The rigour of the first approaches\nis perhaps but the promise of deeper delights: at any rate some women\nhave thought so.\n\nOne knows that a cat's tongue is rough: so is the tongue and all the\nmucous surfaces of negroes. This roughness of surface notably augments\nthe genital pleasure, as men who have known negresses testify. It has\nbeen perfected. The Dyaks of Borneo pierce the extremity of the penis,\nthrough the navicular channel and fit into it a pin to both ends of\nwhich are attached tufts of stiff hair in the form of a brush. Before\nsurrender the women by certain tricks and certain traditional gestures\nindicate the length of the brush desired. In Java one replaces this\napparatus known as the ampallang, by a sheath of goat skin, more or\nless thick. In other countries there are incrustations of little\npebbles, which give the gland the shape of an embossed mace; and these\npebbles are sometimes replaced by tiny bells, so that the men make in\nrunning a sound like mules, and attentive women can judge their value\naccording to the intensity of their sexual music. These customs, noted\nby de Paw among certain aborigines of America, have not been recently\nobserved, doubtless because the Christian modesty of modern travellers\nhas obliterated their eyes and ears at convenient moments. No custom\nis abolished save in the face of some other custom more useful to\nsensuality, and the imagination seems rather to advance than to recede\nin these matters. It is true that the inventors hide themselves, even\nin savage countries, sexual morality tending toward uniformity.\n\nThese artifices, which appear curious to us, have certainly been\ncreated at the instigation of women, since theirs is the profit of\nthem. Males have submitted to them, happy no doubt to be delivered at\nthe price of passing pain from the terrible lasciviousness of their\nfemales. Racked and flayed by such instruments the women ought, at\nleast for a few days, to flee the male and brood in silence upon\ntheir luxurious memories. Chinese and Japs, whose women are likewise\nlascivious, are familiar with analogous means; to dominate their\ncompanions they have also invented ingenious onanist methods which\ngive them time to attend to their own affairs, while peace reigns\nover their hearthstones. In the strange dissemblance between human\nraces the Aryans have, for the same purpose, made use of the religious\ncheck-rein, of prayer, of the idea of sin, and finally of liberty, that\nis to say of the pleasure of vanity which bewilders the woman, and\ninvites her to please someone else before satisfying herself.\n\nWoman is not the only mammal for whom, apart from the peculiar form\nof the penis, the first approaches are painful; but there is perhaps\nno female who has better reason than the mole for fearing the male.\nHer vulva, exteriorly unperforated, is covered by hide, downy as\nthat of the rest of her body; she must, to be fecundated, undergo\na veritable surgical operation. One knows how these beasts live,\nburrowing in search of food, in long subterranean galleries, of which\nthe wastage, pushed up here and there forms the mole-ridge. In rutting\ntime, forgetting his hunting, the male starts in quest of a female; as\nsoon as he divines her, he starts digging in her direction, furiously\nexcavating the hostile earth. Feeling herself hunted, the female flees.\nHereditary instinct makes her tremble before the tool which shall\nopen her belly, before the redoubtable gimlet-armed penis which has\nperforated her mother and all her female ancestors. She flees, digs,\nas the male advances, cross-hatching tunnels in which her persecutor\nmay end by losing his way; but the male also is educated by heredity:\nhe does not follow the female but circles round her, heads her off,\nends by catching her in an impasse, and while she is still ramming her\nblind muzzle into the earth, he grips, operates, fecundates. Charming\nemblem of modesty, this small, soft, black-pelted beast. What human\nvirgin would show such constancy in the defence of her virtue? Who,\nalone in the night, in a subterranean palace, would use her hands to\nopen the walls, all her strength to flee from her suitor? Philosophers\nhave believed that sexual modesty was an artificial sentiment, fruit\nof civilizations: they did not know the mole's story, or any of the\ntrue stories in nature, for nearly all females are timorous, nearly\nall react, at the appearance of the male, in fear or in flight. Our\nvirtues are never more than psychological tendencies, and the finest\nof them are those whose explanation we are forbidden to seek. Why is\nthe she-bat violent, the she-mole timorous? Without doubt the she-mole\nobserves the rule, even in exaggerating its severity, but why the rule?\nThere is no rule, there are nothing but facts which we group in modes\nperceptible to our intelligence, facts which are always provisory, and\nwhich a change of perspective can denaturize. The notion of a rule, the\nnotion of a law, confession of our impotence to pursue a fact into the\nlogical origins of its genealogy. The law is a fashion of speaking,\nan abbreviation, a point of rest. The law is half the facts plus one.\nEvery law is at the mercy of an accident, an unexpected encounter;\nand yet, without the idea of law all would be mere night in our\nconsciousness.\n\n\"The male,\" says Aristotle, in his Treatise on Generation, \"represents\nthe specific form, the female, the matter. She is passive, in so much\nas she is female; the male is active.\"\n\nSexual modesty is a fact of sexual passivity. The moment will come\nfor the female to be in her turn active and strong, when she has been\nfecundated, and when she must give birth and food to the posterity of\nher race. The male then becomes inert; equable sharing of the expense\nof forces, just division of labour. This passivity of the female\nelement is found again in the very figuration of animality, formed by\nthe egg and the spermatozoide. One sees the play under the microscope:\nthe egg waits, solid as a fortress or as a woman whom many men look\non and covet; the little animals begin their attack, they besiege the\nenclosure, they butt it with their heads; one of them breaks the wall,\nhe enters, and as soon as his tad-pole tail passes the breach, the\nwound recloses. The entire activity of this embryonic female reduces\nitself to this gesture; the greater part of her great sisters know no\nother. Their free-will nearly always consists in this: they receive one\namong the arrivals, without one's being able to know very well whether\nthe choice is psychological or mechanical.\n\nThe female waits, or flees, which is but another way of waiting, the\nactive way; for not only _se cupit ante videnti_ but she desires to\nbe taken, she wishes to fulfill her destiny. It is doubtless for\nthis reason that, in species where the male is feeble or timid, the\nfemale resigns herself to an aggression demanded by care for future\ngenerations. In short, two forces are present, the magnet and the\nneedle. Usually the female is the magnet, sometimes she is the needle.\nThese are details of mechanism which do not modify the general march\nof the machine to its goal. At the origin of all feeling there is a\nfact irreducible and incomprehensible in itself. Common reasoning\nstarts from the feeling to explain the fact; this gives the absurd\nresult of making thought run in a set track, like a horse in a circus.\nKantian ignorantism is the masterpiece of these training exercises,\nwhere, starting from the categoric stable the learned quadruped\nnecessarily thither returns, having jumped through all the paper disks\nof scholastic reasoning. Observers of animal habits fall regularly\ninto the prejudice of attributing, regularly, to beasts directive\nprinciples which only a long philosophic education and especially\nChristianity have rammed into restive human docility. Toussenel and\nRomanes are rarely superior to the possessors of a prodigious dog or\nmiraculous cat: one must reject as apocryphal the anecdotes of animals'\nintelligence, and especially those boasting their sensibility, or\ncelebrating their virtues; not that these are of necessity, inexact,\nbut because the manner of interpreting them has vitiated, in principle,\nthe manner of observation. One sole observer appears to me trustworthy\nin these matters, namely J. H. Fabre, the man who, since R\u00e9aumur, has\npenetrated furthest into the intimacy of insects, and whose work is\nveritably the creator, perhaps without his having suspected it, of a\ngeneral psychology of animals.\n\nThe madness of attributing to beasts the intuitive knowledge of our\nmoral catechism has created the legend of the elephant's sexual\nmodesty. These chaste monsters hide, they say, to make love; animated\nby a wholly romantic sensibility, they can not give way to their\nfeelings save in the mystery of the jungle, in the labyrinth of the\nvirgin forests: that is why they have never been known to breed\nin captivity. Nothing is more idiotic; the elephant in the public\ngarden or the circus is ready enough to make love, although with less\nenthusiasm than in his native forest, as is the case with nearly\nall beasts newly captive. He breeds under man's eye with perfect\nindifference, and no showman can prevent the she-elephant, who is very\nlecherous, from manifesting with full voice her shameless desires.\nAs her vulva opens not between her legs but toward the middle of her\nabdomen, Buffon believed that she had to lie on her back to receive the\nmale. This is not so, but she has to make a particular gesture: she\nkneels.\n\nWhales who are by far the greatest mammals, obey a special rite,\nimposed by their lack of members and the element in which they live;\nthe two colossi heave over on their sides like sprung ships, and join\nobliquely, belly to belly. The male organ is enormous, even in the\nstate of rest, six or eight feet long and fifteen or sixteen inches\nin circumference. The vulva of the female is longitudinal; near it is\nfound the udder which projects greatly when she gives suck. This udder\nhas ejectory power, the whale cub hooks on by his lips, and the milk is\nsent to him as from a pump, marvellous accommodation of organs to the\nnecessities of the milieu.\n\nAnatomy forces female seals and walruses to turn over to receive the\nmale. In the specie commonly called the sea-lion, she seems according\nto observations perhaps too sketchy, to make the advances. The male\nbeing stretched out at rest she rolls before him, plagues him, while he\ngrumbles. She succeeds in moving him, and they go to play in the water.\nOn return the female lies on her back, the male who is much thicker and\nlonger covers her, propping himself on his arms. The coupling lasts\nseven or eight minutes. The posture of female seals is also that of\nhedgehogs, and truly the cavalage here must be particularly thorny.\nDespite his roof the male tortoise climbs onto the female and installs\nhimself there, clinging to her shell with the nails of his forefeet;\nthere he stays fifteen days having slowly introduced into her patient\norgans his long round prong, ending in a sort of pointed ball, pressing\nwith all his strength the enormous clitoris of the female. We find\nourselves far from mammifers and from the excitability of the bull;\nthis coupling which lasts a whole season leads us toward the voluptuous\nlaziness of disgusting and marvellous gasteropodes. According to tales\nwhich are, perhaps, not contradictory, crocodiles couple in the water,\naccording to some, and on land according to others; in water laterally;\non land, the female on her back. It is said to be the male who puts her\non her back, and who, coition completed, helps her to right herself;\ncharming spectacle, which I can not guarantee to be so, but which would\nimprove our idea of the gallantry of these ancient divinities.\n\nI don't know whether anyone has ever remarked that the caduceus of\nMercury represents two serpents coupled. To describe the caduceus is\nto describe the love mechanism of ophidians. The bifurcated penis\npenetrates the vagina, the bodies interlace fold on fold while the two\nheads rise over the stiffened coils and look fixedly at each other, for\na long time, eye gazing into eye.\n\nCertain fish have penial organs; they can then realize true copulation;\nthus dog-fish, bounce, sharks, sea-hinds (_biches_). The males grip\nthe females and hold them with hooks often formed at the expense of\nthe abdominal fin, by cartilaginous pieces which penetrate the female\norifice and serve as slide to the penis. The male skate seizes the\nfemale, turns her over, clamps himself to her, belly to belly, holds\nher with his penial tentacles and finishes the coupling, releasing his\nseed which flows into the cloaca. The operation is repeated several\ntimes; separated by the emission of skatelets who are born alive, it\ncontinues until the female has discharged the greater part of her eggs.\n\n\n[1] Here R. de G. uses the term _marmotte_; up to this the word I have\ntranslated marmoset has been ouistiti.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nMECHANISM OF LOVE\n\n\n      _II. Copulation\n      (continued).--Arthropodes.--Scorpions.--Large\n      aquatic crustaceans.--Small crustaceans.--The\n      hydrachne.--Scutilary.--Cockchafer.--Butterflies.--\n      Flies, etc.--Variation of animals' sexual habits._\n\n\nAmong insects, batrachians, and mollusks one finds the most curious\nmodes of fecundation and those furthest removed from the usual\nmechanism of mammals; before coming to that we will give a few\nexamples, toward forming an idea of the sexual habits of various\nspecies chosen from the arthropodes. In scorpions, let us say,\nterrestrial representatives of aquatic crustaceans: the two sexes are\nidentical, genital organs usually invisible, hidden between the abdomen\nand the cephalothorax, the front part of it where the head without neck\nis prolonged directly into the thorax. The male is provided with two\nrigid penes englobed in a sheath--double but forming a single canal;\nholding the female belly to belly he inserts them in the vulva, one\nbranch bending to the left, the other to the right toward each of the\ntwo oviducts. Same mechanism in crustaceans, save in the rare cases\nwhen they are hermaphrodite. Lobsters, langousts, \u00e9crevisses, crabs,\nlike the scorpion, couple in a manner singularly resembling that of\nhumans. Curious spectacle, that of the hen lobster attacked by the\nmale, turned on her back, patiently permitting him to stretch over her,\nenlacing her claws and his pincers! Vision of a sabbat which Callot or\nDor\u00e9 would only have painted in fear. Perhaps one would consider this\nbefore opening the armoured belly of these beasts who have bred their\nspecies among alg\u00e6, and in holes of the rocks? The genital glands of\ncrustaceans are excellent; people gladly eat those of the sea-anemone;\nthe only good part of these spiny animals. The males of the greater\ncrustaceans have erectile ejectory canals, rising in the form of double\nprong between the forefeet; the females are correspondingly provided\nwith two vulv\u00e6 opening in the third sternal segment, or at the base of\nthe feet corresponding to this segment. Copulation is effected by quick\nacts, reiterated two or three times, lasting a quarter of an hour. The\nmale of the fresh water prawn who swims leaning on his side, holds his\nfemale between his claws and progresses by bounds; she is much smaller\nthan he is. Same mechanism in aselle and talitre or sea-flea.\n\nThere are many singularities in the sexual habits of small crustaceans,\nthe male bopyre lives as parasite on the female, who is four or\nfive times larger; oddity increased by the female herself being the\nparasite of the palemon. It is she who forms the little bloatedness\nwhich one notices, grayish when cooked, on the heads of shrimps,\nturned pink. Fishermen state that this spot is a small sole, but they\nalso tell other yarns: for example, that anatifes, the peduncular\nmussels which one sees on drift-wood are the embryos of wild-ducks,\nand one noble sailor has himself seen them taking flight.[1] The\nmale linguatula is also smaller than the female, he has one testicle\nbut two long copulating organs which simultaneously penetrate the\nfemale, ejaculating toward the two ovaries. Another small male is the\nhydrachne, water acarian, two or three times smaller than the female,\nhe alone is provided with a tail at the end of which are his genital\norgans; the female's are formed by a papilla situated beneath the belly\nand marked by a white patch surrounding the sluice. The male swims, the\nfemale comes to meet him, lifts herself obliquely and brings her white\nspot into touch with her lover's caudal extremity, the junction is\naccomplished. One then sees the male drag along the kicking female; the\ncoupling, with periods of rest, but without interruption of profound\ncontact continues for several days.\n\nWith insects of superior talents it is, on the contrary, the female who\ncarries off the male: the ant carries hers on her back, while he bends\nhis abdomen into a bow toward her vulva; thus weighted, she flies,\nmounts, planes, then falls with him like a drop of water. He dies on\nthe spot, the female gets up, returns to the nest, lays, before dying.\nThe fetes of the ant are of the whole ant hill at once, the fall of\nthe lovers like a golden cascade, and the resurrection of the females\ngleams in the sun like a russet foam. The scutilary is an insect\nsometimes squarish or shield-shaped resembling the green wood louse,\nsometimes long and cylindrical with points and lines of all colours\non its wings. One of them, scutiform, known as lineata, with red back\nand black stripes, is common on umbellifera. Copulation takes place\nend to end; one can see them thus, the female towing the smaller male\nfrom leaf to leaf, from umbel to umbel.[2] The forficula also couple\nend to end, fleas, whose male is smaller, couple belly to belly with\nfeet enlaced; the position recalling that of dragon flies is more\nremarkable, in the louvette, a small insect which lives on broom, and\nreadily throws itself upon man: the vulva is in fact, near the mouth.\n\nColeoptera are given to cavalage, of duration varying from ten hours\nto two days. The male cockchafer pursues the female with fervour,\nhe is so ardent that he often mounts other males, deceived by the\nodour of rut floating in the air. He seizes the female and holds her\nclamped by his forelegs and genital hooks. The union continues a day\nand a night, finally the male, exhausted, falls over backward, and\nstill hooked by the penial pincers, is dragged along on his back\nby the impassive female who moves on feeding, pulling him over the\nleaves until death detaches him; then she lays and dies in her turn.\nButterflies are likewise very fervent, the males make veritable voyages\nin quest of females, as Fabre has proved. They often fly coupled,\nthe stronger female easily carrying the male: it is a quite frequent\nsight in the country, these butterflies with four wings who roll, a\nlittle bewildered from flower to flower, drunken ships going where\nthe sails bid them. With flies, feminism is brought frankly into the\nlove mechanism. The females have the copulative apparatus; they force\ntheir oviduct, then a veritable prong, into the male's belly; it is\nthe females who make the mastering gesture, the male merely grips this\ngimlet with the hooks which surround his genital fent. It is this same\naugur which the female uses to bore the wood, or earth or flesh where\nshe deposits her eggs. The coupling is end to end, and one of the\neasiest to observe.\n\nHere are enough examples to show what is permanent in the mechanism of\ntrue copulation, and what is variable in its exterior modes. Given the\ntwo chief pieces of the apparatus, the sword and the scabbard, nature,\nas one might say, leaves it to the imagination of each specie to decide\nthe best manner of using them; all ways seem good if they fecundate.\nNature has still more remarkable methods, for the sexual inventions of\nhumanity are nearly all anterior or exterior to man. There is not one\nwhose model, even perfected, is not offered him by the animals, by the\nmost humble of animals.\n\nIf there is no general rule, if there is no one moral manner of\nfecundating a female, one must recognize that the same mode is fixed\nin the same specie, in the same genus or family. I do not think that\nanyone has observed variation in the sexual habits of an animal; yet\nacts of sheer disembarrassment being possible, one can not consider\nthe love method as being rigorously fixed. It has varied in social\nbees, parting from the relation of the couple, the aggression of the\nmale, to end in the political and autocratic fecundation of a sole\nfemale by a sole male chosen among an hundred slave favourites. The\nmechanism itself must have changed with the change of the organs,\ncomplying with corporal circumstances and with those of the milieu,\nunder pressure of the nervous system which demands acts without\ncaring for the instruments which must execute them. One finds proof\nof these changes in the accidental hermaphrodism of a great number\nof invertebrates and even of fishes, such as the cod, the herring,\nthe scomber: a fundamental change since it shifts the animal from a\nsuperior to an inferior category; a recall to origins, doubtless,\nand an indication that the species liable to such accidents are\nfar from being physiologically fixed. It is very probable that\nanalogous accidents, less accentuated, visible sometimes in exterior\nmalformation, invisible in their psychological influence, are the cause\nof certain tendencies in contrast to the sex apparent or even real.\nBut this does not yet answer the main question: are there in animals,\napart from purely mechanical aberrations, erotic fantasies? One can\nnot answer with certainty. The animal merely follows a groove; when he\nhas gone through it, if he lives for another season, he merely goes\nover the same ground, attentive to the same need, submitted always to\nthe same gestures. Very true, but the animals familiar to man or his\nneighbours, the dog, the ape, perhaps the cat, are assuredly capable\nof erotic fantasies; it is therefore difficult to deny this tendency\nto other animals, to the so intelligent hymenoptera, for example. Who\nknows, moreover, whether certain eccentric modes of copulation are not\nfixed fantasies, become habit and having supplanted an anterior method,\nthe animal being little able to employ two customs at once?\n\nWhat we have found, at least, is that the love mechanism is, in nature,\nof infinite variety, and that if it appears stable in most of the fixed\nspecies, it is, in its entirety extremely oscillating, capricious, and\nfantastic.\n\n\n[1] The name of these cirripedes bears witness to this superstition:\n_anatife_ is the abridgement of _anatifere_, duck-bearing, latin _anas,\nanatis_, \"A tree equally marvelous, is that which produces barnacles,\nfor the fruits of this tree change into birds.\" (Mandeville's Travels.)\n\n[2] This does not seem to be general. I have recently observed, on the\numbels of wild carrots, numerous couples of scutilaries, proceeding by\ncavalage, the male inert, couched on the walking female, who started at\nthe least alarm. Form narrow, almost cylindrical; colour: orange red,\nwith two short black bands: strong sucker, long antenn\u00e6. Union lasting\nat least a day and a night.--R. de G.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nTHE MECHANISM OF LOVE\n\n\n      _III. Of birds and fish.--Males without\n      penis.--Coupling by simple contact.--Salacity of\n      birds.--Copulation of batrachians: accoucheur\n      toad, aquatic toad, earth toad, pipa toad.--F\u0153tal\n      parasitism.--Chastity of fish.--Sexes separated in\n      love.--Onanistic fecundation.--Cephalopodes, the\n      spermatophore._\n\n\n_III. Of birds and fish_. It is toward the middle of the second month\nthat the separation of the cloaca into two regions is marked in the\nhuman foetus: a partition is formed which will absolutely isolate\nthe digestive channel from the uro-genital. The persistence of the\ncloaca is not a sign of primitivity, since one finds it in selacians,\nbatrachians, reptiles, monotremes and birds. The uro-genital region of\nmarsupials and of several rodents is submitted to a single sphincter,\nwitness of original union.\n\nThe bird's cloaca is divided into three chambers, for the three\nfunctions, the outer orifice being necessarily unique, by definition.\nIt is with this rudimentary apparatus that most birds turn to the\npleasures of love. The male being wholly deprived of any erectile\ntissue, coition is by simple contact, a pressure, perhaps a rubbing;\ndispleasing as the comparison may be, it is a play analogous to\nthe mouth to mouth kiss, or, if one prefer, to the pressing of two\nsapphists clasped vulva to vulva. Far from being a regression or a\nstop, it is perhaps a progress, the male at least gaining in security\nand vigour, being obliged to very little muscular development. The\nsalacity of certain birds is well known, and one does not see that the\nabsence of an exterior penis diminishes their ardour, or attenuates the\npleasure which they find in these succinct contacts. Perhaps the direct\ngenital pleasure is concentrated in a vascular papilla which swells a\nlittle at the moment of the approaches; this is very rudimentary, often\nunnoticeable but it seems to be an exciting organ, the producer of\npleasure. The male mounts the female, holds her with feet and beak, the\ntwo cloaca are superposed, the sperm flows into the oviduct. One sees\nsparrows repeat the sexual act as often as twenty times, always with\nthe same excitement, the same expression of contentment; the female\ntires first, and shows her impatience. Birds' habits are especially\ninteresting in reason of the play with which they surround their love\nmaking, their parades, their combats; we will deal with this in later\nchapters.\n\nBatrachians live for hardly anything save reproduction. Outside their\nseason of love, they remain stupefied. The rut over-excites them, and\nthese slow, frozen animals then show themselves ardent and implacable.\nThe males fight for the possession of females; having seized a female,\nnothing will make the male let go. One has seen him stick to his post\neven after his hind legs were cut off, even after losing half his\nbody. Yet the copulation is mere simulacrum, it takes place by simple\ncontact in the absence of exterior organs, even in salamanders, despite\nthe pads which surround the cloaca, sketch of an apparatus which has\nremained extremely rudimentary, or possibly problematic. With anours,\nthe male, smaller than the female, climbs on her back, passes his\nforefeet, his arms, under her armpits and remains skin to skin for a\nmonth, for two months. At the end of this time the pressed flanks of\nthe female finally let fall the eggs, and he fecundates them as they\nfall. Such is the coupling of frogs, lasting from fifteen to twenty\ndays. The male clambers onto the female, encircles her with his arms,\ncrosses his hands over her breast, and holds her tightly embraced.\nHe then remains immobile, in an ecstatic state, insensible to every\nexternal shock, to every wound. It would seem that the sole aim of this\nenlacing is to exercise a pressure on, or to cause an excitement in,\nthe belly of the female and to make her deliver her eggs. She lays a\nthousand and the male sprays them with sperm as they pass.\n\nAll the anours (tailless batrachians) thus press their females like\nlemons; but the method of fecundating the eggs is quite variable.\nThe mid-wife toad enlaced like the others, aids the emergence of the\negg garland with his hind feet, he unrolls it grain by grain, with\ndevotion, while the female, immobile emptier, lends herself willingly\nto this man\u0153uvre, which she feels perhaps as a caress. The aquatic\ntoad does not pull at the garland, he receives it in his paws, and when\nhe has ten eggs or so, he sprinkles them, ejaculating with a movement\nof the flanks, which old Roesel[1] compares to that of a dog's in\ncoition. As for the common land toad, whose note sounds like a pure\ncrystal bell in calm of the evening, he waits until all the eggs have\nemerged, he arranges them in a heap, then excited by somersaults, he\ndrenches the lot of them.\n\nBut no batrachian patience is as curious as that of the pipa toad.\nThis is a hideous beast with small eyes, mouth surrounded with\nwhisker-prickles, skin blackish green, full of warts and swellings. As\nthe eggs are laid the male fecundates them, then taking them in his\nlarge webbed feet he spreads them out on the female's back. Around\neach egg there forms a little protective pustule, in which the young\nhatch. The female on whom a hatch commences offers the odd spectacle of\na back whence, here and there, heads and feet are sprouting, or from\nwhich emerge little toads as if born of a paradox.[2] This formation\nis another proof that nature finds anything good which happens to\nattain her purpose, and that she cares only for the perpetuation of\nlife. An incubatorial pocket was necessary, and she had forgotten it;\nno matter, the animal will make one for itself, at its own expense or\nat the expense of some other specie. The small pipas exercize a real\nparasitism, ordered by an absent-mindedness of nature. Whether the\ndeposit of eggs be in the mother's back or in the tissue of some other\nanimal the parasitism is no less evident, at most it is a question\nof degree. From this point of view it will be possible to consider\nthe normal, internal evolution of sexual products as a parasitic\nevolution: the young of the mammal is a parasite of its mother, as the\nlittle ichneumon is a parasite of the caterpillar which serves it as\nuterus. Thus considered the notion of parasitism temporary or larval\nwill disappear, or, rather, take a much greater extension, enveloping\na considerable number of facts up till now separated in irreducible\ncategories.\n\nFecundation by contact is very rare in fish, other than selacians.\nOne hardly finds it save in lophobranchi and certain other viviparous\nfish, such as the blenny; the milt penetrates the female organs without\ncopulation, and the eggs develop either in these organs, or in a pouch\nwhich the male carries under his belly, or even in the male's mouth,\nhe having thus the virtue of assuring the birth of his offspring. The\nlophobranchi are wholly singular fish, one of them, the sea-horse,\nhorse-headed ludion, gives a good idea of the family. Ordinary fish,\nsuch as one knows and eats, however M. de Lac\u00e9p\u00e8de may have classified\nthem, are chaste animals void of all erotic fantasy.\n\nWhat would appear to be the essential of pleasure is unknown to them.\nThe males do not know possession nor the females surrender, no touch,\nno rubbings, no caress. The object of male desire is not the female but\nthe eggs, he watches for those she is about to lay, he searches for\nthose she has laid, an excitement quite like those produced by onanism,\nor which are engendered by fetishism in certain distorted minds and\nwhich operate at the sight of a slipper or ribbon, and die down, even\nto frigidity in the presence of the woman herself. The fish spends his\nsemen on eggs which he finds floating and whose mother he has never\nseen. Often both eggs and male milt are left floating and meet only in\nthe chance of current and wave. Sometimes fish form a separate couple.\nThe female swims up stream, stops over a grass or sand bottom, the male\nfollows, obeying her gesture. Such habits have permitted people to\nbreed fish with as great a certainty as they breed mushrooms, or more\nso. One takes a female swelled with eggs, squeezes her like an orange,\nthen one empties a male of his milt, and nature takes charge of the\nrest. This procedure is not possible with certain species which act in\nconcert, the male tilted onto his back, his genital orifice beneath\nthat of the female, and ejaculating in time with her.\n\nOne knows that salmon swim up rivers in troops, often very dense,\nand into the branch streams and creeks, to lay their spawn in quiet,\nfavorable nooks. Then they go down stream worn out by the dams and\nwaterfalls which they have mounted by tail-swishing, and tired by their\ngenital exercises. The column is often led by a female, the other\nfemales follow. Then swim the old males and lastly the young males.\nWhen the leaderess has found a suitable place, one of the roes stops,\nhollows the sand with her belly, leaves a packet of eggs in the hole,\nan old male drenches them at once, but the patriarch has been followed\nby young bucks who imitate him and fecundate the same eggs. Thus, with\nthese fish there is a sort of school where the experienced teach the\nnewcomers the procedure of fecundation. This mixture of eggs and semen\nfrom fish of all ages should be very favourable to the maintenance of\na specific type, if the instability of milieu did not bring about the\nencounter of elements belonging to different neighbouring varieties:\ndespite the good will of naturalists, salmon and trout form practically\nonly one family, and nothing is more difficult, for example, than to\ndetermine the specie of a young salmon, or to state the difference\nbetween a salmon and a sea trout.\n\nThe loves of fish (and also of echinoderms, star-fish, sea-anemones,\netc.) thus reduce themselves, in the main, to those of ovule and\nspermatozoide. The essential. But such simplification is rather\nshocking to the sensibility of a superior vertebrate, or to an insect\naccustomed to the amorous parade, to multiple and prolonged contacts,\nto the presence and complexity of the opposite sex. This fashion of\nlove is, admittedly, not unknown to men, but they seem to be led to\nit rather by necessity than by taste, by morals rather than by the\nsearch for the maximum pleasure. Genital satisfactions obtained apart\nfrom contact, apart from being necessarily infecund, save in scabrous\nscientific experiments, often cause a nervous and muscular depression\ngreater even than excess committed in common. But this result is not\nso evident that one can convert it into a moral principle, and the\nfact remains that onanism, carefully considered, is one among nature's\ngestures. A different conclusion would be more agreeable; but millions\nof creatures would protest, from all the oceans, and from beneath the\nreeds of all rivers. One might go further, and insinuate that this\nmethod which appears to us monstrous, or, since it is a matter of fish,\nsingular, is perhaps superior to the laborious method of cavalage, so\nugly, in general, and so inconvenient. But there is not in terrestrial\nnature, any more than in conceivable nature a high and low, a wrong\nside and a right side; there is neither a good nor evil manner, a\nright nor a wrong, but there are states of life which fulfill their\npurpose, since they exist and since existence is their aim. Doubtless\nthe discord between the will and the organs is constant in all stages\nof life, and much accentuated in man where the wishes are multiplex,\nbut where the nervous system remains, in short, the master, and governs\neven to the danger of its life. It is not the chance of circumstances\nand of milieu that has swelled the spermoduct of certain fish into\npapilla, and then into penis, or formed a sheath for this penis at the\nexpense of the caudal fin; it is the will force of cerebral ganglia.\nThe evolution of the nervous system is always in advance of that of\nthe organs, this is a cause of incoherence, and at the same time, of\nprogress and change. The day when the brain has no more orders to give,\nor when the organs have exhausted their faculties of obedience, the\nspecie is fixed; if fixed in a state of incoherence it moves toward\ncertain extinction, as the monotremes. Many species seem to have been\ndestroyed in full evolution by the contradictory exigencies of a\ntyrannous and capricious nervous system.\n\nIt is necessary that the male cephalopode fecundate the female. How\nwill he do it, having no organic sperm-vector? He will make one. One\nthought for a long time that the female argonauts were preyed on by\na parasite. This mysterious beast is nothing but the instrument of\nfecundation. The male has a pouch where sperm accumulates; in this\npouch are made up little bags called spermatophores, the animalcul\u00e6\nmove toward the third arm of the argonaut (nautilus), and this arm\nenlarges in spatula, equips itself with a scourge, loses its suckers,\nand then when heavy with life as a ripe grape, it falls off, moves\ntoward the female, comes alongside her belly, lodges in the palleal\ncavity and oozes out its seed into the organs where this will encounter\nthe ovules. The male organ, here, appears as a temporary individual, a\nthird being between father and mother, a messenger which carries the\nmale genital treasure to the female. Neither of them knows the other.\nThe male is wholly ignorant of the female for whom he detaches a limb,\nand the female knows nothing of her fecundator save the sole organ\nwhich fecundates. A little more complicated than that of the fish,\nthis method is probably older, and seems possible only for aquatic\nanimals. It is nevertheless that of many vegetables; this swimming\narm recalls the winged grains of pollen which travel far from their\npistils. Very few flowers can fecundate directly; nearly all have need\nof an intermediary, the wind, an insect, a bird. Nature had given wings\nto the phallus, ages before the imagination of Pompeian painters; she\nhad thought of this, not for the pleasure of bashful women, but for\nthe satisfaction of the most hideous beasts that people the ocean,\ncuttlefish, calamaries, octopi.\n\n\n\n[1] In his \"Historia Naturalis Ranarum,\" 1758, Bufo aquaticus.\n\n[2] The back as gestative chamber is also found in woodlice, during\none of their parthenogenetic phases, cf. Fabre \"Souvenirs\" VII, _les\nPucerons du terebinthe_.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nTHE MECHANISM OF LOVE\n\n\n      _IV. Hermaphrodism.--Sexual life of\n      oysters.--Gasteropodes.--The idea of reproduction\n      and the idea of pleasure.--Mechanism of\n      reciprocal reproduction: helices.--Spintrian\n      habits.--Reflections on hermaphrodism._\n\n\nFish are the only vertebrates among whom one encounters hermaphrodism,\neither accidental: cyprins, herrings, scombers; or regular, sargue,\nsparaillon, seran. The myxines, very humble fish living as parasites,\nare alternative hermaphrodites, like oysters, like ascides; the genital\ngland functions first as testicle, then as ovary. The amphioxus, the\nbridge between invertebrates and vertebrates, is not hermaphrodite.\nThe most strongly marked and most complicated forms of hermaphrodism\nare found in mollusks, and chiefly in gasteropodes. The alternate\nhermaphrodism of oysters produces effects which have been observed\nthroughout antiquity. The advice to abstain from oysters during months\nlacking an \"r\" is based on a fact, and that fact sexual. From September\nto May, they are males, they are testicles, they elaborate sperm, they\nare good; from June to August the ovaries bourgeon, fill with eggs\nwhich turn whitish as they ripen, the oysters are females, they are\nbad; fecundation takes place at this time, the spermatozoides, born\nin the preceding period, finally perform their office. Superstitions\nbefore being rejected ought to be minutely observed and analysed, there\nis nearly always a kernel of truth in the gross envelope.\n\nIn the hermaphrodism of echinoderms, of fish, there is never\nauto-fecundation; either the sexual products meet outside the animals,\nwhich have neither copulating organs, nor a related genital life; it is\na simple growth of germs; or, in a more complex phase the individuals\nhave exterior male organs, and female organs, but they can not use them\nwithout the aid of another individual acting either as male, or as\nfemale. Here a new distinction is imposed: either the animal will be\nsuccessively male, and then female; or it will be both at once. This\nunion of the two sexes seems useless, according to human logic, when\nthe two genital glands ripen at different seasons; one understands it\nbetter when the reciprocal fecundation is simultaneous, since this\ndoubles the number of females and better assures the conservation of\nthe specie. One must set aside the idea of pleasure. Apart from the\nfact that we can judge it only by a very distant and even dubious\nanalogy considering the difference between the nervous systems of man\nand mollusk, one must set it aside as useless. Pleasure is a result\nnot an aim. In most animal species coition is but a prelude to death,\nand often love and death work their supreme act in the same instant.\nCopulation of insects is suicide: would it be reasonable to consider\nit as produced by a desire to die? One must dissociate the idea of\npleasure and the idea of love, if one wants to understand anything\nof the tragic movements which perpetually beget life at the expense\nof life itself. Pleasure explains nothing. People might simply be\ncommanded to die as a means of reproduction, they would obey with\nthe same eagerness: this is observed even in humanity. Dithyrambs on\npleasure would be misplaced apropos of the mutual ticklings of two\nsnails on a vine-leaf; the subject is rather uncomfortable.\n\nNote then two helices, both bisexual, fulfilling exactly the biblical\nphrase: \"he created them male and female\"; their genital organs are\nvery well developed; the penis and oviduct opening into a vestibule,\nwhich in the act of copulation unbellies itself in part, so that the\npenis and vagina come in touch with the orifice; mutual intromission\ntakes place. A third organ comes from the vestibule, without analogy in\nsuperior animals; it is a little pocket containing a small stiletto,\na jewelled dagger; it is an excitative organ, the needle to prick up\ndesires. These beasts who have prepared for love by fasting, by long\nrubbings, by whole days of close pressure, finally come to a decision,\nthe swords come out of their scabbards, they conscientiously stab each\nother, this causes the penis to rise from its sheath; the double mating\nis accomplished.\n\nThere are species in which the position of the organs is such that the\nsame individual can not be at the same time the female of the one for\nwhom he acts as male, but he can at that moment serve as female to\nanother male, who is female to a third, and so on. This explains the\ngarlands of spintrian gasteropodes which one sees realizing innocently\nand according to the ineluctable wish of nature, carnal imaginations\nthat have been the boast of erotic humanity. Facing this light from\nanimal habits, debauchery loses all character and all its tang, because\nit loses all immorality. Man, who unites in himself the aptitudes of\nall the animals, all their laborious instincts, all their industries,\ncould not escape the heritage of their sexual methods; and there is no\nlewdness which has not its normal type in nature, somewhere.\n\nBefore leaving this repugnant milieu, one may still consider the leech.\nHermaphrodite, they also practice reciprocal fecundation, but the\nposition of their organs compels them to assume a peculiar position:\nthe prong emerges from a pore near the mouth; the vagina is above the\nanus. The copulation of these wretched animals forms, therefore, a\nhead-to-tail, the bocal sucker coinciding with the anal sucker.\n\nAnimals having both sexes, do not necessarily show sexual dimorphism.\nBut neither this exact likeness of individuals, nor the double function\nwith which they are charged, contradicts the general law which seems\nto wish that an individual should be due to elements coming from\ntwo different individuals. Autofecundation is exceptional, is very\nrare. Whether or no the individual possess the two genital glands,\nor one of them only, it needs a male, or an individual acting as\nmale, and a female or an individual acting as female, to perpetuate\nlife. Alternative hermaphrodism confirms these propositions, be it\nthat the same gland transforms itself totally, turn by turn, into\nmale principle, then into female principle; be it divided between a\nmale half and a female half, these two halves ripen simultaneously or\nsuccessively. When there is total or partial alternation, the male\nprinciple is ready first, and waits: thus the aggressivity of the\nmale, and the passivity of the female are visible in the most obscure\nmanifestations of sexual life: the fundamental psychology of an ascide\ndoes not differ from that of an insect, or from that of a mammal.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nTHE MECHANISM OF LOVE\n\n\n      _V. Artificial fecundation.--Disjunction of\n      the secreting apparatus from the copulating\n      apparatus.--Spiders.--Discovery of their copulative\n      method.--Brutality of the female.--Habits\n      of the epeire.--The argyronete.--The\n      tarantula.--Exceptions: the reapers.--Dragon-flies\n      (libellule).--Dragon-flies (demoiselle) virgins and\n      \"jouvencelle.\"--Picture of their love affairs._\n\n\nThe apparatus for secreting sperm and that for copulating are sometimes\nseparated. The female has a vagina normally situated; the male has no\npenis, or else it is situated in some part of the body not in symmetry\nwith the receiving apparatus. It is then necessary either for the male\nto make an artificial penis, as one has seen in the cephalopodes,\nand as in the spider, or for him to engage in complicated man\u0153uvres\nto dominate the female, and to engineer the conjunction of the two\napparatus, as does the dragon-fly (libellule).\n\nThe method of most arachnids strangely resembles the medical practice\ncalled artificial fecundation, although it is hardly more so than\nnormal fecundation. In both it is a question of putting spermatozoides\nin the way of encountering ovules: it matters little whether phallus\nor syringe be the vehicle. The spider uses a syringe. For a long time\npeople thought that the whole genital apparatus was situated in the\nfeelers of the male, but anatomy could find nothing there to resemble\nit. Savigny thought that the introduction of the feelers into the\nvulva was merely an excitative man\u0153uvre, and that the true copulation\nfollowed. One had only observed half the act, the second phase. The\nfirst consists in the male's gathering up the semence in his own belly\nwith the feelers; he then places it in the female organ. The maxillary\nperipalpe or antenna, thus transformed into a penis, contains a spiral\ncanal which the male fills in placing it against the opening of his\nspermatic canals. One sees the joint of one of the knuckles open,\nletting appear a white bourrelet (pad with a hole in the middle), this\nis bent, and plunged into the vulva, it emerges and the insect flees.\nSystem marvellously adapted to the circumstances, for the female is\nferocious and quite ready to devour her suitor. But is it the ferocity\nof the female which has modified the fecundating system, or is it the\nsystem, so lacking in tenderness, which has led the receptress to find\nonly an enemy in the aspirant who advances horn to the fore? Acts which\nproduce constant and useful results always seem to us ordered by an\nadmirable logic; one need only give oneself up to a certain laziness\nof mind, to be led quite gently to call them providential and to fall\nlittle by little into the innocent nets of finalism.\n\nDoubtless--and undeniable--there is a general finality, but one must\nconceive it as represented entire by the present state of nature.\nThis will not be a conception of order, but a conception of fact,\nand in any case, the means used to attain this fact should in no\nway be integrated in the finality itself. None of the procedures of\ngeneration, for example, bears the mark of necessity. It is not the\nferocity of the she-spider which demands the sexual habit; the female\nmantis is still more savage, and mantis' method is cavalage. It does\nnot seem as if anything in nature were ordered in view of some benefit;\ncauses blindly engender causes; some maintain life, others force it to\nprogress, others destroy it; we qualify them differently, according to\nthe dictates of our sensibility, but they are non-qualifiable; they are\nmovements, and nothing else. The pebble ricochets on the water, or it\ndoesn't; this has no importance in itself, nothing more will come of it\nand nothing less. It is an image of supreme finality: after eight or\nten bounds, life, like the pebble thrown by a child, will fall into the\nabyss, and with it all the good and evil, all facts, all ideas, and all\nthings.\n\nThe idea of finality leads one back to the idea of fact, one is no\nlonger tempted to attempt an explanation of nature. One would try\nmodestly to reconstruct the chain of causes and, as a great number of\nrings will always be lacking, and as the absence of one ring alone\nwould suffice to unhook the whole reasoning, one will do this in a\npiety tempered by scepticism.\n\nThe epirus, although a spider, is not an ill-conditioned beast; she is\nepiscopal, she carries on her back a pretty white cross upside down.\nThe large ones are the females; the very small ones, the males. Both\nhook their webs upon bushes, on shrubs, live without knowing each other\nuntil instinct has spoken. A day comes when the male is restless; the\ngnats fail to satisfy him; he leaves, he abandons the home he will\nperhaps not see again. He is not, indeed, without misgivings, and fear\nis mingled with his desire, for the mistress he seeks is an ogress.\nThus he prepares a way of retreat in case of combat; he stretches a\nthread from the female's web to a neighbouring branch, road of entry,\ngate of exit. Often, the instant he shows himself with his excited\nair, the female epirus leaps on him and eats him without formality.\nIs it ferocity? No, stupidity. She also is awaiting the male, but her\nattention is distraught between the coming of the caller and the coming\nof prey. The web has shaken, she leaps, enlaces, devours. Perhaps\na second male if he attempt the pass, will be gladly received, the\nfirst sacrifice accomplished, perhaps this mistake, if it is one, will\nwake all the amorous attention of the distracted female? Ferocity,\nstupidity; there is another explanation which I will give later,\napropos the mantis and the green grass-hopper: it is very probable\nthat the sacrifice of the male, or of a male, is absolutely necessary,\nand that it is a sexual rite. The little male approaches; if he is\nrecognized, and if his coming coincides with the genital state of the\nfemale, she merely behaves like all the rest of her peers, and even\nthough she be the larger and stronger, she flees; she lets herself,\nfull of coquetry, slide down a thread; the male imitates the play, he\ndescends, she mounts, he mounts, the acquaintance is made, they feel\neach other, they pat each other, the male fills his pump, the mating\nis accomplished. She is rapid, the male stays on guard, ready to flee\nat the least movement of his adversary; often he hasn't time. Scarcely\nhas the fecundation been finished when the ogress turns, leaping, and\ndevours the suitor on the very spot of his amours. They say that she\ndoes not always wait for the end of the operation, and that preferring\na good meal to a caress, she interrupts the performance with a slap of\nher mandibles. When the male has the luck to escape he disappears like\na flash, goes down his thread like greased lightning. The argyronete\nuses man\u0153uvres analogous, but even more curious. It is a water spider,\nwhich goes under water in an ingenious small diving-bell, a future\nnest. The female having made her diving-bell, the male, not daring to\npresent himself thinks out the wheeze of making another bell just next\nthat of the female. Then at a propitious moment he breaks through the\ndividing wall and profits by the surprise of his sudden entry. When it\nis a matter of not being eaten, all means are the right ones.\n\nThe tarantula, whose habits are far from gentle, is not cruel to\nher suitor. This monster who spins no web, spins out a long idyllic\ncourtship. Extended preludes, puerile games, delicate caresses,\nlambkins' leapings. Finally the female surrenders fully. The male\nplaces her as he wishes, chooses for her the pose most pleasing to\nhim, and lies obliquely against her, gently and repeatedly taking the\nsperm from his abdomen he insinuates each of his palpes, one after the\nother in the swollen vulva of the female. The break-away is sudden,\na jump. Still more tender are the courtships of the leaping spider;\nthey advance by little rushes, stop, watch, leap on their prey, insect\nor fly, or else float at the wind's will on the end of a long hanging\nweb-thread. When male and female meet, they approach, tap each other\nwith forefeet and tentacles, separate, reapproach, recommence. After\na thousand salutations, they pose head to head, the male climbs onto\nthe female, stretches out until he reaches the abdomen. Then he lifts\nthe extremity of it, applies his palpe to the vulva, and retires. The\nsame act is begun again several times, the female is all compliance\nand offers no insult to her companion. There are certain exceptions to\nthe method of spiders; the reapers, little balls mounted on immense\nlegs, act by cavalage. The males have a retractile prong fixed by two\nligaments to the abdomen, the female an oviduct which opens in vulva\nand spreads interiorly into a vast pouch, the resting place for the\neggs. The male does not manage this female, a strong objector, save\nby seizing her mandibles with his pincers. Overcome by this bite she\nsubmits; the coupling lasts several seconds.\n\nThe dragon-fly, gracefully called \"la demoiselle,\" is one of the\nfinest insects in the world and certainly the most beautiful of those\nwhich fly in our climate; no soft butterfly colour is a match for the\nmoving shimmer of its supple abdomen, and the bright head-colours as\nof steely-blue helmet. Description? It is difficult to find two alike;\none has tawny body and dove-grey abdomen, spotted with yellow, and\nblack feet, transparent wings with brown borders or nerve-veinings,\nor these in black and white; another has a yellow head, brown eyes,\nbrown corselet veined in green, an abdomen touched with green and\nyellow, irised wings; another called \"la Vierge\" is gilded green, or\nblue with green shimmer, and spotless wings; another \"la Jouvencelle\"\nhas wings thin to invisibility, is clothed in all shades, metallic\nblue, reddish-brown green, iris violet, tawny chrysanthemum, whatever\nher fundamental colour she encircles her elegant barrel with rings\nof black velvet. Naturalists divide these insects into libellules,\n\u00e6shnes, agrions; Fabricius disputes with Linn\u00e6us; peasants and children\n(for grown-ups despise nature) call them \"demoiselles,\" \"vierges\" and\n\"jouvencelles.\"[1] Some fly very high, in the trees, others along the\nstreams and over pond edges; others over ferns, reeds, broom. I have\npassed days in the sun watching them, waiting to see their courtships;\nI have seen them, and know that R\u00e9aumur has not deceived us. It was\non the surface of a pond among the border flowers, a morning of July,\na flaming morning. The \"Vierge,\" corselet of blue green, almost\ninvisible wings, fluttered in great numbers, slowly, as if seriously;\nthe hour of parade had arrived. And everywhere couples formed, rings\nof azure hung from the grass blades, trembled on leaves of the\nwater-lentil, everywhere green arrows and blue arrows played at flight,\nand wing-brushing, at joining. The big eyes and strong head of the\nlibellule give an air of gravity to the brilliancy of this spectacle.\n\nThe ejaculatory canal opens at the ninth ring of the abdomen, that is\nto say, at the point; the copulating apparatus is fixed at the second\nring, that is, near the neck, and is composed of a penis, of hooks, and\na reservoir: the male bending his long belly first fills the reservoir,\nthen empties it into the organs of the female. For a long time he\npursues the desired mistress, plays with her, finally seizes her above\nthe neck with the terminal pincers of his abdomen, then, turning like\na serpent, he bends forward and continues to fly, a beast with four\npairs of wings. In this attitude, the male, sure of himself, with the\nair of the hour's indifferent master, chases midges, visits flowers\nand the axilla of plants where the midges sleep, nabs them with his\nfeet and puts them into his mouth. Finally the female accedes, bends\ndownward her flexible abdomen and makes its orifice coincide with the\nmale's pectoral penis: the two beastlets are but one splendid ring with\na double cup, a ring trembling with life and with fire.\n\nNo gesture of love can be conceived more charming than that of the\nfemale slowly bending back her blue body, going half way toward her\nlover, who erect on his forefeet bears, with taut muscles, the full\nweight of the movement. It is so pure, so immaterial, one would say\nthat two ideas joined in the limpidity of ineluctable thought.\n\n\n[1] In America we have, so far as I know, only the terms \"dragon\nfly\" and \"darning-needle,\" and for the larger ones \"devil's\ndarning-needle.\"--E. P.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\nTHE MECHANISM OF LOVE\n\n\n      _VI. Cannibalism in sex.--Females who devour the\n      male, those who devour the spermatophore.--Probable\n      use of these practices.--Fecundation by the whole\n      male.--Loves of the white foreheaded dectic.--The\n      green grasshopper.--The Alpine analote.--The\n      ephippigere.--Further reflections of the cannibalism\n      of sex.--Loves of the praying mantis._\n\n\nThe spider eats her male; the mantis eats her male; in locustians,\nthe female is fecundated by a spermatophore, an enormous genital\nbunch-of-grapes. She gnaws through this envelope of spermatozoides\nto the last shred. These two facts should be brought together.\nWhether the female swallow the male entire, or only the product of\nhis genital glands, it is probably in both cases a complementary act\nof fecundation. There are possibly in the male, assimilable elements\nnecessary for the development of the eggs, almost as the albumen of\nseeds, little aborted plants, is necessary for nourishing the vegetable\nembryo, surviving plantlet. Plants, according to recent study, are born\ntwins: in order to live one must devour the other. Shifted to animal\nlife, and slightly modified, this mechanism explains what one terms,\nfrom sentimentalism, the sexual ferocity of the she-mantis and the\nshe-spider. Life is made out of life. Nothing lives save at the expense\nof life. The male insect nearly always dies immediately after the\nmating; in locustians he is literally emptied by the genital effort:\nwhether the female respect, or devour him, his life would hardly be\nlonger, or shorter thereby. He is sacrificed; why, if this is for the\ngood of the species should he not be eaten? Anyhow, he is eaten. It is\nhis destiny, and he feels it coming, at least the male spider does, and\nthe male mantis allows himself to be gnawed with a perfect stoicism.\nThe spider jibs, the other submits. It is really a matter of ritual,\nnot of accident or of crime. One might try experiments. One might\nprevent the female dectic from pecking the mistletoe berry which the\nmale has discharged on her; one might watch the coupling of mantes and\nisolate them immediately: and then follow all the phases from laying to\nhatching. If the spermatophagy of the dectic is useless, if the murder\nof the male mantis is useless, it will annul the foregoing reflections,\nand others will rise.\n\nThe white-fronted dectic is, like all the locustians (grass-hoppers),\na very ancient insect; it existed in the coal era, and it is perhaps\nthis antiquity which explains its peculiar fecundative method. As the\ncephalopodes, his contemporaries, he has recourse to the spermatophore;\nyet there is mating, there is embracing; there are even play and\ncaresses. Here are the couple face to face, they caress each other\nwith long antenn\u00e6 \"fine as hair,\" as Fabre says; after a moment they\nseparate. The next day, new encounter, new blandishments. Another day,\nand Fabre finds the male knocked down by the female, who overwhelms him\nwith her embrace; he gnaws her belly. The male disentangles himself and\nescapes, but a new assault masters him, he lies flat on his back. This\ntime the female, lifted on her high legs, holds him belly to belly;\nshe bends back the extremity of her abdomen; the victim does likewise;\nthere is junction, and soon one sees something enormous issue from the\nconvulsive flanks of the male, as if the animal were pushing out its\nentrails. \"It is,\" continues the best observer (Fabre, Souvenirs VI),\n\"an opaline leather bottle about the size and colour of a mistletoe\nberry,\" a bottle with four pockets at least, held together by feeble\nsutures. The female receives this leather bottle, or spermatophore, and\ncarries it off glued to her belly. Having got over the thunder-clap,\nthe male gets up, makes his toilet; the female browses as she walks.\n\"From time to time she rises on her stilts, bends into a ring, seizes\nher opaline bundle in her mandibles, and chews it gently.\" She breaks\noff little pieces, chews them carefully, and swallows them. Thus while\nthe fecundative particles are extravasated toward the eggs which they\nare to animate, the female devours the spermatic pouch. After having\ntasted it piece by piece she suddenly pulls it off, kneads it, swallows\nit whole. Not a scrap is lost; the place is clear, and the oviscapte\nis cleaned, washed, polished. The male has begun to sing again, during\nthis meal, but it is not a love-song, he is about to die; he dies:\npassing near him at this moment, the female looks at him, smells him,\ntakes a bite of his thigh.\n\nFabre was unable to see the mating of the green grass-hopper, which\ntakes place at night, but he observed the long preludes; he has seen\nthe slow play of soft antenn\u00e6. The result of the coupling is the same\nas with all locustians; the female chews and swallows the genital\nampulla. She is a terrible beast of prey who eats alive a huge cicada,\nwho fearlessly sucks the entrails of a wriggling cockchafer. One can't\nsay whether she eats her male, dead or alive; it is very probable for\nhe is quite timid. Another dectic, the Alpine analote, has given Fabre\nthe alarming spectacle: a male on his back, a female on his belly, the\ngenital organs joining end to end in this single contact, and while\nshe was receiving the fecundative caress, the enigmatic female, with\nthe fore part of her body raised, was gnawing with little mouthfuls,\nanother male held in her claws, impassive, his belly chewed open. The\nmale analote is much smaller and weaker than the female; like his\nconfr\u00e8re the spider, he flees with greatest possible speed after the\nend of coition; he is very often nipped. In the case observed by Fabre,\nthe meal was doubtless the end of a preceding amour: these locustians\nhave the habit, rare among insects, of receiving several suitors. Truly\nthis cannibal Marguerite de Bourgogne is a fine type of beast, and\ngives a fine spectacle, not of immorality, an empty term, but of the\nserenity of nature, which permits all things, wills all things, and for\nwhom there are neither vices nor virtues, but only movements and chemic\nreactions.\n\nThe spermatophore of the ephippiger is enormous, nearly half the size\nof the animal. The nuptial feast is finished according to the same\nrite, and the female, having finished the leather-bottle spermatophore,\nadds thereto the poor emptied male. She does not even wait until he is\ndead; she chops him up, as he is dying, limb by limb: having fecundated\nher with all his blood, he must feed her with all his flesh.\n\nThis male flesh is doubtless powerful comforting to the mother to\nbe. Female mammifers, after delivery, devour the placenta. One has\ngiven different interpretations to this habitual act. Some see a\nprecaution against enemies: it is necessary to obliterate traces of\na condition which clearly shows that one is feeble, defenceless,\nsurrounded by young, a tasty prey at the mercy of any tooth; others\nsay it is a recuperation of energy. This latter opinion seems more\nlikely, especially if one consider the habits of locustians. The\nspermatophore is indeed the preceding analogy to the placenta. On the\nother hand, fecundation, before being a specific act, belongs to the\ngeneral phenomena of nutrition: it is the integration of one force in\nanother force, and nothing more. The devouring of the male, partial or\ncomplete, represents, then, only the most primitive form of the union\nof cellules, this junction of two unities in one, which precedes the\nsegmentation, feeds it, makes it possible during a limited time, after\nwhich a new conjunction is necessary. If the actual acts are only a\nsurvival, if they have lasted after their utility has disappeared, it\nis another question, and one which I leave again to experimenters.\nIt will be enough for me if I have gained acceptance of the general\nprinciple that animals' acts, whatever they may be, can not be\nunderstood unless one strip them of the sentimental qualifications\nbeneath which ignorant humanity has covered them, corrupting them with\nprovidential finalism.\n\nWhile fully recognizing the immense social value of prejudices,\nanalysis should be permitted to excoriate them and to grind them.\nNothing appears more dear than maternal love, and nothing is more\nwidespread throughout all nature: yet nothing gives a falser\ninterpretation of the acts which these two words pretend to explain.\nOne makes a virtue of it, that is to say, in the Christian sense, a\nvoluntary act; one seems to think that it depends on the mother to\nlove or not to love her children, and one considers culpable those who\nrelax or forget their motherly cares. Like generation, motherly love is\na commandment; it is the second condition of the perpetuity of life.\nMothers sometimes are without it; some mothers also are sterile: the\nwill intervenes neither in one case nor in the other. As the rest of\nnature, as ourselves, animals live submitted to necessity, they do what\nthey ought to do, so far as their organs permit them. The mantis who\neats her husband is an excellent egg-layer who prepares, passionately,\nthe future of her progeny.\n\nAfter Fabre's observations of couples of these insects caged, the\nfemale much stronger than the male mantes, are the predatory ones, who\ndo combat for love. The combats are deadly, the vanquished female is\neaten at once. The male is bashful. At the moment of desire he limits\nhimself to posing, to making sheep's eyes, which the female seems to\nconsider with indifference or disdain. Tired of parade, he finally\ndecides, and with spread wings, leaps trembling upon the back of the\nogress. The mating lasts five or six hours; when the knot is loosed,\nthe suitor is, regularly, eaten. The terrible female is polyandrous.\nOther insects refuse the male when their ovaries have been fecundated,\nthe mantis accepts two, three, four, up to seven; and Bluebeard, eats\nthem regularly after the act is accomplished. Fabre has seen better.\nThe mantis is almost the only insect with a neck; the head does not\njoin the thorax immediately, the neck is long and flexible, bending\nin all directions. Thus, while the male is enlacing and fecundating\nher, the female will turn her head back and calmly eat her companion\nin pleasure. Here is one headless, another is gone up to the corsage,\nand his remains still clutch the female who is thus devouring him\nat both ends, getting from her spouse simultaneously the pleasures\n_ac mensa ac thoro_, both bed and board from her husband. The double\npleasure only ends when the cannibal reaches the belly: the male then\nfalls in shreds and the female finishes him on the ground. Poiret has\nwitnessed a scene perhaps even more extraordinary. A male leaps on a\nfemale and is going to couple. The female turns her head, stares at the\nintruder, and decapitates him with a blow of her jaw-foot, a marvellous\ntoothed-scythe. Without disconcertion the male, wedges up, spreads\nhimself, makes love as if nothing abnormal had happened. The mating\ntook place, and the female had the patience to wait for the end of the\noperation before finishing her wedding breakfast.\n\nThe headless nuptials are explained by the fact that the insects' brain\ndoes not seem to have unique control of its movements; these animals\ncan live without the cervical ganglion. A headless grasshopper will\nstill lift his bruised foot to his mouth, after three hours, with the\nmovement familiar to him in his complete condition.\n\nThe small mantis, or colourless mantis, is almost as fierce as her\ngreat sister, the religious mantis; but the _empuse_, a kindred specie,\nseems peaceful.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\nTHE SEXUAL PARADE\n\n\n      _Universality of the caress, of amorous\n      preludes.--Their r\u00f4le in fecundation.--Sexual\n      games of birds.--How cantharides caress.--Males'\n      combats.--Pretended combats of birds.--Dance of the\n      tetras.--Gardener bird.--His country house.--His\n      taste for flowers.--Reflections on the origin\n      of his art.--Combats of crickets.--Parade of\n      butterflies.--Sexual sense of orientation.--The\n      great-peacock moth.--Animals' submission to orders of\n      Nature.--Transmutation of physical values.--Rutting\n      calendar._\n\n\nOne has convinced oneself in the preceding chapters that the games of\nlove, preludes, caresses, combats are in no way peculiar to the human\nrace. On nearly all rungs of the animal ladder, or rather on all the\nbranches of the animal fan, the male is the same, the female is the\nsame. It is always the equation given in the intimate mechanism of\nunion of animalcule and ovule: a fortress toward which _amans volat\ncurrit ac l\u00e6tatur_. The whole passage of the _Imitatio_ (L. III, chap.\niv, 4) is a marvellous psychological presentation of love in nature,\nof sexual attraction as it is felt throughout the whole series of\ncreatures. The besieger must enter the fortress; he uses violence,\nsometimes gentle violence; more often trickery, the caress.\n\nCaress, charming movements, grace, tenderness, we do all these things\nof necessity, not because we are men, but because we are animals.\nTheir aim is to liven the sensibilities, to dispose the organism to\naccomplish with joy its supreme function. They are, very probably,\nagreeable to the individual and they are perceived as pleasure only\nbecause they are useful to the species. This character of necessity is\nnaturally more apparent in animals than in man. In animals the caress\nhas fixed forms, of which the kiss, however, gives a good example; the\ncaress is an integral part of the cavalage. A prelude, but a prelude\nwhich can not be omitted without compromising the essential part of\nthe drama. It happens, however, that man, able to overexcite himself\ncerebrally, may abridge, or even neglect the prologue to coition: this\nis also noted in certain domestic mammifers, the bull and stallion. The\nmere sight or smell of the other sex is doubtless enough to produce a\nstate permitting immediate union. This is not the case with dogs, who\nare still more domestic, the two sexes give themselves up to play, to\nexplorations, they demand each other's consent, courtship continues,\nsometimes the male, despite his condition, retreats; more often the\nfemale lowers the draw-bridge of her tail, and closes the fortress. One\nknows the provocations of birds. M. Mantegazza has agreeably recounted\nthe sexual play of two vultures, the female shut in the carcass of an\nalmost devoured horse, interrupted her pecking of carrion, to groan\ndeeply, turning her head to look up into the air. A male vulture soared\nabove the larder, replying to the groans of the female. However, when\nthe overexcited male descended toward the supposedly willing vulturess,\nshe retreated into the carcass, and after a short dispute she made him\nunderstand that the time was not yet ripe, and sent him off. After\nwhich the groans recommenced; the female seemed annoyed; she mounted\nthe cage of bone, swelling her wings, lifting her tail, cooing. The\nunion finally took place in a great commotion of ruffled feathers and\nshaken bones.\n\nThe same author has precisely noted the complicated preludes indulged\nin by two sparrows. I give the r\u00e9sum\u00e9, graphically: A troop of sparrows\non the roof in the morning; calm, they make their toilet. Arrives a\nlarge male who emits a violent cry; one of the females replies at once,\nnot by a cry but by an act: she leaves the group. The male joins her,\nshe flies to a neighbouring roof; there follows a long chatter beak to\nbeak. New flight; the male rests in the sun, then rejoins the minx. The\nassaults begin, the male is repulsed. The female moves off, in little\nhops. The edge of the roof stops the flight, she profits by this excuse\nand surrenders.\n\nBut it is the prodigious insect whom one must interrogate. One knows\nthe cantharides, these beautiful coleoptera on whom pharmacy has\ninflicted so wicked a reputation. The female gnaws her oak leaf, the\nmale arrives, mounts her back, enlaces her with his hind feet. Then\nwith his stretched abdomen he flagellates the female alternately to\nright and left with frantic speed. At the same time he massages her,\nlashes her neck furiously with his front feet, all his body shakes and\nvibrates. The female remains passive, awaiting the calm. It comes.\nWithout letting go the male stretches out his forelegs in a cross,\nunbends a little, wagging from head and corselet. The female starts\neating again. The calm is short; the male's follies recommence. Then\nthere is another man\u0153uvre, with the fold of his legs and tarses, he\nseizes the female's antenn\u00e6, forces her to lift her head, at the same\ntime redoubling the lashing of her flanks. New pose; new start of the\nflagellation: finally the female opens. The coupling lasts a day and a\nnight, after which the male falls, but remains knotted to the female\nwho drags him from leaf to leaf, the penis attached to her organs.\nSometimes he also takes a mouthful here and there; when he drops off it\nis to die. The female lays the eggs and dies in her turn. The cerocome,\nan insect kin to the cantharide, has analogous habits, but the female\nis even colder, and the male is obliged to tap more than one before\ngetting an answer. In vain he beats the sides of his chosen companion\nwith his paws, she remains insensible, inert. This action, moreover,\nhas the full appearance of having passed to a state of mania in the\nmale muscles, so much so that, in default of females, males mount and\npummel each other. As soon as a male is charged by another male he\ntakes the female attitude and remains quiet; one sees pyramids of three\nor four males; in which case the top one is the only one wildly waving\nhis feet; the others remain immobile, as if their position of mounts\ntransformed them into passive animals: probably because their muscles\nare pinned down. (For these two observations see Fabre, \"_Souvenirs_,\"\nvol. II. _C\u00e9rocomes, mylabres et zonitis_.)\n\nIt is rare for a female to assist the male in his work, but there\nremains the obstacle of the other males. Contrary to what one might\nthink, there is no relation between the male's social character and\nhis amorous character. Ferocious animals show themselves at the moment\nof love-making much more placid than gentle or even timid animals.\nThe scary rabbit is an impetuous, tyrannous and jealous lover. If the\nfemale does not accede to his first desire, he rages. She is, moreover,\nvery lascivious and gestation in no way interrupts her amours. The\nhare, who does not pass for audacious, is an ardent and heady lover; he\nfights furiously with his peers for the possession of a female. They\nare animals very well equipped for love, the penis greatly developed,\nclitoris almost as large. The males make real voyages, run for entire\nnights in search of the doe-hare who is sedentary: like the doe-rabbit,\nshe never refuses, even when pregnant.\n\nMartins, polecats, sables, rats fight violently during the rutting\nseason. Rats accompany their fights with sharp cries. Stags and\nwildboars, and a great number of other species fight to the death for\nthe possession of females; a practice not unknown to humanity. Even\nheavy tortoises feel exasperation from love; the defeated male is\ntilted onto his back.\n\nFiner, destined perhaps for a superior and charming civilization, the\nbirds like combat; sometimes the duel is serious, as in gallinace\u00e6,\ncock-fights, often it is a courtesy, a mimicry. The female of\nthe rock-cock of Brazil is tawny and without beauty, the male is\nyellow-orange, with crest bordered in deep red, the long wing feathers\nand tail feathers are red-brown. One sees the females ranged in a\ncircle as a crowd about jugglers, the males are strutting, cutting\ncapers, moving their colour-shot feathers, getting themselves admired\nand desired. From time to time a female admits that she is moved, a\ncouple is formed. But the tetras, heather-cocks of North America, have\nstill more curious customs. Their fights have become exactly what they\nhave with us, that is, dances. It is no longer the tourney, it is\nthe tour-de-valse. What completes the proof that these parades are a\nsurvival, a transformation, is that the males, being amused by them,\nperform them not only before but after coupling. They even practice\nthem for diversion while the females are sitting on the eggs, absorbed\nin maternal duty. Travellers thus describe the tetras' dance (Milton\nand Cheaddle, \"Atlantic to Pacific,\" p. 171 of the French translation):\n\"They gather, twenty or thirty in a chosen place, and begin to dance\nlike mad. Opening their wings, they draw together their feet, like men\ndoing the _danse du sac_. Then they advance toward each other, do a\nwaltz turn, pass to a second partner, and so on. This contre-danse of\nprairie chickens is very amusing. They become so absorbed in it that\none can approach quite near.\"\n\nBirds of Australia and New Guinea[1] make love with a charming\nceremony. To attract his mistress the male makes a veritable\ncountry-house, or, if he is less skilful, a rustic bower of greenery.\nHe plants rushes, green sprigs, for he is small, about the size of a\nblackbird; he bends them into a vault, often a metre long. He strews\nthe floor with leaves, flowers, red fruits, white bits of bone, bright\npebbles, bits of metal, jewels stolen in the neighbourhood. They say\nthat when Australians miss a ring or a pair of scissors, they search\nthese green tents. Our magpie shows a certain taste for bright objects:\npeople tell tales about him. The \"gardener-bird\" of New Guinea is\nstill more ingenious, to such a degree that his work is mistaken for\nhuman work and people are deceived thereby. With his beak and claws he\nmanages as well and better than peasants, often showing a decorative\ntaste which they lack. People search for the \"origin of art\": there\nyou have it, in the sexual game of a bird. Our \u00e6sthetic manifestations\nare but a development of this same instinct to please which, in one\nspecie over-excites the male, in another moves the female. If there is\na surplus it will be spent aimlessly, for pure pleasure: that is human\nart; its origin is that of the art of birds and insects.\n\nThe _Grande Encyclop\u00e9die_ has given a picture of the gardener-bird's\npleasure house. He is called in most scholarly parlance the Amblyornis\ninornata, because he is lacking in personal beauty. One would take\nhis house for the work of some intelligent delicate pygmy. We find\nthe description of it, after the Italian traveller M. O. Beccari[2]\n\"In crossing a magnificent forest M. Beccari found himself suddenly\nin the presence of a little conical cabin, in front of which was a\nlawn strewn with flowers; he at once recognized the sort of hut which\nM. Bruijn's huntsmen had described to him as the work of a dark bird\nsomewhat larger than a blackbird. He made a very exact sketch of it,\nand verifying the native's tales by his own observation, he found\nout how the bird makes this building which is not so much a nest\nas a pleasure house. The amblyornis chooses a little clearing with\nunbroken lawn and a small tree in the middle. Around this tree or bush\nwhich serves as axis, the bird places a little moss, then he plants\nslantwise the branches of a plant which will continue to grow for\nsome time; juxtaposition of branches form the inclined walls of the\nhut. On one side they are left open to make a doorway, before which\nis the garden whose elements are gathered with difficulty, tuft by\ntuft, at some distance. After having carefully cleaned the lawn, the\namblyornis sows it with flowers and fruits which he collects in the\nneighbourhood, and which he renews from time to time.\" This primitive\ngardener belongs to the bird of paradise family, remarkable for\nthe beauty of their plumage. It seems that not being able to dress\nhimself, he has exteriorized his instinct. According to travellers,\nthese cabins are true houses of rendezvous, the country-boxes of the\nseventeenth century, the \"follies\" of the XVIIIth. The gallant bird\nornaments it with everything that might please the invited female; if\nshe is satisfied, it is the abode of love, after having been that of\ndeclarations. I do not know whether these oddities have been given the\nimportance which they should have been, in the history of birds and of\nhumanity. The scholar, the only person knowing such details, usually\nfails utterly to understand them. One savant whom I read, thinks of\nthe thieving magpie, and adds, these traits which are common to them\nally them closely to birds of paradise and corvida. Doubtless, but that\nis not very important. The grave fact is the gathering of the first\nflower. The useful fact explains animality; the useless fact explains\nman. Now, it is of capital importance to show that the useless fact is\nnot peculiar to man alone.\n\nCrickets also have courting fights, but perhaps for a different reason:\nthe feebleness of their offensive weapons, and the solidity of their\narmour. There is, however, a winner and loser. The loser decamps, the\nconqueror sings. Then he shines himself, stamps, seems nervous. Fabre\nsays that emotion often renders him mute; his elytra (wing-shells)\nshake without giving a sound. The female cricket, witness of the duel,\nruns to hide under a leaf as soon as it is over. \"She draws back the\ncurtain a little, and looks out, and wants to be seen.\" After this\nplay, she shows herself completely, the cricket rushes forward, makes\na half-turn, rears up and slides under her belly. The work finished,\nhe gets away as fast as possible, for we are before an enigmatic\northopter, the female is quite ready to eat him. It is the male's song\nwhich attracts the female cricket. When she hears it, she listens,\ntakes her bearings, obeys the call. It is the same with cicadas, even\nthough the two sexes usually live side by side. By imitating the sound\nof the male, one can deceive the females and make them come to one.\n\nSometimes sight, sometimes smell guides the male. Many hymenoptera,\nfurnished with a powerful visual organ keep watch for the females,\nspying the vicinity. Thus also many day butterflies. When the male\nnotices a female, he pursues, but in order to get in front of her,\nto be seen, and he seems to tempt her with slow waving of his wings.\nThis display lasts often quite a long time. Finally their antenn\u00e6\ntouch, their wings stroke each other, and they fly off in company. The\ncoupling often takes place in the air; thus among pierides. In certain\nspecies, bombyx for example, the females are heavy and even aptera, the\nmale who is in contrast lively, fecundates several, going from one to\nthe other, which is doubtless what gives butterflies their reputation\nfor inconstancy. They live too short a time to deserve it: many born\nin the morning do not see the next day's sun. One might rather make\nthem a symbol for pure thought. There are some who do not eat, and\namong those who do not eat there are some whom nature has vowed to\nvirginity. Hermaphrodites of a singular sort, male on the right side,\nfemale on the left, they seem to be two sexual halves welded together\nalong the medial line. The organs whose centre is cut by this line are\nbut demi-organs good for nothing save the entertainment of observers.\nHybrid butterflies, produced by crossing of two species, are not very\nrare; they also are incapable of reproduction.\n\nThe coupling of day butterflies lasts only a few minutes, among night\nbutterflies it is often prolonged for a day and a night, as in sphinx,\nphalenes, noctuelles. If it is a reward, it is due to their long\ncourageous voyages in quest of the female whom they have divined. The\ngreat-peacock moth covers several leagues of country in the attempt to\nsatisfy his desire. Blanchard tells of a naturalist who having caught\na female bombyx and put her in his pocket, returned home escorted by\na cloud of over two hundred males. In spring, in a place where the\ngreat-peacock is so rare that one with difficulty finds one or two per\nyear, the presence of a caged female will draw a hundred males, as\nFabre has shown by experiment. These feverish males are endowed with\nvery brief ardour. Whether or no they have touched a female, they live\nbut two or three days. Enormous insects, larger than a humming-bird,\nthey do not eat; their bocal pieces are merely an ornament, a decor:\nthey are bora to reproduce and to die. The males seem infinitely more\nnumerous than the females, and it is probable that not more than one\nin an hundred can accomplish his destiny. He who misses the pursued\nfemale, who arrives too late, is lost: his life is so short that it\nwould be very difficult for him to discover a second. It is true that\nin normal circumstances the female should stop emitting her sexual\nodour as soon as she has been ridden; the males are thus attracted by\nthe same female through a proportionately shorter time and there is\nthis much less chance of their searches being unfruitful. Is it their\nsense of smell alone that guides them?\n\nAt 8 a. m. at Fabre's place in Serignan, one saw the cocoon of a\nlesser-peacock moth open; a female emerged and was immediately\nimprisoned in a wire cage. At noon a male arrived, the first that\nFabre, who had lived there all his life, had ever seen. The wind was\nblowing from the north. The male came from the north, that is to say,\nagainst the scent. At two o'clock ten had arrived. Having come as far\nas the house without hesitation, they were troubled, got the wrong\nwindow, wandered from room to room, never went directly toward the\nfemale. One would say that at this point they should have used another\nsense, perhaps sight, despite their being crepuscular creatures, or\nthat the cage bothered them. Perhaps also it is the custom for the\nfemale to come and play before them? It is, in any case, evident that\nsense of smell plays an important r\u00f4le; the mystery would not be less\ngreat if one supposed the bringing into play of a special sense, that\nof sexual orientation. Fabre has obtained equal success with the\nfemale of a very rare butterfly, the oak bombyx, or banded minime: in\none morning sixty males arrived, turning about the prisoner. One has\nobserved analogous if not identical things in certain serpents, in\nmammifera: everyone has seen dogs in the country, drawn by a female in\nheat, coming from a considerable distance, nearly a league, without\none's being able to say how their organism had got the news.\n\nExplanations are vain in these matters. They divert the curiosity\nwithout satisfying the reason. What one sees clearly is a necessity:\nthe act must be accomplished, to this end, all obstacles, whatever\nthey are, will be overcome. Neither distance, nor the difficulty\nof the voyage, nor the danger of the approach can drive back the\ninstinct. In man, who has sometimes the power to escape the sexual\ncommandments, disobedience may have happy results. Chastity, as a\ntransmuter, may change unused sexual energy into intellectual or social\nenergy; in animals this transmutation of physical values is impossible.\nThe compass needle remains in one immutable position, obedience is\nunescapable. That is why there is so deep a rumble in nature when the\nspring orders are posted. Vegetable flowers are not the only ones to\nopen: sexes of flesh also flower. Birds, fish take on new and more\nvivid colours. There are songs, plays, pilgrimages. Salmon who live\nquietly at the river-mouths, must gather, depart, climb the streams,\npass weirs, scrabble against rocks which form the dams and cataracts,\nwear themselves out leaping as arrows against all human and natural\nobstacles. Males and females arrive worn out at the end of their\njourney, the _fray\u00e8re_ of fine sand where they are to lay their eggs,\nand the males heroically to spend the milt distilled from their blood.\n\nSpring is not the only rutting season. Love's calendar covers the\nyear. In winter, wolves and foxes; in spring, the birds and fish;\nin summer, insects and many mammals; in autumn the deer. Winter\nis often the season chosen by polar animals; the sable couples in\nJanuary; the ermine in March; the glutton, at the beginning and end\nof winter. Domestic animals have often several seasons; for the dog,\ncat and house-birds, spring and autumn. One finds young otters at any\ntime. Most insects die after mating; but not all hemiptera, nor the\nqueen bee, nor certain coleoptera, nor certain flies. The stag and\nthe stallion empty themselves, but not the ram, nor the bull nor the\nhe-goat. The duration of pregnancy in placentaires seems to have some\nrelation to the size of the animal; mare, eleven to twelve months;\nass, twelve months and a half; cow, doe, nine months; sheep, goat,\nwolf, vixen, five months; sow, four months; bitch, two months; cat, six\nweeks; rabbit, one month.\n\nThere are oddities: fecundated in August, the roe is not delivered\nuntil seven and a half months later, the embryo remaining a long time\nstationary, and waiting for the spring to start again. In a she-bat\novulation does not take place until the end of winter, although she has\nreceived the male in the autumn: females caught during hibernation have\nthe vagina swollen with inert sperm which does not act until the spring\nwaking.\n\n\n[1] One has the unpronounceable name, savants designating it by the\njumble of letters: Ptilinorhynches. The other is called the \"gardener.\"\n\n[2] The title of his study is curious \"Les Cabanes et les jardins de\nl'Amblyornis.\" (Annales du Mus\u00e9e d'histoire naturelle de G\u00eanes, 1876).\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI\n\nPOLYGAMY\n\n\n      _Rarity of monogamy.--Taste for change in animals.--\n      R\u00f4les of monogamy and polygamy in the stability or\n      instability of specific types.--Strife of the couple\n      against polygamy.--Couples among insects.--Among\n      fish, batrachians, saurians.--Monogamy of pigeons, of\n      nightingales.--Monogamy in carnivora, in rodents.--\n      Habits of the rabbit.--The ichneumon.--Unknown\n      causes of polygamy.--Rarity and superabundance\n      of males.--Polygamy in insects.--In fish.--In\n      gallinace\u00e6, in web-footed birds.--In herbivora.--The\n      antelopes harem.--Human polygamy.--How it tempers the\n      couple among civilized races._\n\n\nThere are no monogamous animals save those which love only once during\ntheir lifetime. Exceptions to this rule have not sufficient constancy\nto be erected into a counter-rule. There are monogamists in fact, there\nare none of necessity, from the time an animal lives long enough to\ncommit the reproductive act several times. Free female mammals nearly\nalways flee the male who has once served them, they need a new one.\nA bitch does not receive last season's dog save in direst extremity.\nThis appears to me to be the struggle of the specie against variety.\nThe couple is the maker of varieties. Polygamy drags them back to the\ngeneral type of the specie. Individuals of a specie frankly polygamous\nshould present a very great similarity; if the species incline toward\na certain monogamy, the dissemblances become more numerous. It is not\nan illusion which makes us recognize in human races almost monogamous,\na lesser uniformity of type than in polygamous societies or those\ngiven over to promiscuity, or among animal species. The example of\nthe dog seems the worst that one could have chosen. It isn't, it is\nthe best, considering that in receiving successively individuals of\ndifferent variety, the bitch tends to produce individuals not of a\nspecialized breed, but on the contrary of a type where several breeds\nwill be mixed, individuals which in crossing and recrossing in their\nturn, will end, if the dogs live in a free state, in forming one\nsingle specie. Sexual liberty tends to establish uniformity of type;\nmonogamy strives against this tendency and maintains diversity.[1]\nAnother consequence of this manner of seeing is that one must consider\nmonogamy as favourable to intellectual development, intelligence being\na differentiation which accomplishes itself more often, in proportion\nas there are individuals and groups who differ physically. Physical\nuniformity engenders uniformity of sensibility, thence of intelligence;\nthis does not need to be explained; now intelligences count, and mark\nonly their differences; uniform, they are as if they were not; impotent\nto hook themselves one onto the other, to react against each other,\nlacking asperities, lacking contrary currents. This is the flock, in\nwhich each member makes the same gesture of flight, of biting, or of\nroaring.\n\nNeither the conditions of absolute monogamy, nor those of absolute\npromiscuity seem to be found at present in humanity, nor among animals;\nbut one sees the couple, in several animal and human species, either\nin state of tendency, or in state of habit. More often, especially\namong insects, the father, even if he survives it a little while,\nremains indifferent, to the consequences of the genital act. At other\ntimes, the fights between males so reduce their number that a sole male\nremains the master and servant of a great number of females. So one\nmust distinguish between true, and successive polygamy; between the\nmonogamy of one season, and that of an entire lifetime; and finally\none must set apart those animals who make love only once, or during\none season which is followed by death. These different varieties and\nnuances demand methodic classification. It would be a long work, and\nwould perhaps not attain true exactitude, for in animals, as in man,\none must count with caprice in sexual matters: when a faithful dove is\ntired of her lover, she takes flight, and soon forms a new couple with\nan adulterous male. The couple is natural, but the permanent couple is\nnot. Man has never bent to it, save with difficulty, even though it be\none of the principal conditions of his superiority.\n\nThe breasts of the male do not seem to prove the primordiality of\nthe couple in mammals. Although there are veridic examples of the\nmale's having given suck, it is difficult to consider the male udder\nas destined for a real r\u00f4le, or for an emergency milking.[2] This\nreplacement has been too rarely observed for one to use it as a basis\nof argument. Embryology gives a good explanation of the existence\nof this useless organ. An useless instrument is, moreover, quite as\nfrequent in nature as the absence of a useful instrument. Perfect\nconcordance of organ and act is rare. In the case of insects who\nlive but for one love-season, sometimes for two real seasons if they\ncan benumb themselves for the winter, polygamy is nearly always the\nconsequence of the rarity of males, or the superabundance of females.\nSpace is too vast, their food too abundant for there to be truly deadly\ncombats between males. Moreover, their love accomplished, the minuscule\nfolk ask only to die, the couple is formed only for the actual time\nof fecundation, the two animals at once resume their liberty, that is\nfor the female to deliver her eggs, and for the male to languish, and\nsometimes to cast a final song to the winds. There are exceptions to\nthis rule, but if one looks upon the exceptions with the same gaze as\non the rule, one would see in nature only what one sees on the surface\nof a river, vague movements and passing shadows. To conceive some\nreality, one must conceive a rule, first, as an instrument of vision\nand of measure. With most insects the male does nothing but live; he\ndeposits his seed in the female receptacle, flies on, vanishes. He does\nnot share any of the labours preparatory to laying. Alone the female\nsphex engages in her terrible and clever strife with the cricket, whom\nshe paralyzes with three stabs of her dagger in his three moto-nervous\ncentres; alone she hollows the oblique burrow at the bottom of which\nlive her larv\u00e6; alone she adorns it, fills it with provisions, closes\nit. Alone the female cerceris heaps up in the deep gallery the stunned\nweevils and burn-cows, fruit of her excavations, larder for her\nprogeny. Alone the she-osmie, she-wasp, she-philanthe--one would have\nto cite nearly all the hymenoptera. One understands better, when the\ninsect deposits her eggs by chance, without prefatory man\u0153uvres, or by\nspecial instruments, that the male co-operation is lacking; only the\nfemale cicada can sink her clever burrow in the olive bark.\n\nThere are however couples among insects. Among coleoptera there\nare the \"purse-maker,\" the necrophore. Stercorian geotrupes, lunar\ncopris, onitis bison, sisyphus, work soberly side by side preparing\nthe larder for their coming families. In these cases, the male seems\nmaster, he directs the man\u0153uvres in the complicated operations of\nthe necrophores. A couple get busy about a corpse, say of a field\nmouse; nearly always one or two isolated males join them, the troop\nis organized, one sees the chief engineer explore the territory and\ngive orders. The female awaits them, motionless, ready to obey, to\nfollow the movement. As soon as there is a couple the male necrophore\ncommands. The male assists the female during the work of arranging the\ncell and the laying. Most purse-makers, sisyphus or copris make and\ntransport together the pill which serves as food for the larv\u00e6; their\ncouple is just like that of birds. One might believe that in this\ncase monogamy is necessitated by the nature of the work; not at all:\nthe male in other quite closely related species, sacred scarab, for\nexample, leaves the female alone to build the excremental ball in which\nshe encloses her eggs.\n\nComing up to vertebrata one finds also certain examples of a sort\nof monogamy: when the male fish serves as hatcher for his own eggs,\neither carrying them in a special pouch, or heroicly sheltering them\nin his mouth. This is rare, since, usually, the two sexes of fish do\nnot approach each other, do not even know each other. Batrachians,\non the contrary, are monogamous; the female does not lay save under\nmale pressure, and it is so slow an operation, preceded by such long\nman\u0153uvres that the whole season is filled with it. The male of the\ncommon land toad rolls the long chaplet of eggs about his feet as\nsoon as it is divided, and goes in the evening to place it in the\nneighbouring pool. Nearly all saurians seem also to be monogamous.\nThe he and she lizard form a couple said to last several years. Their\namours are ardent, they clasp each other closely belly to belly.\n\nBirds are generally considered monogamous, save gallinace\u00e6 and\nweb-footed birds; but exceptions appear so numerous that one would have\nto name the species one by one. The fidelity of pigeons is legendary,\nand is perhaps only a legend. The male pigeon certainly has tendencies\nto infidelity and even to polygamy. He deceives his companion; he goes\nso far as to inflict upon her the shame of having a concubine under\nthe conjugal roof! And these two spouses, he tyrannizes over them, he\nenslaves them by beating. The female, it is true, is not always of an\neasy disposition. She has her caprices. Sometimes, refusing her mate,\nshe deserts him and gives herself to the first comer. One will not find\nhere any of the zo\u00f6logical anecdotes on the industry of birds, their\nunion in devotion to the specie. The habits of these new-comers in the\nworld, are very unstable; yet among certain gallinace\u00e6, monogamous\nfor exception, like the partridge, the males seem pulled by contrary\ndesires, they undergo the couple rather than choose it, and their share\nin the rearing of young is often very slight. One has seen the male\nred partridge, after mating, abandon his female and rejoin a troop of\nmale vagabonds. The nightingales, perfect pair, sit on the eggs turn\nby turn. The male, when the female comes to relieve him, remains near\nby and sings until she is comfortably settled on the eggs. Still more\ndevoted is the male talegalle, a sort of Australian turkey. He makes\nthe nest, an enormous heap of dead leaves; when the female has laid, he\nwatches the eggs, comes from time to time to uncover them for exposure\nto the sun. He takes his share of watching the young, sheltering them\nunder leaves until they are able to fly.\n\nOf mammals, the carnivora and rodents often practice a certain, at\nleast temporary, monogamy. Foxes live in couples, and educate the\nyoung foxes. One finds their real habits in the old \"Roman du Renart\":\nRenard the fox goes vagabond, hunting for prey and windfalls, while\nMadame Hermaline, his wife, waits at home, in her bower at Maupertuis.\nThe vixen teaches her children the art of killing and dividing; their\napprenticeship is made on the still living game which the male purveyor\nhas brought to the house. The rabbit is very rough in love; the\nhamster, another rodent, often becomes carnivorous during the rutting\nseason; they say that he is quite ready to eat his young, and that\nthe female, fearing his ferocity, leaves him before delivery. These\naberrations are exaggerated in captivity, and affect even the female.\nOne knows that the she-rabbit sometimes eats her young; this happens\nespecially when one has the imprudence to touch or even to look too\nclosely at the young rabbits. This is enough to bring on a violent\ndisturbance of maternal sentiment. The same dementia has been observed\nin a vixen who had kittened in a cage; one day someone passed, and\nlooked steadily at the young foxes, a quarter of an hour later they\nwere throttled.\n\nVarious explanations are given for this practice among she-rabbits,\nthe simplest being that they are driven by thirst to kill the young in\norder to drink the blood. This is rather Dantescan for she-rabbits.\nThey say also, regarding both wild and tame rabbits, that the female\nwhen surprised kills the young because she has not industry like the\ndoe-hare, cat, or bitch, to transport them to some other place or to\nsave at least one, by the scruff of its neck. The third explanation is\nthat, devouring the afterbirth, like nearly all mammals, and this from\nphysiological motive, the doe-rabbit acquires a taste, and continues\nthe meal, absorbing the young as well. Without rejecting any of these\nexplanations one may present several others. First, it is not only the\nfemales who eat the young, the males are equally given to it. Being\nvery lascivious, the male rabbit tries to get rid of his young, in\norder to stop suckling, and have his female again. On the other hand,\nit is a regular fact, that as soon as she has retaken the habit of\nhaving the male, the mother rabbit, even if she is still giving suck,\nat once ceases to recognize her offspring, her brief ideas already\nturned toward her new, coming family. Different causes may engender\nidentical acts, and different lines of reasoning bring the same\nconclusions. There is reasoning in this case of the rabbit; there is\nno reasoning save in case of initial error, when there is trouble in\nthe intellect. This trouble and the final massacre is all that one can\nstate definitely: the reasoning escapes our analysis.\n\nIs the rabbit really monogamous? Perhaps, with a monogamy for the\nseason, or from necessity. The male, in any case pays no attention to\nthe young, unless it be to throttle them; thus the female as soon as\nshe is gravid, takes refuge in an isolated burrow. Their coupling,\nwhich occurs especially toward evening, is repeated as often as five\nor six times an hour, the female crouching in a particular manner; the\nbreak away is very sudden, the male throwing himself back, sidewise and\nuttering a short cry. What really makes one doubt the monogamy of the\nrabbit is that one male is enough for eight or ten females, that he is\na great runner, that the males have murderous fights among themselves.\nDoubtless one must take each specie separately. Buffon pretends that\nin a warren the oldest buck rabbits have authority over the young. An\nobserver of rabbit habits, M. Mariot-Didieux, admits this trait of\nsuperior sociability in angoras, which is just the specie Buffon had\nstudied.\n\nBuck rabbits have still other aberrations, hunters pretend that they\npursue doe-hares, tire them and wear them out by their lustiness; it is\ncertain that these couplings give no result.\n\nThe Egyptian ichneumon lives in families. It seems that it is very\ninteresting to see them on a hunting expedition, first the male, then\nthe female, then the young in Indian file. Female and young do not take\ntheir eyes off father, and imitate all his gestures with care: one\nmight think the train was a large serpent moving in reeds. The wolf who\nlike the fox lives in pairs, helps his female and feeds her, but he\ndoes not know his young and will eat them if they come to hand. Certain\ngreat apes, gibbon and orang are temporarily monogamous.\n\nPolygamy would be explained by the rarity of males; which is not the\ncase with most mammals, among whom the males are almost constantly\nmore numerous. Buffon was the first to note this predominance, neither\nhas he nor has anyone since, given a satisfactory explanation. People\nhave said that in man, at least, the elder parent gives the sex to the\noffspring, and the more surely as the difference in age is greater,\nbut, by this reckoning one would have almost nothing but males. People\nhave also said that the younger the woman, the more likely the child\nto be male. The early marriages of the past are supposed to have\nyielded more males than the late marriages of the present. None of\nthese statements is serious. What remains past doubt is that European\nhumanity, to consider only that, gives an excess of males. The general\naverage is about 105, with extremes of 101 in Russia, and 113 in\nGreece; the French average is the same as the general average. One has\nnot been able to make out, in these variations, either influence of\nrace, or of climate, or of taxes, or of nationality, or anything else\nin particular. There are more male humans, more male sheep: it is a\nfact, which being regular, will be difficult to explain.\n\nWe find here superabundance, there penury of males, but neither does\nthe abundance determine the customs, nor is it likely the lack of males\nwould do so. There are so few males among gnats that Fabre was the\nfirst to recognize them, the proportion about one male to ten females.\nThis in no way produces polygamy, for the male dies the instant after\ncoupling. Nine out of ten gnat females die virgin, and even without\nhaving seen a male, without knowing that males exist: perhaps celibacy\naugments their ferocity, for it is the female gnat and she alone who\nsucks our gore. One supposes also that female spiders outnumber the\nmales ten or twenty to one: perhaps the buck who has escaped the\njaws of one mistress has the courage to risk his life yet again? It\nis possible, the male spider who survives his amours may live on for\nseveral years. Polygamy seems to exist, and in its most refined form,\nwith one sort of spider, the ctenize, whose males are peculiarly rare.\nThe female digs a nest in the earth, into which the male descends; he\nlives there some time, then he leaves, comes back: there are several\nhouses between which he divides his time equitably.\n\nThe polygamy of a curious little fish, the stickleback, is of the same\nsort, although more naive. The male builds a grass nest, then goes in\nsearch of a female, brings her back to the nest, invites her to lay;\nscarcely has his first companion departed when he brings in another.\nHe only stops when there is a satisfactory treasure of eggs, then he\nfecundates them in the usual manner. Thence on he guards the nest\nagainst malefactors, and watches the hatching. In the odd reversal of\nr\u00f4les, the young recognize their father; their mother may be the fish\npassing between them, or the one gliding off like a shadow, or the one\nchewing a grass blade. When the stickleback world becomes reasonable,\nthat is to say absurd, it will perhaps give itself up to the \"recherche\nde la maternit\u00e9\"? Their philosophers will demand \"Why should the\nfather alone be charged with the education of his offspring?\" Up to\nthe present one knows nothing except that he educates them with joy\nand affection. Among sticklebacks and among men there is no answer to\nsuch question save the answer given by facts. One might as well ask why\nhumanity is not hermaphrodite, like the snails, who strictly divide the\npleasures and burdens of love, for all snails commit the male act, and\nall lay. Why has the female ovaries, and the male testicles: and this\nflower pistils, and this one stamens? One ends in baby-talk. The wish\nto correct nature is unnecessary. It is hard enough to understand her,\neven a little, as she is. When she wishes to establish the absolute\nresponsibility of the father, she establishes the strict couple, and\nespecially, absolute polygamy. The pigeon is no longer certain of\nbeing the father of his young; the cock can not doubt it, he being the\nsole male among all his hens. But nature has no secondary intentions,\nshe keeps watch that, temporary or durable, fugitive or permanent the\ncouples are fecund; that is all.\n\nGallinace\u00e6 and web-feet present certain birds best known and most\nuseful to us. They are nearly all polygamous. The cock needs about\na dozen hens, he can do with a much larger number, but in that case\nhis ardour wears itself out. The duck, very licentious, is accused of\nsodomy. Not only is he polygamous, but anything will serve him. He\nmight better be a natural example of promiscuity. A gander is good\nfor ten or twelve geese, the cock-pheasant for eight or ten hens. The\nlyrure tetras needs many more, he leads a sultan's harem behind him. At\ndawn, in the season of amours, the male starts whistling with a noise\nlike steel on a grindstone, simultaneously stretching himself up, and\nspreading the fan of his tail, opening and puffing his wings. When the\nsun clears the horizon he rejoins his females, dances before them,\nwhile they devour him with their eyes, then he mounts them, according\nto his caprice, and with great vivacity.\n\nPolygamy is the rule among herbivora; bulls, bucks, stallions, bison\nare made to reign over a troop of females. Domesticity changes their\npermanent polygamy into successive polygamy. Stags go from female\nto female without tying up to any; the females follow this example.\nA specie immediately akin gives, on the contrary, an example of the\ncouple; the roebuck and his doe live in family, and bring up their\nyoung until these are ready to mate. The male of a certain Asian\nantelope needs more than a hundred docile females. Naturally, these\nharems can only be formed by the destruction of other males. This\nhundred females represents possibly more than a hundred males put out\nof business, males being always the more numerous sex, among mammals.\nThe utility of such hecatombs to the race is not certain. Doubtless one\nmay suppose that the surviving male is the strongest, or one of the\nstrongest of his generation, that is the lucky element, but whatever\nhis vigour it may be expected to wane at some point or other before\na hundred females desiring satisfaction. Some females are forgotten,\nothers fecundated in moments of weariness: for a certain number of\ngood products, there are a number of mediocre creations. True, these\nare destined, if male, to perish in future combats; but if they are\nfemale, and if they receive the favours of the chief, this system might\nhave for consequence the progressive degradation of the specie. It is\nhowever, probable that the necessary equilibrium is re-established;\ncombats between females, combats of coquetry, incitements of\nfemininity, doubtless take place, and it is the triumph of the malest\nmale and of the most female females.\n\nVirey asserts, in D\u00e9terville's \"Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire\nnaturelle,\" that the greater polygamous apes get on very well with\nwomen indigenes. It is possible, but no product has ever been born\nof these aberrations, which we must leave to theological works on\nbestialitas. Men and women, even of the Aryan race have at times\nset out to prove the radical animality of the human specie by the\npeculiarity of their tastes. The interest in these matters is chiefly\npsychological, and if one can draw no proof of evolution from the\nchance relations between woman and dog, man and goat, the coupling\nof primates of different orders offers no evidence either. There is\nhowever a relation between man and apes, it is that they are both\ndivisible into polygamists and monogamists, at least temporary; but\nthis does not differentiate them from most other animal species.\n\nIn most human races there is a radical polygamy, dissimulated under a\nshow-front of monogamy. Here generalizations are no longer possible,\nthe individual emerges and with his fantasy upsets all observations,\nand annihilates all statistics. The monogamist's brother is polygamous.\nA woman has known only one man, and her mother was every one's fancy.\nOne may assert the universal custom of marriage and deduce monogamy\nas a conclusion, and this will be false or true according to the\nepoch, milieu, race, moral tendencies of the moment. Moral codes are\nessentially unstable, since they represent only a hand-book ideal of\nhappiness; morality will modify itself according to the mobility of\nthis ideal.\n\nPhysiologically, monogamy is in no way required by the normal\nconditions of human life. Children? If the father's help is necessary\nit can be exercised over the children of several women as well as over\nthose of one woman only. The duration of tutelage among civilized\npeople is, moreover, excessive; it is dragged out, when it is a\nmatter of certain careers, almost until ripe age. Normally puberty\nought to liberate the young human, as it liberates the young of other\nmammals. The couple need then last only ten or fifteen years; but\nfemale fecundity accumulates children at a year's interval, so that,\nas long as the father's virility lasts, there might be, always one\nfeeble creature having right to demand protection. Human polygamy\ncould then, never be successive polygamy, save by exception, that is,\nif man were an obedient animal, submitting to normal sexual rules,\nand always fecund; but this successivity is frequent and divorce has\nlegalized it. The other and true polygamy, polygamy actual, temporary\nor permanent, is still less rare among people of European civilization,\nbut nearly always secret and never legal; it has for corollary a\npolyandry exercised under the same conditions. This sort of polygamy is\nvery different from that of Mormons, Turks, gallinace\u00e6 and antelopes,\nit is nothing more than promiscuity. It does not dissolve the couple,\nin diminishing its tyranny it renders it more desirable. Nothing so\nfavours marriage, and consequently, social stability, as the de facto\nindulgence in temporary polygamy. The Romans well understood this,\nand legalized concubinage. One can not here deal with a question so\nremote from, natural questions. To condense one's answer into briefest\npossible space, one would say that man, and principally civilized\nman, is vowed to the couple, but he only endures it on condition\nthat he may leave and return to it at will. This solution seems to\nconciliate his contradictory tastes, and is more elegant than the one\noffered by divorce, which is always the same thing over again; it is\nin conformity not only with human, but also with animal tendencies. It\nis favourable to the species, in assuring the suitable up-bringing of\nchildren, and also to the complete satisfaction of a need, which, in a\nstate of civilization is inseparable either from \u00e6sthetic pleasure or\nsentimental pleasure.\n\n\n[1] That is to say in the eye of some imaginary divinity who might be\nsupposed to regard humanity, or even the slower mammals from a timeless\nor say five century altitude.--Translator's note.\n\n[2] One believes nevertheless that the male bat suckles one of the two\nyoung that the couple regularly produces. But these animals are so odd\nand so heteroclite that this example, if it is authentic, would not be\na decisive argument.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVII\n\nLOVE AMONG SOCIAL ANIMALS\n\n\n      _Organization of reproduction among\n      hymenoptera.--Bees.--Wedding of the\n      queen.--Mother bee, cause and consciousness\n      of the hive.--Sexual royalty.--Limits of\n      intelligence among bees.--Natural logic and human\n      logic.--Wasps.--Bumble-bees.--Ants.--Notes on their\n      habits.--Very advanced state of their civilization.--\n      Slavery and parasitism among ants.--Termites.--The\n      nine principal active forms of termites.--Great\n      age of their civilization.--Beavers.--Tendency of\n      industrious animals to inactivity._\n\n\nSocial hymenoptera, bumble-bees, hornets, wasps, bees, have peculiar\nlove customs very different from those of other animal species. It is\nnot monogamy, since one finds in it nothing resembling the couple,\nnor polygamy, since the males know only one female, when they have\neven that adventure, and since the females are fecundated for the\nwhole of their life by a single fecundation. It is, rather, a sort of\nmatriarchate, even though the queen bee is not generally the mother of\nmore than a part of the hive whereover she rules, the other part having\nsprung from the queen who has gone off with the new swarm, or from the\none who has remained in the former hive. In very numerous hives there\nare about six or seven hundred males to one female. Copulation takes\nplace in the air; as is the case with ants, it is only possible after\na long flight has filled with air the pouches which cause the male's\norgan to emerge. Between these pockets, or a\u00ebriferous bladders shaped\nlike perforated horns, emerges the penis, a small white body, plump\nand bent back at the point. In the vagina, which is round, wide and\nshallow, the sperm-pouch opens; it is a reservoir which can contain\nthey say, a score of million of spermatozoides, destined to fecundate\nthe eggs, during several years in proportion as they are to be laid.\nThe form of the penis and the manner in which the sperm is coagulated\nby a viscous liquid into a veritable spermatophore, cause the death\nof the male. The copulation ended, he wishes to disengage himself but\nonly manages to do so in leaving in the vagina not only the penis but\nall the organs attached to it. He falls like an empty bag, while the\nqueen, returned to the hive, stops at the entrance, makes her toilet,\naided by the workers who crowd about her: with her mandibles she gently\nremoves the spine which has remained in her belly, and cleans the place\nwith lustral attention. Then she enters the second period of her life:\nmaternity. This penis which remains fast in the vagina makes one think\nof the darts of fighters which also remain in the wound; be it love or\nwar the over-courageous beastlet expires, worn out and mutilated; there\nis in this a peculiar facility of dehiscence which seems very rare.\n\nThe wedding of the queen bee remained a long time absolutely\nmysterious, and even today there are only a very few observers who\nhave been the distant witnesses of it. R\u00e9aumur, having isolated a\nqueen and a male, witnessed a play or combat with movements which he\ninterpreted with ingenuity. He could not see the actual coupling, which\nonly takes place in the air. His story, is unique and nothing since\nhas confirmed it. He shows us a queen approaching a male, sucking him\nwith her proboscis, offering him honey, stroking him with her feet, and\nfinally irritated by the coldness of her suitor, mounting his back,\napplying her vulva to the male organ, which R\u00e9aumur describes very well\n(\"Memoirs,\" tome V) and which he represents as covered with a white\nviscous liquid. The real preludes, at least in a state of liberty,\ncontradict the great observer. The female seems in no way aggressive.\nHere are the three authentic accounts I have been able to discover:\n\n\"6th July, 1849, M. Hannemann, bee-keeper at Wurtemburg, Thuringia was\nseated near my hive when his attention was aroused by an unaccustomed\nbuzzing. Suddenly he saw thirty or forty drones\" (i.e., false drones,\nmale bees) \"rapidly pursuing a queen-bee, about twenty or thirty feet\nup in the air. The group filled a space about two feet in diameter.\nSometimes, in their flight, they came as low as ten feet from the\nground, then rose, flying north to south. He followed them about a\nhundred yards, then a building interrupted him. The group of drones\nformed a sort of cone with the queen at the summit, then the cone\nenlarged into a globe of which she was the centre: at this moment the\nqueen succeeded in getting away and rose vertically, still followed by\nthe drones who had reformed the cone under her.\"[1]\n\n\"Some years later the Rev. Millette, at Witemarsh, observed the final\nphase of the act. During a hiving, he noticed a flying queen, who\nan instant later, was stopped by a male. After having flown about a\nrod they fell to the ground hooked to each other. He approached and\ncaptured them both, at the very moment when the male had abandoned\nhimself to the embrace; he carried them to the house and let them\nloose in a closed room. The queen, angry, flew toward the window; the\nmale after dragging himself for an instant across the open palm of the\nobserver's hand, fell to floor and died. Both male and female had at\nthe tip of the abdomen drops of a milky white liquid; by squeezing the\nmale, he saw that the male had lost his genital organs.\" (Farmer and\nGardener, 1859.)\n\n\"Having seen the queen go out, M. Carrey closed the entrance of the\nhive. During his absence, which lasted a quarter of an hour, three\nfalse-drones came to the entrance and finding it closed, continued\nflying. When the queen on her return was only about three feet from\nthe hive, one of the drones flew very rapidly toward her, throwing his\nlegs around her body. They stopped, resting on a long grass-blade. Then\nan explosion was distinctly heard, and they separated. The drone fell\nto the ground quite dead, with abdomen much contracted. After a few\ncircles in the air, the mother entered the hive.\" (Copulation of the\nmother bee, in l'Apiculteur, 6e ann\u00e9e, 1862.)\n\nSave the remark about the final explosion, these three accounts accord\nwell enough, and give an exact idea of one of the couplings most\ndifficult to get sight of.\n\nIt is, moreover, the one half-obscure point in bee life. One knows\nall the rest, their three sexes, rigorously specialized, the precise\nindustry of the wax-workers, the diligence of the collectresses, the\npolitical sense of these extraordinary amazons, their initiatives, when\nthe hive is too full, their starts for the formation of new swarms,\nthe duels of queens where the populace intervene, the massacre of\nmales as soon as they are useless, the nurse's art in transforming a\nvulgar larva into the larva of a queen, the methodical activity of\nthese republics where all wills, united in a single conscience, have\nno other aim but the common well-being and the conservation of the\nrace. It is however these over-mechanical virtues which constitute\nthe inferiority of the bee; the workers are extremely laborious\nand well-behaved, but they lack even that slight personality which\ncharacterizes sexed insects. The much less reasonable queen is more\nliving, she is capable of jealousy, rage, of despair when she feels\nher royalty menaced by the new queen whom the nurses have bred up in\nsecret. Even the useless, noisy, pillaging, parasitic males, drunk and\nswollen with vain sperm are more attractive than the honest workers,\nand handsomer also, stronger, more slender, more elegant. Bee-lovers\ngenerally despise these musketeers, yet it is they who incarnate the\nanimality, that is to say the beauty of the specie. If it is true as\nM. Maeterlinck believes (La Vie des Abeilles), that the most vigorous\nof seven or eight hundred males finally seduces the royal virgin, then\ntheir laziness, their greediness, their giddy staggering are but so\nmany virtues.\n\nIt seems that the queen and even the workers can without fecundation\nlay eggs which will hatch into males; but copulation is necessary in\norder to produce females and queens; now as only the queen can receive\nthe male, a hive without a queen is doomed. That is the practical\npoint of view, the sexual point of view leads to other reflections. A\nfemale can, quite alone, give birth to a male: but to have an egg hatch\nfemale, it must be fecundated by a male born spontaneously: one observes\nhere the real exteriorization of the male organ, a segmentation of the\ngenital power, into two forces, the male force and the female. Thus\ndisunited, it acquires a new faculty which will fully unfold itself\nby the reintegration of the two halves of the initial force into a\nsingle force. But why do the virgin-born ovules necessarily give birth\nto males, among bees, and to females among plant lice? That is the\nquestion defying answer. All that one sees is that parthenogenesis is\nalways transitory, and that after a number of virginal generations,\nnormal fecundation always intervenes.\n\nOne can not say that the mother bee is a true queen, a veritable\nchief, but she is the important personage in the hive, the one without\nwhom life stops. The workers have the air of being mistresses; in\nreality their nervous centre is in the queen; they act only for her,\nand by her. Her disappearance sets the hive crazy, and drives it to\nabsurd endeavours, such as the transformation of a nurse into a layer,\nthough she will give eggs of one sex only, so many useless mouths. In\nreflecting on this last expedient one can measure the importance of\nsex, and understand the absolutism of its royalty. Sex is king, and\nthere is no royalty save the sexual. The making neuter of the workers,\nwhich sets them out of norm, if it is a cause of order in the hive, is\nabove all a cause of death. There are no living creatures save those\nwho can perpetuate life.\n\nThe interest offered by bees is very great, but does not pass that\noffered by the observation of most hymenoptera, social or solitary, or\nof certain neuroptera, such as termites; or even by beavers, and many\nbirds. But bees have been through many ages our sugar-producers, and\nthey alone; hence man's tenderness for insects more valuable than all\nothers to him. Their intelligence is well developed, but soon shows its\nlimitations. People pretend that bees know their master, a manifest\nerror. The relations of bees and man are purely human. It is evident\nthat they are as ignorant of man as are all the other insects, and all\nother invertebrata. They allow themselves to be exploited, in the sense\nof their instinct, to the limit of famine and muscular exhaustion.\nVirgil's phrase is excessively true, in all the senses one wishes to\ntake: _Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes_. (Bees making honey not\nfor yourselves.) These clever, witty creatures are fooled by the gross\nfakes of our industrial cunning. When they have stacked their winter's\nprovisions, honey, into their wax combs, one removes the honeycombs,\nand replaces them by sockets of varnished paper: and the solemn bees,\nset themselves to forgetting their long labours; before these virgin\ncombs, they have but one idea: to fill them. They restart work with a\nbustle which would excite veritable pity in any man but a bee-keeper.\nThese commercials have invented a hive with moveable combs. The bees\nwill never know. Bees are stupid.\n\nBut we who see the limits of intelligence in bees, should consider\nthe limits of our own. There are limits; it is possible to conceive\nbrains who observing us, would say: men are stupid. All intelligence\nis limited; it is just this shock against the limit, against the wall,\nwhich by the pain it causes, engenders consciousness. We are not to\nlaugh too much at the bees who gaily furnish the mobile combs of their\nimproved hives. We are perhaps the slaves of a master who exploits us,\nand who will remain forever unknown. The polygamy, or if one wish, the\npolyandry of bees, pretext for this digression, is then purely virtual;\nit is in the state of possibility, but it will never be realized, since\nthe fecundity of the queen is assured by a single act. The excessive\nmultiplicity of males corresponds doubtless to an ancient order in\nwhich the females were more numerous. In any case only two or three\nmales out of about a thousand, are used, or let us say ten, if you wish\nto suppose very frequent swarming, this demonstrates that one must not\nprejudge the habits of an animal specie by the overabundance of one\nsex or another, and that, in a general fashion, one must place natural\nlogic above our human logic, derived from mathematical logic. Facts in\nnature are connected by a thousand knots of which no one is solvable by\nhuman logic. When one of these tangles is unravelled before our eyes\nwe marvel at the simplicity of its mechanism, we think we understand,\nwe make generalities, we prepare to open neighbouring mysteries with\nthe same key: illusion. One always has to begin again at the start.\nThus the sciences of observation become increasingly obscure as one\npenetrates further into the labyrinth.\n\nAmong wasps and hornets there is nothing resembling polygamy, even\npotentially. A fecundated female after passing the winter, constructs,\nby herself, the first foundations of a nest, lays the eggs, from which\nsexless individuals are born; these workers then assume all material\nlabours, finish the nest, watch the larv\u00e6 which the female continues to\nproduce. These are now males and females: after coupling the males die,\nthen the workers, the females become languid, those who survive will\nfound as many new tribes.\n\nThe generation of bumble-bees is more curious, the differentiation of\ncastes more complicated. There are among them, males, workers, small\nfemales, great females. A great female, having passed the winter,\nfounds a nest in the earth, often in moss (there is a sort called the\nmoss bee), she constructs a wax comb, lays. From the first eggs come\nworkers who, as in wasps, construct the definitive nest, pillage, make\nhoney, and being more industrious than the other sort of bees who fear\ndampness, they scour the country long after sunset. After the workers,\nthe little females see light; they have no function save laying,\nwithout fecundation, the eggs which will hatch male. Simultaneously the\nqueen produces great females who will soon couple with the males. Then,\nas with wasps, all the colony dies except the fecundated great females,\nby whom the cycle will recommence, the following spring.\n\nThere are three casts of ants, or four if one count, the division\nof neuters into workers and fighters, as among termites. Here, as\nwith bees, the neuters are the base of the republic, the males die\nafter mating, the females after laying. \"There are,\" says M. Janet\n(_Recherches sur l'anatomie de la fourmi_) \"workers so different from\nthe others, in the development of their mandibles and the largeness\nof their heads that one calls them soldiers, a name according with\nthe r\u00f4le they fill in the colony.\" These soldiers are also butchers,\nwho cut up prey which is too large or dangerous. Specialization is\nthe only superiority of the neuters who for the rest seem inferior to\nthe females and to the males in size, muscling and visual organs. The\nfemales are sometimes half as large again as the neuters, the males\nbeing between the two sizes. The ant shows much more intelligence than\nthe bee. Before this tiny people one seems really to touch humanity.\nConsider that the ants have slaves, and domestic animals. First the\nplant lice, preferably those who live on roots, and, at need, those of\nthe rose-bush, who are milked, and who permit it, subjected by long\nheredity. _Aphis formicarum vacca_, says Linn\u00e6us briefly (beetle the\nants' cow). But wandering herds are not enough for them, they keep\nin the interior of their ant-hills, colonies of slave plant-lice, of\ndomesticated staphylins. The staphylins are small coleoptera with\nmobile abdomen, one of their species is only found among ants. They are\ndomesticated to the point of no longer being able to feed themselves:\nthe ants stuff the necessary food into their mouths. In return the\nstaphylins furnish their masters a revenue analogous to that which they\nget from the plant-lice: from the bunch of hairs rising at the base of\ntheir abdomen they seem to exude a delectable liquor, at least one sees\nthe ants suck these hairs with great eagerness. These animals permit\nit. They are so much at home, that the same observer (Muller, traduit\npar Brull\u00e9, _dans le Dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle de Gu\u00e9rin, au\nmot Pselaphiens_) has seen them coupling without fear in the midst\nof the busy ant people, the male hunched on the back of the female,\nsolidly crammed against the mellifluous tuft of ant's delicacies.\n\nOne knows that the red ants make war on the black ants and steal their\nnymphs, who, retained in captivity, make them excellent domestics,\nattentive and obedient. White humanity also, at one point in its\nhistory, found itself faced with a like opportunity, but less prudent\nthan the red ant, it let it pass, from sentimentalism, thus betraying\nits destiny, renouncing, under Christian inspiration, the complete and\nlogical development of its civilization. Is it not amusing that slavery\nis presented to us as anti-natural, when it is on the contrary, normal\nand excessively natural to the most intelligent of animals? And in an\norder of ideas more closely related to the subject of this book, if\nthe making neuter of a part of the population, placing them in castes\nvowed to continence, is an anti-natural attempt, how is it that social\nhymenoptera, ants, bees, bumble-bees, and termites among neuroptera,\nhave managed it so well, and have made it the basis of their social\nstate? Doubtless there is nothing like it among animals; but mammals,\napart from man, that monster, even including beavers, are infinitely\ninferior to insects. If the habits of social birds (for there are such)\nwere better known, one might find analogous practices among them. The\nsexual co-operation of all the members of a people being useless so\nfar as the conservation of the race is concerned; and on the other\nhand inferior species living as neighbours to a superior species being\ndestined to disappear, slavery is good for the inferiors as it assures\nthem perpetuity and a sort of evolution suited to their feebleness.\n\nA little brown ant, the anergates, having no workers establishes itself\nas parasite in an ant-hill and gets itself served by workers of another\nspecies in order to live. What ingenuity of the sexed, what docility\nof the sexless! The worker ants are clearly degenerate females, among\nwhom sexual sensibility has been completely transformed into maternal\nsensibility. One observes, moreover, in many species an intermediate\ntype of woman-worker, who gives the key to this evolution. One should\nnote that after fecundation the females do not all re-enter the city;\nwhere they fall, they build, as mother-bumble-bees, a provisory nest,\nacting then like workers, and await the first egg-laying, which will\nproduce exclusively real workers and will thereby permit the normal\nconstruction of the new ant-hill.\n\nThere are among ants, as among butterflies, hermaphrodites along the\nmedial line, or sometimes along an oblique line: this gives absurd\ncreatures, half one thing, half the other, or singularities such as a\nfemale with a worker's had who functions as a worker.[2]\n\nPolygamy by massacre of males, as among herbivora, and gallinace\u00e6 seems\na step toward a more logical and more economic distribution of the\nsexes. If antelopes perpetuate themselves very well with one male to\nan hundred females, is it not an indication that a part at least of\nthe sacrificed males might have dispensed with being born? And would\nit not be better, in the interest of the antelopes, that a part of\nthese males, if they ought to continue to be bora, should be normally\nsexless, as with termites, and entrusted with some social duty?\n\nThe organization of termites is very pretty; it will do to finish off\nthis brief review of animal societies founded on the unsexing of sexes.\nOne has already noted, in the chapters on dimorphism, the diversity\nof sexual forms, corresponding to four quite distinct castes. The\nminute examination of one of their republics permits one to assert\ndifferentiations much more numerous, for each of the principal castes\npasses through active larval and nymphal forms, adolescent forms, such\nas most neuroptera and libellules also present. In taking count of\nall the nuances one may observe in a state (to use the familiar word)\nof termites fifteen different forms, all with marked characteristics.\nThe principal are: 1. Workers, 2. Soldiers, 3. Small males, 4. Small\nfemales, 5. Large males, 6. Large females, 7. Nymphs with little cases,\n8. Nymphs with long cases, 9. Larv\u00e6. When one attacks an ant hill, the\nsoldiers arrive at the breach, very threatening, odd, with their bodies\nall head, all mandibles. The enemy routed, the workers come to repair\nthe damage. There are sometimes several female egg-layers; sometimes\nthere is only one male: copulation always takes place outside the hill,\nand as with ants, the males perish, while the fecundated females become\nthe origin of a new state. The expeditions of travelling termites,\ncommon as fighting termites in South Africa, are naturally directed\nby soldiers. Sparmann (cited in Gu\u00e9rin's Dictionnaire d'histoire\nnaturelle) observed them during his voyage to the Cape, and says\nthey behave rather as non-coms in close rank, or climbing onto grass\nblades, watch the defile, beating with their feet, if the order were\nbad, or too slow. The signal is at once understood, and obeyed by the\nrank at once, is answered by a whistle. There is in this something so\nmarvellous that one hesitates to accept the traveller's interpretation\nin entirety. It is not the spontaneous and mechanical discipline of\nthe ants, but the consenting obedience, so difficult to obtain from\ninferior humanities. After all, nothing is impossible, and without\nbeing credulous in these matters, one need be astonished at nothing.\nNevroptera are, moreover, exceeding old on the earth; they date from\nbefore the coal-beds: their civilization is some thousands of centuries\nolder than human civilizations.\n\nBeavers are the only mammals, man excepted, whose industry indicates\nan intelligence near that of insects. But their societies offer no\ncomplication, they are a simple grouping of couples. They do not\nconstruct their dams until the females have been delivered, this\nhappens toward the end of July, one sees no other connection between\ntheir sexual habits and their remarkable works.\n\nThese enormous trees felled and made to lie where intended, these\npiles stuck in the river-bed and interbound with twisted branches,\nthese impermeable dams, all this hard and complicated work, the beaver\naccepts when pushed by necessity. He needs an artificial lake with\nunvarying depth; if he finds one made by nature, he accepts it, and\nlimits himself to erecting his regular huts. Thus osmies, chalicodomes,\nor xylocopes,--or men, if they find by chance a nest prepared, hasten\nto profit by it. The instinct of construction is by no means blind; it\nis a faculty which will not be employed very often save in extremity:\nthe present inhabitant of the Loire valley still arranges the caves\nfor domestic use. To its injury, but of that it knows nothing, the bee\nprofits by the artificial combs slid into its hive. The Rhone beaver\nhas rested ever since men erected such excellent dams there. The fairy\npalace which rises in mid forest for the rubbing of a ring is the\nhuman, and animal, ideal.\n\nI must dose these observations on natural societies, in pointing\nout that if they are today based on something quite different from\npolygamy, it seems likely that they were in origin societies either of\npolygamy or of sexual communism. If one starts from communism one will\nvery soon evolve either toward the couple, or toward polygamy, if it is\na matter of mammals; or toward sexual neutralization if it is a matter\nof insects. The couple, polygamy, neutralization are methods; sexual\ncommunism is not a method, and for that reason one must consider it as\nthe chaos from which order has little by little emerged.\n\n\n\n[1] Bienenzeitung (Gazette des Abeilles) janvier, 1850.\n\n[2] E. Rambert, after A. Forel, les M\u0153urs des fourmis (Biblioth\u00e8que\nuniverselle, tome LV).\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVIII\n\nTHE QUESTION OF ABERRATIONS\n\n\n      _Two sorts of sexual aberration.--Sexual\n      aberrations of animals.--Those of men.--Crossing\n      of species.--Chastity.--Modesty.--Varieties and\n      localizations of sexual bashfulness.--Artificial\n      creation of modesty.--Sort of modesty natural to all\n      females.--Cruelty.--Picture of carnage.--The cricket\n      eaten alive.--Habits of carabes.--Every living\n      creature is a prey.--Necessity to kill or to be\n      killed._\n\n\nSexual aberrations are of two sorts. The cause of the error is\ninternal, or external. The flower of the arum muscivorum (fly-catching\narum) by its cadaverous odour attracts flies in search of rotting flesh\nin which to lay their eggs. Schopenhauer has supported by this, or\nanalogous, fact a theory just, but somewhat summary, of aberration from\nexternal cause. Aberration from internal cause is sometimes explained\nby the statement that the same arteries irrigate and the same nerves\nanimate the region of the sacrum, anterior and posterior; the excretal\ncanals being always near each other, and sometimes common, at least for\npart of their length. One has spoken seriously of the drake's sodomy,\nbut anatomy refuses to understand it. Whether a drake frequents another\ndrake or a duck, he addresses himself in both cases to the single\ndoor of a vestibule into which all excretions are poured. Doubtless\nthe drake is aberrated, and his accomplice still more so, but nature\ndeserves part of the blame. In general, animal aberrations require very\nsimple explanations. There is a keen desire, and very urgent need,\nwhich if unsatisfied produces an inquietude, which may augment until\na sort of momentary madness takes hold of the animal, and throws it\nblindly upon all sorts of illusions. This may go, doubtless, to the\npoint of hallucination. There is also a need, purely muscular, of at\nleast sketching in the sexual act, either passive or active; one sees,\nby singular inversion, cows in heat mounting each other, perhaps with\nthe idea of exciting the male, or perhaps the visual representation\nwhich they make themselves of the desired act, forces them to try an\nimitation: it is a marvellous example, because it is absurd, of the\nmotor force of images.\n\nThere are two parts in the sexual act; that of the specie, and that\nof the individual; but that of the specie is only given it by means\nof the individual. In relation to the male in rut, it is a question\nof a very simple natural need. He must empty his spermatic canals:\nlacking females they say the stag rubs his prong on trees to provoke\nejaculation. Bitches in heat rub their vulva on the ground. Such are\nthe rudiments of onanism, suddenly carried by primates to such a\nhigh degree of perfection. One has seen male cantharides, themselves\nridden, riding other males; the argule, a small crustacean parasite\nof fresh-water fish, is so ardent that he often addresses himself to\nother males, or to gravid or even dead females. From the microscopic\nbeasts to man, aberration is everywhere; but one should, rather, call\nit, at least among animals, impatience. Animals are by no means mere\nmachines, they, as well as men, are capable of imaginations, they\ndream, they have illusions, they are subject to desires whose source\nis in the interior movement of their organism. The sight or odour of\na female over-excites the male; but far from any female, the logic of\nthe vital movement suffices perfectly to put them in a state of rut; it\nis absolutely the same with females. If the state of rut, and if the\nsensibilization of the genital parts is established far from necessary\nsex, we have here a natural cause of aberration, for it is this special\nsensibility which must be used: the first simulacrum, or even the first\npropitious obstacle will be the adversary against which the exasperated\nanimal exercises the energy by which he is tormented.\n\nOne may apply the general principles of this psychology to man, but on\ncondition that we do not forget that man's genital sensibility is apt\nto be awakened at any moment, and that for him the causes of aberration\nare multiplied ad infinitum. There would be extremely few aberrated\nmen and women if moral customs permitted a quite simple satisfaction\nof sexual needs, if it were possible for the two sexes to meet always\nat the opportune moment. There would remain aberrations of anatomical\norder; they would be less frequent and less tyrannic, if our customs,\ninstead of contriving ways to make sexual relations very difficult,\nshould favour them. But this easiness is only possible, in promiscuity,\nwhich is possibly a worse ill than aberration. Thus all questions are\ninsoluble, and one can only improve nature by disorganizing her. Human\norder is often a disorder worse than spontaneous disorder, because it\nis a forced and premature finality, an inopportune turning of the vital\nriver out of its course.\n\nSexual selection is probably not a source of variation (i. e., of\ntype); its r\u00f4le is, on the contrary, to keep the specie in statu quo.\nThe causes of variation are probably changes of climate, the nature of\nthe soil, the general milieu, and also disease, the troubles of blood\nand nerve circulation--perhaps certain sexual aberrations. I say,\n\"perhaps,\" for the cross-breeding between individuals of different\nspecies, living in liberty, seems difficult, as soon as the species\nis really something different from a variety in evolution, a form\nstill seeking itself. At that stage anything is possible; but one is\nspeaking of species (i.e., set species). Mules, bardots, leporides\nare artificial products; one has never found them in free nature. It\nis very difficult to obtain the copulation of a hare and she-rabbit;\nthe she-rabbit is refractory and the hare lacking enthusiasm. The mare\nvery often refuses the ass; if she turns her head at the moment of\nhis mounting, one has to bandage her eyes to overcome her disgust; it\nis the same with the she-ass whom one offers a stallion for producing\nthe bardot. As for the product of bull and mare, the celebrated\njumart is a chim\u00e6ra: comparison of the meagre prong of the bull to\nthe massive one of the stallion is enough to convince one that such\ndissimilar instruments can not replace each other. Nevertheless it\nwould be imprudent wholly to rule out this form of sexual aberration\nfrom the causes of variability of species. That is perhaps one of its\njustifications.\n\nOf all sexual aberrations perhaps the most curious is chastity. Not\nthat it is anti-natural, nothing is anti-natural, but because of\nthe pretexts it obeys. Bees, ants, termites, present examples of\nperfect chastity, but of chastity that is utilized, social chastity.\nInvoluntary, congenital, the neuter state among insects is a state\nde facto, equivalent to the sexual state, and the origin of a\ncharacterized activity. In humans it is a state, often only apparent or\ntransitory, obtained voluntarily or demanded by necessity, a precarious\ncondition, so difficult to maintain that people have heaped up about\nit all sorts of moral and religious walls, and even real walls made of\nstones and mortar. Permanent and voluntary chastity is nearly always\na religious practice. Men, in all ages, have been persuaded that\nperfection of being was only obtainable by such renunciation. This\nseems absurd; it is, on the contrary, very direct logic. The only means\nof not being an animal is to abstain from the act to which all animals\nwithout exception deliver themselves. It is the same motive that has\nmade people imagine abstinence, fasting; but as one can not live\nwithout eating, and as one can live without making love, this second\nmethod of perfectionment has remained in the state of outline.\n\nIt is true, asceticism, of which humanity alone is capable, is one\nof the means which may lift us above animality; but by itself it is\ninsufficient to do this; by itself it is good for nothing, save perhaps\nto excite sterile pride; one must add to it an active exercise of the\nintelligence. It remains to know whether asceticism, which deprives the\nsensibility of one of its healthiest and most stimulating nutriments is\nfavourable to the exercise of the intelligence. As it is not the least\nnecessary to answer this question here, we will say nothing save this,\nprovisorily: one need not scorn chastity nor disdain asceticism.\n\nIs modesty an aberration? Indulgent observers have believed that they\nnoticed it in elephants as well as in rabbits. The modesty of the\nelephant is a popular maxim which makes right-minded women cast sheep's\neyes, in circuses, at the great beast who hides for her amours. During\ncopulation, says a celebrated rabbit-raiser[1] \"the male and female\nshould be alone, in demi-obscurity. This solitude and obscurity are\nmore necessary in view of the fact that certain females show signs of\nmodesty.\" The modesty of animals is a fancy. Like modesty among humans,\nit is merely the mask of fear, the crystallization of timorous habits,\nnecessitated by the animals being unarmed during coupling. This is very\nwell known and needs no explanation. But the need of reproduction is so\ntyrannic that, even among the most timid animals, it does not always\nleave them presence of mind enough to hide themselves during the amour.\nThe most domesticated of animals, one knows it only too well, shows at\nthis moment neither fear nor shame.\n\nIn man, among the civilized and among the uncivilized, sexual fear,\nshame, has taken a thousand forms which, for the most part, seem to\nhave no longer any relation to the original feeling whence they are\nderived. One notices however that if the milieu where the couple finds\nitself is such that no attack, no ridicule is to be feared, shame\nvanishes, in part, or entirely, according to the degree of security,\nand the degree of excitement. For a crowd of populace on a fete night\nthere is hardly any modesty save \"legal modesty\"; the example of one\nbolder couple is enough, if there is no authority to be feared, to set\nloose all the appetites, and one then sees clearly that man who does\nnot hide in order to eat, only hides to make love under pressure of\nusage.\n\nFrom the genital act, modesty is stretched over the exterior sexual\norgans by a mechanism very simple and very logical. But here, I think,\none must distinguish between genital modesty bred from the custom of\nclothing the whole body, and that which has led men to cover only a\nparticular part. Heat, cold, rain, insects explain clothing, but not\nthe savage's cotton drawers or the fig leaf; especially when the leaf,\nimposed on married women, for example, is forbidden to virgins, or\nwhen this symbolic leaf is so reduced that it serves no purpose, save\nthat of a sign. In this last case, it has not even any direct relation\nto genital modesty; it is only a matrimonial ornament, analogous to\nthe ring or the collar, a sign, indeed indicating a condition. It is\npossible also, that among certain peoples where the men go entirely\nnaked, the women wear an apron merely to keep off flies, gad-flies,\nrather as a peasant drapes his horse's muzzle with grass and leaves.\nQuite often, however, one is forced to recognize in these customs,\nthe proof of a particular genital sensibility, analogous to civilized\nmodesty. An English sailor, at the time of the first explorations got\nhimself rejected by the Maori women not because he appeared without\nclothing, a state which custom required, but because he appeared with\nhis organ unsheathed. This detail shocked them extremely. A curious\nexample of the localization of shame: all parts of the body could and\nshould show themselves, all save this small surface. On reflection,\nthe modesty of Europeans at a ball or on the beach is almost as absurd\nas that of the Maoris, or as that of the fellaheen women who at the\napproach of a stranger remove their shirts, their sole garments, in\norder to cover their faces.\n\nSexual modesty, as one observes it today, among the most various\npeoples, is utterly artificial. Livingstone assures us that he\ndeveloped modesty in little Kaffir girls by clothing them. Surprised\nin neglige, they covered their breasts--and this in a race where the\nwomen go wholly naked, save for a string round the middle, from which\nanother string hangs. Clothing is only one of the causes of modesty, or\nof customs which give us the illusion of it, and the sentiment of fear\nassociated with the sexual act does not explain all the rest. There is\na shame particular to the female, an ensemble of movements, which one\ncan assimilate to nothing, which one can attach to nothing. The gesture\nof Venus modest is not purely a woman's gesture; nearly all females,\nespecially mammifers, have it; the female, who refuses, lowers her tail\nand clamps it between her legs; there is here, evidently, the origin of\none of the particular forms of modesty. We have given characteristic\nexamples in an earlier chapter.\n\nMan is un-get-at-able; the slightest of his habitual sentiments has\nmultiple and contradictory roots in a sensibility variable and always\nexcessive. He is the least poised and the least reasonable of all\nanimals, although the only one who has been able to construct for\nhimself an idea of reason; he is an animal lunatic, that is to say one\nwho flows out on all sides, who unravels everything in theory, and\ntangles up everything in fact, who desires and wills so many things,\nwho throws his muscles into so many divers activities that his acts are\nat once the most sensible and the most absurd, the most conforming and\nthe most opposed to the logical development of life. But he profits\neven by error, especially by the error fatal to all animals, and that\nconstitutes his originality, as Pascal noted, and as Nietzsche repeats.\n\nIf the word modesty (_pudeur_) is not exact, when applied to animals,\nalthough one finds in their habits the distant origin of this complex\nand refined sentiment, the word cruelty, is not so either, when applied\nto their natural acts of defence or nutrition. Human cruelty is often\nan aberration; the cruelty of beasts is a necessity, a normal fact,\noften the very condition of their existence. An anarchist philosopher,\nardent and naive disciple of Jean-Jacques believed that he traced\nan universal altruism in nature; he has redone with other words\nand another spirit, and a few new examples, the infantile works of\nBernardin de Saint-Pierre, and has abused, under pretext of inclining\nmankind to kindness, the right which one has to promenade about nature\nwithout seeing and without understanding her. Nature is neither good,\nnor evil, nor altruist, nor egoist; she is an ensemble of forces\nwhereof none cedes save under superior pressure. Her conscience is that\nof a balance; being of a perfect indifference, it is of an absolute\nequity. But the sensibility of a balance is of a single order, single\ndimension; the sensibility of nature is infinite, to all actions and\nreactions. Whether the strong devour the weak, or the weak the strong,\nthere is no compensation save in our human illusion; in reality one\nlife is enlarged at the expense of another life, in one case as in the\nother, the total energy has been neither diminished nor augmented.\nThere is neither strong, nor weak, there is a level which tends to\nremain constant. Our sentimentalism makes us see dramas where nothing\noccurs more disturbing than the general facts of nutrition. One may\nhowever look at these facts a little more closely, and then the parity\nof animal organism and the human organism will lead us to qualify as\ncruel, certain acts which would deserve this title if committed by man.\nOne must say cruelty in order to understand it oneself; it is also\nnecessary to remember that this cruelty is unconscious, that it is not\nfelt by the devouring animal, that no element of ill-will enters into\nits act, and that man himself, the judge, in no way deprives himself of\neating live creatures when they are better raw than cooked, living than\ndead.\n\nA philanthe, sort of wasp, catches a bee to feed its larv\u00e6; while\ncarrying the prey to his nest, he presses the belly, sucks the bee,\nempties it of all its honey. But at the entrance of the nest a mantis\nis waiting, its double-saw of an arm is unfolded, the philanthe is\nnipped in passing. And one sees the mantis gnawing the belly of the\nphilanthe while the philanthe continues sucking the bee's belly. And\nthe mantis is so voracious that you can cut her in two without making\nher let go; a chain, truly, of carnage.\n\nThe larv\u00e6 of the sphex, another wasp, are fed on live crickets that\nhave been paralyzed by a stab. As soon as it hatches the larva attacks\nthe cricket in the belly at the chosen spot where the egg has been\nlayed. The poor insect protests by feeble movements of antenn\u00e6, and\nmandibles: in vain; he is eaten alive, fibre by fibre, by a great worm\nwhich gnaws his entrails, and with so great a skill that it begins on\nthe parts not essential to life, and thus keeps the prey fresh and\ntasty to the last. Such is the gentleness of nature, the good mother.\n\nThe carabes are fine coleoptera, violet, purple, and golden. They feed\nonly on living prey, which they chew slowly, beginning at the belly,\nand boring slowly into the palpitating cavity. Helices, and slugs are\nthus tom apart by bands of carabes who dig them up and dissect them in\na boiling of saliva.\n\nSuch are theft and murder, in nature. These are the normal acts.\nHerbivorous species alone are innocent perhaps from imbecility; always\noccupied in eating, because their food is so unsubstantial, they have\nnot time to develop their powers: they are the inevitable prey, a sort\nof superior grass which will be browsed at the first opportunity.\nBut the carnivora are in the same way eaten by their stronger and\nmore adroit fellow-boarders. Very few beasts have a quiet death. The\ngeotrupes, scarabs, necrophores their work finished, the egg-laying\naccomplished, devour each other to pass the time, perhaps, to lend a\nlittle gaiety to their last moments. Animals are of but two sorts,\nhunters and game, but there is scarcely a hunter who is not game in\nhis turn. One does not find in nature the purely human invention of\nbreeding for slaughter, or the more extraordinary one of breeding for\nhunting. Ants know how to milk their cows, the plant-lice, or their\ngoats the staphylins; they do not know how to fatten them and to slit\ntheir gullets.\n\nA hundred other signs of animal cruelty are scattered through this\nbook. One may collect many others, and this might form a work edifying\nin this era of sentimentalism. Not because one wishes--quite the\ncontrary--to offer them to men as so many examples; but because this\nmight teach them that the first duty of a living being is to live,\nand that all life is nothing but a sum sufficient of murders. Men or\ntigers, sphex or carabes are under the same necessity: to kill or to\ndie, or to shed blood or eat grass. But to eat grass, is not much\nbetter than suicide: ask the lambkins.\n\n\n[1] Mariot-Didieux, Guide pratique de l'\u00e9ducateur de lapins.\nBiblioth\u00e8que des professions industrielles et agricoles, s\u00e9rie H. No.\n17.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIX\n\nINSTINCT\n\n\n      _Instinct.--Can one oppose it to\n      intelligence?--Instinct in man.--Primordiality\n      of intelligence.--Instinct's conservative\n      r\u00f4le.--Modifying r\u00f4le of intelligence.--Intelligence\n      and consciousness.--Parity of animal and human\n      instinct.--Mechanical character of the instinctive\n      act.--Instinct modified by intelligence.--Habit\n      of work creates useless work.--Objections to the\n      identification of instinct and intelligence taken\n      from life of insects._\n\n\nThe question of instinct is perhaps the most nerve-racking there is.\nSimple minds think they have solved it when they have set against\nthis word the other word: intelligence. That is merely the elementary\nposition of the problem. Not only does it explain nothing, but it\nopposes all explanations. If instinct and intelligence are not\nphenomena of the same order, reducible one to the other, the problem\nis insoluble and we will never know what instinct is, nor what is\nintelligence.\n\nIn the vulgar contrast one overhears the considerable naivete that\nanimals have instinct and man, intelligence. This error, pure rhetoric,\nhas prevented, up to the present, not the answer to the question\nwhich still seems a long way off, but the scientific exposure of the\nquestion itself. It includes but two formul\u00e6: Either instinct is a\nfructification of intelligence; or intelligence is an augmentation of\ninstinct. One must choose, and know that in choosing one makes, as the\ncase may be, either instinct or intelligence, the seed or flower of a\nsingle plant: the sensibility.\n\nOne will first establish that for manifestations of instinct and for\nthose of intelligence, there is no essential difference between man and\nanimals. The life of all men, quite as well as that of all animals,\nis based on instinct, and doubtless there is no animal who can not\ngive signs of spontaneity, that is to say, of intelligence. Instinct\nseems anterior because in all animals except man the quantity and\nespecially the quality of instinctive facts greatly surpasses the value\nand number of intellectual facts. This is so, but in admitting this\nhierarchy, if one thereby explain with considerable difficulty, the\nformation of intelligence in man and in the animals which show more\nor less perceptible gleams of it, one also renounces by so doing, all\nlater attempts that might furnish some notions as to the formation of\ninstinct. If the bee makes his combs mechanically, if this act is as\nnecessary as the evaporation of warmed water, or the crystallization\nof freezing water, it is useless to search any further: one is in the\npresence of a fact which will never yield anything else.\n\nIf, on the contrary, one consider intelligence as anterior, the field\nof investigation stretches out to infinity and instead of one problem\nradically insoluble, one has a hundred thousand or more, as many\nas there are animal species, and of these problems none is simple,\nnone absurd. This manner of looking at it, brings, I admit, grave\nconsequences. One must then look at matter as a simple allotropic form\nof intelligence, or, if you prefer, consider intelligence and matter\nas equivalents, and admit that intelligence is merely matter endowed\nwith sensibility, and that its power of extremely diversifying itself\nfinds impassable limits in the very forms which clothe it. Instinct\nis the proof of these limits. When acts have become instinctive,\nthey have become invincible. A specie is a group of instincts whose\ntyranny becomes, one day, deaf to all attempts at movement. Evolution\nis limited by the resistance of what is, striving against what might\nbe. There comes a moment when a specie is a mass too heavy to be moved\nby intelligence: then it remains in its place; this is death, but is\ncompensated by the steady arrival of other species; new forms assumed\nby the inexhaustible Proteus.\n\nOne will add nothing, here, to this theory, save a few facts favourable\nto it, and a handful of objections.\n\nThe old distinction between intelligence and instinct, although false\nand superficial, may be adapted to the views just abbreviated. We will\nattribute to instinct the series of acts which tend to conserve the\npresent condition of a specie; and to intelligence, those which tend to\nmodify that condition. Instinct will be slavery, subjection to custom;\nintelligence will represent liberty, that is to say, choice, acts which\nwhile being necessary, since they occur, have yet been determined\nby an ensemble of causes anterior to those which govern instinct.\nIntelligence will be the deep, the reserve, the spring which after long\ndigging emerges between the rocks. In everything that intelligence\nsuggests, the consciousness of the species makes a departure; what is\nuseful is incorporated in instinct, enlarging and diversifying it; what\nis useless perishes--or perhaps flowers in extravagances, as it does\nin man, in dancing and gardening birds, or the magpies attracted by a\njewel, larks by a mirror! One will then call instinct, the series of\nuseful aptitudes; intelligence, the series of aptitudes de luxe: but\nwhat is useful, what useless? Who will dare brand a series of bird\nnotes or a feminine smile as lacking utility? There is neither utility\nnor inutility unless there be also finality. But finality can not be\nconsidered as an aim; it is nothing but a fact, and one which might be\nother.\n\nThis utilization of old terms, if it were possible, could never be\nthe pretext for a new radical differentiation between instinct and\nintelligence; one could only use it to define by contrast two states\nwhose manifestations present appreciable nuances. The great objection\nto the essential identification of instinct and intelligence comes\nfrom a habit of mind which spiritistic philosophy has for long imposed\nupon us: instinct should be unconscious, intelligence, conscious.\nBut psychological analysis does not permit us rigorously to tie\nintellectual activity to consciousness. Without consciousness, every\nthing might happen, even in the most thoughtful man, exactly as it\ndoes under the paternal eye of this consciousness. In M. Ribot's\ninteresting analogic comparison, consciousness is an interned candle\nlighting a clock-face; it has the same influence on the movement of the\nintelligence that this candle has on the clock. It is difficult to know\nwhether animals have consciousness, and it is perhaps useless, unless\nat least, one admit that this candle, by its luminous or calorific\nrays, does, as M. Fouill\u00e9e teaches, affect the march of the mechanism.\nIn sum, consciousness also is a fact, and no fact dies without\nconsequences; there are neither first causes nor last causes. In any\ncase one will, since it is evident, cling to one statement that even if\nconsciousness is a possible reactive, intelligence can act without it:\nthe most conscious of men have phases of unconscious intellectuality;\nlong series of reasonable acts may be committed without their\nreflection being visible in the mirror, without the candle being lit\nbefore the clock. In brief, it does not seem as if nervous matter could\nexist without intelligence or sensibility; but consciousness is an\nextra. There is no need to take count of the old scholastic objection\nto the identification of the intelligence and the instinct.\n\nWhat is there serious in the other objection: that man, if he once had\ninstincts, has lost them?\n\nThe animal having the richest instincts ought also to have, or to have\nhad, the richest intelligence. And reciprocally: intellectual activity\nsupposes a greatly varied instinctive activity, either in the present\nor in the future. If man have not instincts, he ought to be in the way\nof making them. He has numerous instincts, and makes more every day:\na part of his consciousness is constantly crystallizing itself into\ninstinctive acts.\n\nBut if one consider the different instincts of animal species one\nwill scarcely find any which are not also human. The great human\nactivities are instinctive. Doubtless man may refrain from building\na palace, but he can not dispense with a cabin, a nest in a cave, or\nin the fork of a tree, like the great apes, many mammals, birds, and\nmost insects. His food depends very little on choice, it must contain\ncertain indispensable elements: a necessity identical with that which\nrules the animals, and even the plants whose roots reach down toward\nthe desired juice, and whose branches reach toward the light. Song,\ndance, strife, and, for the group, war; human instincts are not unknown\nto all animals. The taste for brilliant things, another human instinct\nis frequent enough in birds; it is true that birds have not yet made\nanything of it, and that man has evolved the sumptuary arts. There\nremains love, but I think this supreme instinct is the consecrated\nlimit of the objections.\n\nUseful acts habitually repeated may become invincible, like veritable\ninstinctive movements. A hunter[1] spending the winter in an isolated\ncabin in Canada engaged an Indian woman to keep house for him. She\narrives in the evening, melts the snow, begins to wash up, shifts\neverything, prevents his getting any sleep. He rages. Silence. As soon\nas he is asleep, the woman mechanically begins to work again, and so\non, until the humble Indian gets the last word. Here, exactly as among\ninsects, one has the example of work which once begun must go on until\nit is finished. The insect can not be interrupted; if it is interrupted\nby external cause it starts work again not at the point where it\nactually finds the work, but at the point where it, the insect, left\noff. Thus, one entirely removed the nest which a chalicodome was\nbuilding on a shingle; the bee returns, finds nothing, since there is\nnothing to find, but instead of recommencing the building, continues\nit. There was nothing to be done but close the hole; the bee closes it,\nthat is to say she deposits the last mouthful of mortar on the ideal\ndome of an absent nest: then with instinct satisfied, sure of having\nassured her posterity, she retires, she goes to die. One can get the\nsame result with the p\u00e9lop\u00e9e, and with other builders. Processional\ncaterpillars are accustomed to make long trips in Indian file on the\nbranches of their native pine-tree, in search of food: if one place\nthem on the rim of a basin they will stupidly circulate for thirty\nhours, without one of them having the idea of interrupting the circle\nby going off at a tangent. They will die in their track, stuck fast\nin obedience; when one falls another steps into his place, the ranks\nclose, that is all. Here are the extremities of instinct, and to our\ngreat surprise they are almost the same in an Indian of the great lakes\nand in a processional pine caterpillar.\n\nBut other cases of animal's instinct joining with free intelligence,\ngive examples of human sagacity. We have seen these same mason bees and\nxylocopes and domestic bees profit eagerly by a nest ready made, by a\nhole bored in wood, by artificial combs set ready to take their honey;\nthe osmies, who lay in the stalks of cut reeds, in which they arrange a\nseries of chambers, accommodated themselves under Fabre's guidance in\nglass tubes which permitted the great observer to know them intimately.\nInstinct is by turns as stupid as a machine and as intelligent as a\nbrain; these two extremes should correspond with very ancient and very\nrecent habits. It is certainly but a relatively short time since the\npeasant's pruning-bill began preparing cut reeds for the osmie; before\nthat time she constructed her nest, as she still does, in empty snail\nshells or in some natural cavity. They are very interesting these\nosmies, extremely active solitary bees; one sees them having exhausted\ntheir ovaries, but not their muscular force, building extra nests,\nprovisioning them with honey, without having laid a single egg in them;\nthey will even make and close them without honey, if they do not find\nmore flowers, thus showing a real craziness for work, an authentic\nmania analogous to that which moves man to move pebbles, to smoke, to\ndrink rather than remain immobile.[2] If the osmie lived longer, she\nmight perhaps invent some game which, vain at the start, would end by\nbecoming both a need and a benefit to the whole species.\n\nThe theory which makes instinct a partial crystallization of\nintelligence is extremely seductive: I dare say we will have to accept\nit as true. Yet the contemplation of the insect world raises an\nenormous objection. In the course of his wonderful memoirs Fabre has\nformulated it ten times and with always fresh ingenuity. Here is the\ninsect, nearly always born adult, and after the death of her parents,\nshe has received from them neither direct education nor education by\nexample, as do the young of birds or mammals. A hen teaches her chick\nto scratch for worms (it is true that she does not teach her ducklings\nto dabble in puddles, and they are her despair, to our amusement), an\nosmie can teach its young nothing. Yet now osmies do exactly what their\nancients have done. The insect opens its shell, brushes its antenn\u00e6,\nperforms its toilet, opens its wings, flies off for life, moves\nwithout hesitation toward the pasture it needs, recognizes and flees\nthe enemies of its race, makes love, and finally constructs a nest\nidentical with the cradle from which it has emerged.[3]\n\nOne sees quite well that the acquisitions of the individual have\npassed to the descendant, but how? How have they fixed themselves in\nthe nerves and blood during a few short days of life? Without any\napprenticeship the sphex paralyzes with three stabs the cricket which\nis to feed its larv\u00e6; if the cricket is killed and not paralyzed, the\nlarv\u00e6 will die, poisoned by the carrion; and if the paralysis is not\ndurable the cricket will come to, and destroy the sphex in the egg.\nThe man\u0153uvre of this wasp and of many other killing hymenoptera has\nthis tiresome point for our reasoning, the act must be perfect, on\npain of death. Nevertheless it must be admitted that the sphex has\nformed itself slowly, like all complex animals, and that its genius is\nonly the sum of intellectual acquisition slowly crystallized in the\nspecie.[4] As for the mechanism of this transformation of intelligence\ninto instinct, it has for motive the principle of utility; intelligent\nacts which are useful for the preservation of the specie, are the only\nones which pass into instinct.\n\nThe science of these hymenoptera goes so far that it was ahead of\nhuman science until yesterday. The insect attacks the nervous system;\nit knows that the power of beginning a movement lies in the nervous\nsystem and not in the limbs. If the nervous system is centralized\nas in weevils, their enemy the cerceris gives only one dagger-stab;\nif the movement depends on three ganglia, it gives three stabs; if\non nine ganglia, nine: thus does the shaggy ammophile when it needs\nthe caterpillar of the noctuelle, commonly called the gray worm, for\nits larv\u00e6; if a single sting in the cervical ganglion appears too\ndangerous, the hunter limits himself to chewing it gently, in order to\ninduce the necessary degree of immobility. It is odd that the social\nhymenoptera who know how to do so many difficult things, are ignorant\nof this savant dagger-play. The bee stings at random, and so brutally\nthat she mutilates herself while often inflicting but an insignificant\nwound on her adversary. Collective civilization has diminished the\nindividual genius.\n\n\n[1] Vide Milton and Cheaddle, works already cited.\n\n[2] Compare this with the valuable remarks of a gamekeeper, \"One must\nknow the habits of animals, even their manias, for they have them, just\nas we do.\" Figaro, 31, Aug. 1903.\n\n[3] To my mind a slight unsoundness creeps into Chap. XVI, and here\nboth Fabre and Gourmont seem to me to go astray in considering the\ninsect as a separate creature, i. e. a creature cut off from its larva\nor cocoon life. Surely the animal may be supposed to exist while in\nits cocoon or larva, it may reasonably be supposed to pass that period\nin reflection, preparing for precisely the acts of its desire (as for\nexample an intelligent young man might pass his years in a university\nunder professors, awaiting reasonable maturity to act or express his\nobjections). The larva has its months of quiet, precisely the necessary\npre-reflection for the two days' joy-ride of exterior manifestation,\namours, etc., its _contemplatio_, or what may be counted as analogous,\npassing in its cell. The perfection and precision of its acts, being,\nlet us say, proportionate to the non-expressive period. Having spent\nGod knows how long in that possibly monotonous nest, it seems small\nwonder that the insect should know the pattern by heart. Small wonder,\nthat is to say wonder not incommensurate with the general wonder of the\nwhole process.--E. P.\n\n[4] Vide translator's postscript.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XX\n\nTYRANNY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM\n\n\n      _Accord and discord between organs and acts.--Torses\n      and sacred scarab.--The hand of man.--Mediocre\n      fitness of sexual organs for copulation.--Origin\n      of \"luxuria.\"--The animal is a nervous\n      system served by organs.--The organ does not\n      determine the aptitude.--Man's hand inferior\n      to his genius.--Substitution of one sense for\n      another.--Union and r\u00f4le of the senses in love.--Man\n      and animal under the tyranny of the nervous\n      system.--Wear and tear of humanity compensated by\n      acquisitions.--Man's inheritors._\n\n\nIt is a universal belief that nature or God, in their wisdom, have made\nthe corporal organs in the best possible form: perfection of the eye,\nof the hand, of the paw-jaw of the mantis, of the sexual apparatus of\nman, of the bird or the scarab, the furnishing tarses of hymenoptera,\nthe beaver's tail, the grasshopper's hams, the cicada's tambourine. It\nis sometimes true and very often false. It happens that there appears\nan exact concord between the organ and the act which it is to perform;\nbut it happens also, and that not rarely, that the organs seem in no\nway fashioned for the deed they must accomplish: most of them are\nindeed chance tools, with which the creature manages, as he can, the\nacts which he wants to, or should, do.\n\nThe forefeet of scarabs are so little destined for modelling and\nrolling mud-balls that their tarses are worn out in the process, as\nhuman fingers would perhaps be worn if they had to knead the raw clay\nand mortar. In considering the scarab one has to think of a humanity\nlacking fingers, having lost them by a long and slow diminution of\nnails, bones, flesh. The scarab is a modeller, nothing would be more\nuseful to him than fingers; instead of losing them by use, he ought to\nhave grown them longer and more supple. He has lost them, and it is\nwith the arm stumps that he turns the little balls which are to be food\nfor himself or his offspring. This insect is condemned to a labour that\nwill become increasingly difficult as the species grows increasingly\nolder. It remains to know whether the ancestors of the sacred scarab\nhad tarses. Horus Apollo grants them as many fingers as the month has\ndays, that is thirty, which corresponds quite well with the six feet\nand five tarses of the scarab. If he was a good observer, the question\nis answered, but a single testimony is insufficient, and moreover it is\nunlikely that so great a wearing-away would have occurred in so small a\nnumber of centuries. Horus, and a savant like Latreille himself, have\nbeen the dupes of symmetry; if either has looked closely at a scarab,\nand if he has seen the forefeet lacking tarses, he has put this down\nto chance or to accident. Fabre has at least noted one indisputable\nfact, it is that neither as nymph nor adult has the scarab tarses on\nhis forefeet. If it ever had them, our reasoning draws new vigour\nfrom the negation, for then less than ever is it possible to find the\nleast logical concordance between the insect's stumps and the need of\nmodelling and turning to which nature condemns it.\n\nThis scarab is a type to which one can relate a great number of other\nexamples: purveyor hymenoptera are wholly deprived of tools adapted\nto their work as quarry-men and well-diggers: thus, at the end of\ntheir labours the greater part of these fragile insects are very much\ndamaged. One knows the beaver's constructions, but who without the\ncertitude we have gained by observation, would have dared to attribute\nthem to these great rats?\n\nEighteenth century philosophers set themselves the question: Is man\nman because he has hands; or has he hands because he is man? One may\nanswer boldly, that man's hands marvellous as they appear to us, add\nalmost nothing to his intelligence. One does not see that they are\nindispensable for anything save for playing the piano. What constitutes\nman is his intelligence, his nervous system. The exterior organ is\nsecondary: no matter what exterior organ, beak, prehensile tail, teeth,\nproboscis, paws would have done the work of the hands. There are birds'\nnests which no manual cleverness could weave.\n\nThe reproductive organs are no better adapted to their purpose than\nare the working organs. Doubtless they attain very often their end,\nbut at the cost of efforts which a better disposition would have\nattenuated or eliminated altogether. The interior mechanism is, or\nseems, marvellous; the external mechanism is rudimentary and gives no\nresult, save, as they say, thanks to the ever-renewed ingenuity of the\ncouples. Instinct, in one of its most necessary acts, is often put to\ndifficult proof. The plausible adventure of Daphnis has been presumably\noften repeated, even though the limberness of the human form is well\nsuited to coition; but who has not been surprised to see a heavy bull\nleap clumsily onto a lowing cow, bending his useless hocks along her\nback, panting, and often not succeeding save thanks to the good offices\nof a farm hand? Among beavers, says A. de Quatrefages (Orbigny's\n\"Dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle\"), the external orifice of the\ngenerative organs opens in a cloaca so placed under the tail that one\nhardly understands how the coupling takes place.\n\nCertain matings are sheer tours de force, and the animal whether it be\nthe scutilary, a tiny insect, or the elephant, a colossus, is compelled\nto take positions absolutely different from its normal postures.\nNature who firmly intends the perpetuity of the species, has not yet\nfound a simple and unique means thereto; or else, having found it, in\nbudding, she has cast it aside to adopt the diversity of organs, means,\nand movements. There are none, even to those of our own specie which\nman may not criticize, even though he prize them; he has criticized,\nand his criticism has been to diversify them still further, which\nsimplifies a fated necessity in making it pleasanter. Morals term this\ndiversification \"luxure.\"[1] This term is a pejorative which may be\napplied also to the exercise of our other senses. All is but _luxuria_.\n_Luxuria_, the variety of foods, their cooking, their seasoning, the\nculture of special garden plants; _luxuria_: the exercises of the\neye, decoration, the toilet, painting; _luxuria_, music; luxuria, the\nmarvellous exercises of the hand, so marvellous that direct hand work\ncan be mimicked by a machine but never equalled; _luxuria_, flowers,\nperfumes; _luxuria_, rapid voyages; luxuria, the taste for landscape;\nluxuria, all art, science, civilization; _luxuria_, also the diversity\nof human gestures, for the animal in his virtuous sobriety has but\none gesture for each sense, and that gesture unvarying; or if the\ngesture, as probable, undergoes a change, it is but a slow, invisible\nchange, and there is at the end but one gesture. The animal is\nignorant of diversity, of the accumulation of aptitudes; man alone is\n\"_luxurieux_,\" is libidinous.\n\nThere is a principle which I will call the individualism of species.\nEach specie is an individual which profits as best it may, for its\nuseful ends, by the instruments which have devolved to it. A specie of\nhymenoptera feels itself obliged to protect its eggs from new enemies,\nby digging holes in the ground; it makes use of the tools which it\nhas, without taking count of the fact that these tools have not been\nmade for excavation; it acts thus at pressure of necessity, as man\nclimbs trees in a flood, or gets onto the roof in case of fire. The\nneed is independent of the organ; it precedes it, and does not always\ncreate it. In the sexual act, need commands the gesture: the animal\nadapts itself to positions which are strange to it, and very difficult.\nCoupling is nearly always a grimace. One would say that nature has\nset the male organ here, and the female there, and left to specific\ningenuity the care of effecting the junction.\n\nIt is, I think, permitted us to conclude from the mediocre fitness of\nanimals to milieu, and of organs to acts, that it is not the milieu\nwhich absolutely fashions, or the organs which absolutely govern,\nthe acts. One then feels oneself inclined to reaccept Bonald's\ndefinition of man, and even to find it admirable, just, and strict:\nAn intelligence served by organs. Not \"obeyed,\" not always, but\nserved, service implying imperfection, a discord between the order\nand its fulfillment. But the phrase applies not to man only, and its\nspiritualistic origin in no way diminishes its aphoristic value; it\nqualifies every animal. The animal is a nervous centre, served by the\ndifferent tools in which its branches terminate. It commands, and the\ntools, good or bad ones, obey. If they were incapable of performing\ntheir work, at least the essential parts of it, the animal would\nperish. There are forms of parasitism which seem to be the consequence\nof a general renunciation of organs; impotent to enter into direct\nrelations with the outer world, unmanned by the softness of the\nmuscles, the nervous system brings the skiff it was piloting into some\nharbour or other, and beaches it.\n\nFabre says, thinking particularly of insects: \"The organ does not\ndetermine the aptitude.\" And this most aptly confirms Bonald's manner\nof seeing. Thrown in at the end of a chapter, with scarcely anything\ndirectly to justify it, this affirmation but gains in value. It is the\nconclusion, not of a dissertation, but of a long sequence of scientific\nobservations. As for the facts that one can set inside it, they are\ninnumerable; one would group them under two heads: The animal serves\nhimself as best he can with the organs he possesses; he does not\nalways make use of them. The flying-stag, the best armed of all our\ninsects, is inoffensive; while the carabe, of peaceful appearance, is\na formidable beast of prey. Apropos of the pill in which the scarab\nshuts its egg, the skill with which it is worked up and felted, in a\ndark hole by a stump-armed insect, Fabre says simply: \"It gave me the\nidea of an elephant wanting to make lace.\" But in what insect will we\nsee perfect accord of work and organ? In the bee? It would scarcely\nseem so. The bee uses for building, modelling, waxing, bottling honey,\nexactly the same organs that her sisters, the ammophile, bembex, sphex,\nant, chalicodome, use for hollowing earth, excavating sand, making\ncellars, mud houses. The libellule does nothing with the hooks which\nrender the termite dangerous, and she loafs, while her industrious\nbrother, also neuroptera and nothing more, builds Himalayas.\n\nThe mole-cricket is so well organized for digging with her short\npowerful bow legs that she could cut sandstone: she frequents only\nthe soft soil of gardens. The antophore, on the other hand, with no\ninstruments save her mediocre mandibles, her velvet paws, forces the\ncement which holds the stone walls together, and bores the hardened\nearth of the slopes by the roadside.\n\nInsects, like man, moreover, ask nothing better than to do nothing and\nto let their tools sleep; the xylocope, that fine violet bumble-bee,\nwho ought to bore into wood, a gallery twice a hand's length wherein\nto lay her eggs, if she finds a suitable hole ready made, confines\nherself to the meagerest possible works of accommodation. In sum, the\ninsects who like the saw-fly (tenthredes) use a precise instrument for\na precise job, are almost rare.\n\nMan's hand, to come back to this point, is useful to him because he\nis intelligent. In itself the hand is nothing. Proof, in the monkeys\nand rodents who use their hands only to climb trees, louse themselves,\nand crack nuts. Our five fingers! Really nothing is more broadcast\nin nature, where they are only a sign of age: the saurians have\nthem, and are not a bit more clever thereby. It is without fingers,\nwithout hands, without members that the larv\u00e6 of insects construct\nfor themselves marvellous mosaic shells, weave themselves tents in\nsilk-floss, exercise the trades of plasterer, miner, and carpenter.\nBut this hand of man, become the world's marvel, how inferior to his\ngenius, and how he has had to lengthen it, refine it, complicate it,\nin order to obtain obedience to the increasingly precise orders of\nhis intelligence. Has the hand created machines? Man's intelligence\nimmeasureably surpasses his organs, and submerges them; it demands of\nthem the impossible and the absurd: hence the railway, the telegraph,\nthe microscope and everything which multiplies the power of organs\nwhich have become rudimentary in the face of the brains' exigence, the\nbrain being our master, who has demanded also of the sexual organs more\nthan they were able to give: it is to satisfy these orders that the bed\nof love has been scattered with so many dreams and rose-leaves.\n\nIt is difficult to make people understand that the eye sees, not\nbecause it is an eye, but because it is situated at the tip of some\nfilaments of nerve which are sensitive to light. At the end of\nfilaments sensitive to sound, the eye would hear. Doubtless it is\nadapted to its function, as the ear is to hearing, but this function\nis an effect, not a cause. Insects' eyes are very different from ours.\nOne has spoken of the experiments of a German savant who wished to\nthrow visual images on the brain without the eye's intervention. This\nis suspicious, but not absurd: insects are gifted certainly with the\npower to smell, but one has never been able to discover the organ\nin any single one of them; and, also, the r\u00f4le of the antenn\u00e6 which\nseems very considerable in their life, remains very obscure, since the\nremoval of these appendices has not always a measurable effect on their\nactivity.[2]\n\nOrgans, evidently the most useful, are sometimes placed in a position\nwhich diminishes their value. Notice a resting horse, and another horse\ncoming toward him (observation can be made quite easily in the streets\nof Paris), what is he to do to gauge the danger, and reconnoitre the\nmovement? Look at the other horse? No. His eyes are made to look\nsideways, not forward. He uses his long ears, raises them, shifts\ntheir open side toward the noise. Reassured he lets them fall, and\nre-establishes his calm. The horse looks with his ears. The blinkers by\nwhich people pretend to make him look forward, merely blind him, and\nperhaps, thereby diminish his impressionability. Blind horses moreover\ndo the same work as the others.\n\nThe senses, as one knows, are substitutable one for the other, in a\ncertain degree; but in the normal state they seem rather to reinforce\neach other mutually, and lend each other a certain support. One does\nnot shut the eyes to hear better, save when one has determined the\nsource of the sound. And even then, is it to hear better? Is it not\nrather to reflect and to hear at the same time, to manage an interior\nconcentration with which the eye, essentially an explorative organ,\nwould interfere?\n\nIt is in love that this alliance of all the senses is most intimately\nexercised. In superior animals, as well as in man, each sense, together\nor in groups, comes to reinforce the genital sense. None remain\ninactive, eye, ear, scent, touch, even taste come into play. Thus one\nexplains the gleam of plumage, the dance, song, sexual odours. The\nfemale eye, in birds, is more sensitive than the male eye; the contrary\nis true of humanity; but female birds and women are particularly moved\nby song or words. The two sexes in dogs have, equally, recourse to\nscent; sight seems to play but an insignificant r\u00f4le in their sexual\naccess, since minuscule canine beasts do not fear to address themselves\nto monsters, which for man would be in proportion more than that of\na mammoth. Insects before mating often caress each other with their\nmysterious antenn\u00e6; the male is sometimes given a sounding apparatus:\ncricket and grasshopper drum to charm their companions.\n\nIt is not necessary to explain how in humans, especially in the male,\nall the senses concur in the amour, at least when moral and religious\nprejudices do not stop their impetus. It should be so, in an animal\nso sensitive, and of so complex and multiple a sensibility. The\nabstention of a single sense from the coupling is enough to enfeeble\nthe pleasure very greatly. The coldness of many women may proceed\nless from a diminution of their genital sense, than from the general\nmediocrity of their senses. Intelligence, being but the ripe fruit\nof the general sensibility, its intensity is very often found to be\nin a certain relation with the sexual sensibility. Absolute coldness\nmight signify stupidity. There are, however, too many exceptions for\none to generalize in this matter. It happens indeed that intelligence\ninstead of being the sum total of the sensibility, is, so to speak, the\ndeviation or transmutation. There remains very little sensibility; it\nis nearly all turned into intelligence.\n\nEvery organized animal has a master: its nervous system; and there\nis, doubtless, no real life save where a nervous system exists, be it\nthe magnificent infinitely branching tree of mammals and birds, be it\nthe double, knotted cord of the mollusks, or the nail head which is\nplanted, in ascides, between the buccal and anal orifice. As soon as\nthis new matter appears, it reigns despotically, and the unforeseen\nappears in the world. One would say a conqueror, or rather an intruder,\na parasite come in by stealth, and lifting itself into the royal r\u00f4le.\n\nAnimals bear this tyranny better than man. Their master asks fewer\nthings. Often it only asks one: to create a being in its exact\nlikeness. The animal is sane, that is to say, ruled; man is mad, that\nis to say, out of rule: he has so many orders to execute at once, that\nhe scarcely does any one well. In civilized countries he can hardly\nreproduce himself and the specie is in danger. It would disappear, if\nthe means of protecting it did not compensate the sterility.\n\nOne can not say that humanity has attained its intellectual limits,\nalthough its physical evolution seems completed; but as superior human\nspecimens are nearly always sterile, or capable of only mediocre\nposterity, it is found that, alone among values, intelligence is not\ntransmitted by generation. Then the circle closes and the same effort\nends ceaselessly in the same recommencement. However, even here,\nartificial means intervene, and the transmission of the acquisitions\nof intelligence is relatively assured by all sorts of instruments.\nThis mechanism, much inferior to carnal generation, permits us, if the\nmost exquisite forms of intelligence disappear as fast as they flower,\nto preserve at least part of their contents. Notions are transmitted,\nthat is a result, even though most of them are vain, in default of\nsensibilities sufficiently powerful to assimilate them and make a real\nlife of them.\n\nFinally, if man ought to abdicate, which seems unlikely, animality\nis rich enough to raise up an inheritor. The candidates for humanity\nare in great number, and they are not those whom the crowd supposes.\nWho knows if our descendants may not some day find themselves faced\nwith a rival, strong and in the flower of youth. Creation has not gone\non strike, since man appeared: since making this monster, nature has\ncontinued her work: the human hazard might reproduce itself on the\nmorrow.\n\n\n[1] The Latin _luxuria_ and French _luxure_ have no exact English\nequivalent; our \"luxury,\" is the French _luxe_; the phrase \"the\nexercise of pleasant lusts\" is perhaps as near as I can come to a\ndefinition of _luxure_.--Translator.\n\n[2] Fabre's experiments on mason bees, the shaggy ammophile, and\ngreat-peacock moth.\n\n\n\n\nTRANSLATOR'S POSTSCRIPT\n\n\n\"Il y aurait peut-\u00eatre une certain correlation entre la copulation\ncompl\u00e8te et profonde et le d\u00e9veloppement c\u00e9r\u00e9bral.\"\n\n\nNot only is this suggestion, made by our author at the end of his\neighth chapter, both possible and probable, but it is more than likely\nthat the brain itself, is, in origin and development, only a sort of\ngreat clot of genital fluid held in suspense or reserve; at first\nover the cervical ganglion, or, earlier or in other species, held in\nseveral clots over the scattered chief nerve centres; and augmenting in\nvarying speeds and quantities into medulla oblongata, cerebellum and\ncerebrum. This hypothesis would perhaps explain a certain number of as\nyet uncorrelated phenomena both psychological and physiological. It I\nwould explain the enormous content of the brain as a maker or presenter\nof images. Species would have developed in accordance with, or their\ndevelopment would have been affected by, the relative discharge and\nretention of the fluid; this proportion being both a matter of quantity\nand of quality, some animals profiting hardly at all by the alluvial\nNile-flood; the baboon retaining nothing; men apparently stupefying\nthemselves in some cases by excess, and in other cases discharging\napparently only a surplus at high pressure; the gateux, or the genius,\nthe \"strong-minded.\"\n\nI offer an idea rather than an argument, yet if we consider sider that\nthe power of the spermatozoide is precisely the power of exteriorizing\na form; and if we consider the lack of any other known substance\nin nature capable of growing into brain, we are left with only one\nsurprise, or rather one conclusion, namely, in face of the smallness of\nthe average brain's activity, we must conclude that the spermatozoic\nsubstance must have greatly atrophied in its change from lactic to\ncoagulated and hereditarily coagulated condition. Given, that is, two\ngreat seas of this fluid, mutually magnetized, the wonder is, or at\nleast the first wonder is, that human thought is so inactive.\n\nChemical research may have something to say on the subject, if it be\ndirected to comparison of brain and spermatophore in the nautilus,\nto the viscous binding of the bee's fecundative liquid. I offer only\nreflections, perhaps a few data. Indications of earlier adumbrations of\nan idea which really surprises no one, but seems as if it might have\nbeen lying on the study table of any physician or philosopher.\n\nThere are traces of it in the symbolism of phallic religions, man\nreally the phallus or spermatozoide charging, head-on, the female\nchaos. Integration of the male in the male organ. Even oneself has felt\nit, driving any new idea into the great passive vulva of London, a\nsensation analogous to the male feeling in copulation.\n\nWithout any digression on feminism, taking merely the division Gourmont\nhas given (Aristotelian, if you like), one offers woman as the\naccumulation of hereditary aptitudes, better than man in the \"useful\ngestures,\" the perfections; but to man, given what we have of history,\nthe \"inventions,\" the new gestures, the extravagance, the wild shots,\nthe impractical, merely because in him occurs the new up-jut, the new\nbathing of the cerebral tissues in the residuum, in _la mousse_ of the\nlife sap.\n\nOr, as I am certainly neither writing an anti-feminist tract, nor\nclaiming disproportionate privilege for the spermatozoide, for the sake\nof symmetry ascribe a cognate r\u00f4le to the ovule, though I can hardly be\nexpected to introspect it. A flood is as bad as a famine; the ovular\nbath could still account for the refreshment of the female mind, and\nthe recharging, regracing of its \"traditional aptitudes;\" where one\nwoman appears to benefit by an alluvial clarifying, ten dozen appear to\nbe swamped.\n\nPostulating that the cerebral fluid tried all sorts of experiments,\nand, striking matter, forced fit; into all sorts of forms, by gushes;\nwe have admittedly in insect life a female predominance; in bird,\nmammal and human, at least an increasing male prominence. And these\nfour important branches of \"the fan\" may be differentiated according to\ntheir apparent chief desire, or source of choosing their species.\n\nInsect, utility; bird, flight; mammal, muscular splendour; man,\nexperiment.\n\nThe insect representing the female, and utility; the need of heat being\npresent, the insect chooses to solve the problem by hibernation, i.e.,\na sort of negation of action. The bird wanting-continuous freedom,\nfeathers itself. Desire for decoration appears in all the branches, man\nexteriorizing it most. The bat's secret appears to be that he is not\nthe bird-mammal, but the mammal-insect: economy of tissue, hibernation.\nThe female principle being not only utility, but extreme economy,\nwoman, falling by this division into a male branch, is the least\nfemale of females, and at this point one escapes from a journalistic;\nsex-squabble into the opposition of two principles, utility and a sort\nof venturesomeness.\n\nIn its subservience to the money fetish our age returns to the\ndarkness of medievalism. Two osmies may make superfluous egg-less\nnests, but do not kill each other in contesting which shall deposit\nthe supererogatory honey therein. It is perhaps no more foolish to go\nat a hermit's bidding to recover an old sepulchre than to make new\nsepulchres at the bidding of finance.\n\nIn his growing subservience to, and adoration of, and entanglement in\nmachines, in utility, man rounds the circle almost into insect life,\nthe absence of flesh; and may have need even of horned gods to save\nhim, or at least of a form of thought which permits them.\n\nTake it that usual thought is a sort of shaking or shifting of a fluid\nin the viscous cells of the brain; one has seen electricity stripping\nthe particles of silver from a plated knife in a chemical bath, with\norder and celerity, and gathering them on the other pole of a magnet.\nTake it as materially as you like. There is a sort of spirit-level\nin the ear, giving us our sense of balance. And dreams? Do they not\nhappen precisely at the moments when one has tipped the head; are they\nnot, with their incoherent mixing of known and familiar images, like\nthe pouring of a complicated honeycomb tilted from its perpendicular?\nDoes not this give precisely the needed mixture of familiar forms in\nnon-sequence, the jumble of fragments each coherent within its own\nlimit?\n\nAnd from the popular speech, is not the sensible man called\n\"level-headed,\" has he not his \"head well screwed on\" or \"screwed on\nstraight;\" and are not lunatics and cranks often recognizable from some\npeculiar carriage or tilt of the head-piece; and is not the thinker\nalways pictured with his head bowed into his hand, yes, but level so\nfar as left to right is concerned? The upward-jaw, head-back pose has\nlong been explained by the relative positions of the medulla and the\nmore human parts of the brain; this need not be dragged in here; nor do\nI mean to assert that you can cure a lunatic merely by holding his head\nlevel.\n\nThought is a chemical process, the most interesting of all transfusions\nin liquid solution. The mind is an up-spurt of sperm, no, let me alter\nthat; trying to watch the process: the sperm, the form-creator, the\nsubstance which compels the ovule to evolve in a given pattern, one\nmicroscopic, minuscule particle, entering the \"castle\" of the ovule.\n\n\"Thought is a vegetable\" says a modern hermetic, whom I have often\ncontradicted, but whom I do not wish to contradict at this point.\nThought is a \"chemical process\" in relation to the organ, the brain;\ncreative thought is act like fecundation, like the male cast of the\nhuman seed, but given that cast, that ejaculation, I am perfectly\nwilling to grant that the thought once born, separated, in regard to\nitself, not in relation to the brain that begat it, does lead an\nindependent life much like a member of the vegetable kingdom, blowing\nseeds, ideas from the paradisal garden at the summit of Dante's Mount\nPurgatory, capable of lodging and sprouting where they fall. And\nGourmont has the phrase \"fecundating a generation of bodies as genius\nfecundates a generation of minds.\"\n\nMan is the sum of the animals, the sum of their instincts, as Gourmont\nhas repeated in the course of his book. Given, first a few, then as\nwe get to our own condition, a mass of these spermatozoic particles\nwithheld, in suspense, waiting in the organ that has been built up\nthrough ages by a myriad similar waitings.\n\nEach of these particles is, we need not say, conscious of form, but\nhas by all counts a capacity for formal expression: is not thought\nprecisely a form-comparing and form-combining?\n\nThat is to say we have the hair-thinning \"abstract thought\" and we have\nthe concrete thought of women, of artists, of musicians, the mockedly\n\"long-haired,\" who have made everything in the world. We have the\nform-making and the form-destroying \"thought,\" only the first of which\nis really satisfactory. I don't wish to be invidious, it is perfectly\npossible to consider the \"abstract\" thought, reason, etc., as the\ncomparison, regimentation, and least common denominator of a multitude\nof images, but in the end each of the images is a little spoiled\nthereby, no one of them is the Apollo, and the makers of this kind of\nthought have been called dry-as-dust since the beginning of history.\nThe regiment is less interesting as a whole than any individual in it.\nAnd, as we are being extremely material and physical and animal, in the\nwake of our author, we will leave old wives' gibes about the profusion\nof hair, and its chance possible indication or sanction of a possible\nneighbouring health beneath the skull.\n\nCreative thought has manifested itself in images, in music, which is to\nsound what the concrete image is to sight. And the thought of genius,\neven of the mathematical genius, the mathematical prodigy, is really\nthe same sort of thing, it is a sudden out-spurt of mind which takes\nthe form demanded by the problem; which creates the answer, and baffles\nthe man counting on the abacus.\n\nI query the remarks about the sphex in Chapter XIX, \"que le sphex s'est\nform\u00e9 lentement,\" I query this with a conviction for which anyone is\nat liberty to call me lunatic, and for which I offer no better ground\nthan simple introspection. I believe, and on no better ground than\nthat of a sudden emotion, that the change of species is not a slow\nmatter, managed by cross-breeding, of nature's leporides and bardots,\nI believe that the species changes as suddenly as a man makes a song\nor a poem, or as suddenly as he starts making them, more suddenly\nthan he can cut a statue in stone, at most as slowly as a locust or\nlong-tailed Sirmione false mosquito emerges from its outgrown skin. It\nis not even proved that man is at the end of his physical changes. Say\nthat the diversification of species has passed its most sensational\nphases, say that it had once a great stimulus from the rapidity of the\nearth's cooling, if one accepts the geologists' interpretation of that\nthermometric cyclone.\n\nThe cooling planet contracts, it is as if one had some mud in a tin\npail, and forced down the lid with such pressure that the can sprung\na dozen leaks, or it is as if one had the mud in a linen bag and\nsqueezed; merely as mechanics (not counting that one has all the\nknown and unknown chemical elements cooling simultaneously), but\nmerely as mechanics this contraction gives energy enough to squeeze\nvegetation through the pores of the imaginary linen and to detach\ncertain particles, leaving them still a momentum. A body should cool\nwith decreasing speed in measure as it approaches the temperature of\nits surroundings; however, the earth is still, I think, supposed to be\nwarmer than the surrounding unknown, and is presumably still cooling,\nor at any rate it is not proved that man is at the end of his physical\nchanges. I return to homed gods and the halo in a few paragraphs. It\nis not proved that even the sort of impetus provided by a shrinking of\nplanetary surface is denied one.\n\nWhat is known is that man's great divergence has been in the making of\ndetached, resumable tools.\n\nThat is to say, if an insect carries a saw, it carries it all the time.\nThe \"next step,\" as in the case of the male organ of the nautilus, is\nto grow a tool and detach it.\n\nMan's first inventions are fire and the club, that is to say he\ndetaches his digestion, he finds a means to get heat without releasing\nthe calories of the log by internal combustion inside his own stomach.\nThe invention of the first tool turned his mind (using this term in the\nfull sense); turned, let us say, his \"brain\" from his own body. No need\nfor greater antenn\u00e6, a fifth arm, etc., except, after a lapse, as a\ntour de force, to show that he is still lord of his body.\n\nThat is to say the langouste's long feelers, all sorts of extravagances\nin nature may be taken as the result of a single gush of thought. A\nsingle out-push of a demand, made by a spermatic sea of sufficient\nenergy to cast such a form. To cast it as one electric pole will cast\na spark to another. To exteriorize. Sometimes to act in this with more\nenthusiasm than caution.\n\nLet us say quite simply that light is a projection from the luminous\nfluid, from the energy that is in the brain, down along the nerve cords\nwhich receive certain vibrations in the eye. Let us suppose man capable\nof exteriorizing a new organ, horn, halo, Eye of Horns. Given a brain\nof this power, comes the question, what organ, and to what purpose?\n\nTurning to folk-lore, we have Frazer on homed gods, we have Egyptian\nstatues, generally supposed to be \"symbols,\" of cat-headed and\nibis-headed gods. Now in a primitive community, a man, a volontaire,\nmight risk it. He might want prestige, authority, want them enough\nto grow horns and claim a divine heritage, or to grow a cat head;\nGreek philosophy would have smiled at him, would have deprecated his\nostentation. With primitive man he would have risked a good deal, he\nwould have been deified, or crucified, or possibly both. Today he would\nbe caught for a circus.\n\nOne does not assert that cat-headed gods appeared in Egypt after the\nthird dynasty; the country had a long memory and such a phenomenon\nwould have made some stir in the valley. The horned god would appear\nto have persisted, and the immensely high head of the Chinese\ncontemplative as shown in art and the China images is another stray\ngrain of tradition.\n\nBut man goes on making new faculties, or forgetting old ones. That\nis to say you have all sorts of aptitudes developed without external\nchange, which in an earlier biological state would possibly have found\ncarnal expression. You have every exploited \"hyper-\u00e6sthesia,\" i.e.,\nevery new form of genius, from the faculty of hearing four parts in a\nfugue perfectly, to the ear for money (vide Henry James in \"The Ivory\nTower\" the passages on Mr. Gaw). Here I only amplify what Gourmont has\nindicated in Chapter XX. You have the visualizing sense, the \"stretch\"\nof imagination, the mystics,--for what there is to them--Santa Theresa\nwho \"saw\" the microcosmos, hell, heaven, purgatory complete, \"the\nsize of a walnut;\" and you have Mr. W., a wool-broker in London, who\nsuddenly at 3 a.m. visualizes the whole of his letter-file, three\nhundred folios; he sees and reads particularly the letter at folder\n171, but he sees simultaneously the entire contents of the file, the\nwhole thing about the size of two lumps of domino sugar laid flat side\nto flat side.\n\nRemains precisely the question: man feeling this protean capacity to\ngrow a new organ: what organ? Or new faculty; what faculty?\n\nHis first renunciation, flight, he has regained, almost as if the\nrenunciation, so recent in terms of biology, had been committed in\nforesight. Instinct conserves only the \"useful\" gestures. Air provides\nlittle nourishment, and anyhow the first great pleasure surrendered,\nthe simple ambition to mount the air has been regained and regratified.\nWater was never surrendered, man with sub-aqueous yearnings is still,\ngiven a knife, the shark's vanquisher. The new faculty? Without then\nthe ostentation of an organ. Will? The hypnotist has shown the vanity\nand Blake the inutility of willing trifles, and black magic its\nfutility. The telepathic faculty? In the first place is it new? Have\nnot travellers always told cock and bull stories about its existence\nin savage Africa? Is it not a faculty that man has given up, if not\nas useless, at any rate as of a very limited use, a distraction,\nmore bother than it is worth? Lacking a localizing sense, the savage\nknowing, if he does, what happens \"somewhere\" else, but never knowing\nquite where. The faculty was perhaps not worth the damage it does to\nconcentration of mind on some useful subject. \"Instinct preserves the\nuseful gestures.\"\n\nTake it that what man wants is a capacity for clearer understanding,\nor for physical refreshment and vigour, are not these precisely the\nfaculties he is forever hammering at, perhaps stupidly? Muscularly he\ngoes slowly, athletic records being constantly worn down by millimetres\nand seconds.\n\nI appear to have thrown down bits of my note somewhat at random; let me\nreturn to physiology. People were long ignorant of the circulation of\nthe blood; that known, they appeared to think the nerves stationary;\nGourmont speaks of \"circulation nerveuse,\" but many people still\nconsider the nerve as at most a telegraph wire, simply because it\ndoes not bleed visibly when cut. The current is \"interrupted.\" The\nschool books of twenty years ago were rather vague about lymph, and\nvarious glands still baffle physicians. I have not seen the suggestion\nthat some of them may serve rather as fuses in an electric system, to\nprevent short circuits, or in some variant or allotropic form. The\nspermatozoide is, I take it, regarded as a sort of quintessence; the\nbrain is also a quintessence, or at least \"in rapport with\" all parts\nof the body; the single spermatozoide demands simply that the ovule\nshall construct a human being, the suspended spermatozoide (if my wild\nshot rings the target bell) is ready to dispense with, in the literal\nsense, incarnation, en-fleshment. Shall we postulate the mass of\nspermatozoides, first accumulated in suspense, then specialized?\n\nThree channels, hell, purgatory, heaven, if one wants to follow yet\nanother terminology: digestive excretion, incarnation, freedom in\nthe imagination, i.e., cast into an exterior formlessness, or into\nform material, or merely imaginative visually or perhaps musically or\nperhaps fixed in some other sensuous dimension, even of taste or odour\n(there have been perhaps creative cooks and perfumers?).\n\nThe dead laborious compilation and comparison of other men's dead\nimages, all this is mere labour, not the spermatozoic act of the brain.\n\nWoman, the conservator, the inheritor of past gestures, clever,\npractical, as Gourmont says, not inventive, always the best disciple of\nany inventor, has been always the enemy of the dead or laborious form\nof compilation, abstraction.\n\nNot considering the process ended; taking the individual genius as\nthe man in whom the new access, the new superfluity of spermatozoic\npressure (quantitative and qualitative) up-shoots into the brain,\nalluvial Nile-flood, bringing new crops, new invention. And as Gourmont\nsays, there is only reasoning where there is initial error, i.e.,\nweakness of the spurt, wandering search.\n\nIn no case can it be a question of mere animal quantity of sperm. You\nhave the man who wears himself out and weakens his brain, echo of the\norang, obviously not the talented sieve; you have the contrasted case\nin the type of man who really can not work until he has relieved the\npressure on his spermatic canals.\n\nThis is a question of physiology, it is not a question of morals and\nsociology. Given the spermatozoic thought, the two great seas of\nfecundative matter, the brain lobes, mutually magnetized, luminous in\ntheir own knowledge of their being; whether they may be expected to\nseek exterior \"luxuria,\" or whether they are going to repeat Augustine\nhymns, is not in my jurisdiction. An exterior paradise might not allure\nthem \"La b\u00eatise humaine est la seule chose qui donne une id\u00e9e de\nl'infini,\" says Renan, and Gourmont has quoted him, and all flesh to\ngrass, a superior grass.\n\nIt remains that man has for centuries nibbled at this idea of\nconnection, intimate connection between his sperm and his cerebration,\nthe ascetic has tried to withhold all his sperm, the lure, the ignis\nfatuus perhaps, of wanting to super-think; the dope-fiend has tried\nopium and every inferior to Bacchus, to get an extra kick out of the\norgan, the mystics have sought the gleam in the tavern, Helen of\nTyre, priestesses in the temple of Venus, in Indian temples, stray\npriestesses in the streets, un-uprootable custom, and probably with a\nbasis of sanity. A sense of balance might show that asceticism means\neither a drought or a crowding. The liquid solution must be kept at\nright consistency; one would say the due proportion of liquid to\nviscous particles, a good circulation; the actual quality of the sieve\nor separator, counting perhaps most of all; the balance of ejector and\nretentive media.\n\nPerhaps the clue is in Propertius after all:\n\nIngenium nobis ipsa puella fecit.\n\nThere is the whole of the XIIth century love cult, and Dante's\nmetaphysics a little to one side, and Gourmont's Latin Mystique; and\nfor image-making both Fenollosa on \"The Chinese Written Character,\"\nand the paragraphs in \"Le Probl\u00e8me du Style.\" At any rate the quarrel\nbetween cerebralist and viveur and ignorantist ends, if the brain is\nthus conceived not as a separate and desiccated organ, but as the very\nfluid of life itself.\n\nEzra Pound\n\nJune 21, 1921.\n\n\n\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nPRINCIPAL WORKS CONSULTED\n\nAnnales des sciences naturelles (zo\u00f6logie). Paris, 1824-1902.\n\nL'Apiculture, journal des cultivateurs d'abeilles, ann\u00e9e 1862.\n\nO. Beccari, Les Cabanes et les jardins de l'Amblyornis; Annales du\nMus\u00e9e d'histoire naturelle de G\u00eanes, 1876.\n\nBienenzeitung (Gazette des Abeilles) janvier, 1850.\n\nE. Blanchard, M\u00e9tamorphoses, m\u0153urs et instinct des insectes, 2nd edtn.\nParis, 1877, gr. in 8vo.\n\nBonnet, Consid\u00e9rations sur les corps organis\u00e9s; Amsterdam, 1776. 2\nvols. in 8vo.\n\nBrehm, Les Mammif\u00e8res; Les Oiseaux; Les Reptiles et les Batraciens;\nLes Poissons et les Crustac\u00e9s; Les Insectes, les Myriapodes et les\nArachnides; Les Echinodermes, les Zoophytes et les Protozoaires\n(ouvrage traduit de l'Allemand sous le titre de Merveilles de la\nNature). Paris, 1869-85, 9 vols. gr. in 8vo.\n\nJ. Chatin, Organes de nutrition et de reproduction chez les vert\u00e9br\u00e9s;\nChez les invert\u00e9br\u00e9s. Paris, 1900, 2 vols. in 12 mo.\n\nDarwin, La Descendance de l'homme et la s\u00e9lection sexuelle. Paris, s.\nd. in 8vo.\n\nDe Paw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Am\u00e9ricains. Berlin, 1768.\n\nD'Orbigny, Dictionnaire universe! d'histoire naturelle. Paris, 1839-49,\n24 vols. in 8vo.\n\nJ. H. Fabre, Souvenirs entomologiques, Etudes sur l'instinct et les\nm\u0153urs des insectes. Paris, s. d. tome VIII is of 1903. 8 vols. in 8vo.\n\nFarmer and Gardener, for 1859.\n\nF. C. Forberg, Antonii Panormit\u00e6 Hermaphroditus, primus in Germania\nedidit et Apophoreta adjecit F. C. Forbergius. Coburg, 1824, in 8vo.\nReprinted under title Figur\u00e6 Veneris.\n\nA. Forel, Les fourmis de la Suisse. Zurich, 1874, in 8.\n\nA. Forel, Les Facult\u00e9s psychiques des insectes: Revue g\u00e9n\u00e9rale des\nsciences, 15. Feb., 1902.\n\nGu\u00e9rin, Dictionnaire pittoresque d'histoire naturelle. Paris, 1833-39.\n9 vols. in 4.\n\nHuber, Recherches sur les fourmis indig\u00e8nes; Gen\u00e8ve, 1810, in 8vo.\n\nDr. Issaurat, Le Sinus Uro-genital, son d\u00e9veloppement, ses anomalies.\nParis, 1888, in 8vo.\n\nJanet, Recherches sur l'anatomie de la fourmi. Paris, 1900, in 8vo.\n\nL. Laloy, Les Cirrip\u00e8des, leur \u00e9volution sexuelle: Revue scientifique,\n21 March, 1903.\n\nF. LeDantec, La Sexualit\u00e9. Paris, s. d. Scientia, No. 2.\n\nM. Maeterlinck, La Vie des Abeilles. Paris, 1901. (Contains a\nbibliography of the bee.)\n\nP. Mantegazza, L'Amour dans l'humanit\u00e9, Essai d'une ethnologie de\nl'amour. Paris, 1886, in-18.\n\nP. Mantegazza, Physiologie de l'amour. Paris, 1886.\n\nMariot-Didieux, Guide-pratique de l'\u00e9ducateur de lapins. Paris, s. d.","title":"The Natural Philosophy of Love","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":56021}