INSECTS AND MANKIND 447 



The study of insect life, with its definite practical and 

 intellectual appeals to those who pursue it, is not devoid of 

 spiritual aspect. The ancient Egyptians, who used the bee 

 as a symbol of their king, paid divine honour to representa- 

 tions of the dung-beetles (Scarabaeus), and laid the image 

 (scarab) of the creature to replace the heart of the mum- 

 mified dead. According to E. A. W. Budge (1925) and other 

 archaeologists, the beetle's action in rolling over and over 

 the ball of dung which serves it for food-supply, suggested 

 to primitive observers the revolution of the sun in the 

 heavens, and thus the beetle became a symbol of Kheper, 

 the creator who made and sustained in their courses the 

 celestial spheres, and caused the sun to rise again after each 

 evening's setting. As a natural further step in symbolism, 

 " the ideas of resurrection and renewed life became associated 

 with the beetle." The use by the Greeks of the same word 

 i^^XV) ^^ designate a butterfly and the soul shows how 

 the well-known transformation from crawling caterpillar 

 to winged imago seemed a parable of man's higher nature, 

 so that to them also insects became silent prophets of im- 

 mortality. Not to pagans only did this symbol from insect 

 life-history appeal ; it was taken up by the great seventeenth- 

 century Dutch zoologist Swammerdam as an illustration 

 of the Christian doctrine of the future : "we see therein," 

 he wrote, " the resurrection painted before our eyes." It 

 is noteworthy that Swammerdam was a pioneer in the 

 elucidation of the true nature of insect metamorphosis, for 

 he saw the preformation of imaginal rudiments in the 

 larva, and realised the individual continuity of life through 

 all stages of growth ; the modern student of things natural 

 and spiritual may find the parallel no less attractive on 

 that account. 



While such analogies are of interest as showing how 

 details of insect development and behaviour have drawn 

 out the deeper aspirations of various observers, there is 

 a more compelling appeal in the wide vision of purpose 

 which the study of insects, as of all nature, reveals to those 

 who, in the true scientific spirit, seek for a reasonable 



