53 



L'Envoi. 



Ich mag in eliesem Hexenheer 

 Mich ganz uncl gar verlieren. 

 Goethe. 



l antheism is directly fostered in the mind of man 

 through the study of Entomology. It appeals to him by the 

 display of that which is beautiful in Nature and it may be 

 said that the worship or cult of Butterflies has taken root 

 among us. As such it opposes the view of Deism, as 

 an intellectual solution of the world-all. My old friend 

 Sanborn was taken to task, upon religious grounds, for 

 collecting on Sunday. He replied to his interlocutor, a New 

 England clergyman, that "if God would shut up his Butter- 

 flies on Sunday, he himself would not go out after them." 

 To Sanborn, Butterflies were a part of the Divinity in 

 nature. He was a Pantheist and met the demands of the 

 orthodox Deists by the creed that the woods are God's temple 

 in which man seeks the Divinity in the rays of sunlight 

 glinting across the green leaves, in bird and beast and butter- 

 fly and flower. The search was to him always religious and 

 hence justifiable. This argument is more or less consciously 

 advanced by all Entomologists, who, as a body, classify their 

 collections rather than their thoughts, perhaps. They wor- 

 ship none the less fervently at the Altar of the Hours than 

 the believers at that of the Sacrements. I have elsewhere 

 dwelt on this subject of the latent Pantheism in our race. 

 While the Semite accepts all indistinguishably from the hand 

 of the Creator, the Indo-German examines and arranges. 

 The observing Greek Poet claps the wings of the Butterfly 

 on the immortal and beautiful shoulders of Psyche and wings 

 his figures of Love and Death like Birds. The cult of 

 Butterflies is too strong for some of us. It causes Mr. Strecker 



