INSECT VAllTETY. 35 



CHAPTER I. 



Metaphysical Incentives to Reproduction and Distribution — The Germs of the 

 Passions,' Fear, Rivalry, Love, and Maternal Care, shown to exist in Insecta, 

 and their Expression in Contractions and Secretions — Corresponding Senses 

 of Touch and Smell. 



No historian, poet, or philosopher, devoting- himself to the 

 study of mankind, has omitted to comment on the ruling bias 

 of the passions, whether as regards the loss caused b} 

 their unbridled indulgence, or the incentive they afford to all 

 commendable actions. Arising directly at the intimations of 

 pleasure or pain communicated by the senses, they precede 

 thought, reason, judgment, and other qualities of the mind, and 

 in the savage divert the very members from rational machines 

 to watchful weapons of defence. The emotions or stimuli of 

 these metaphysical passions alone have their source low in the 

 animal kingdom, and these we shall show pervade Articulata 

 coexistently with the origin of complete organs of sensation in a 

 multiple form. 



Voluntary actions evincing these incentives are, it has been 

 said, of two kinds, as they proceed from design or propensity ; 

 and in performing one of these kinds, the mind itself has an 

 object in view, and is properly the source whence they originate. 

 But in the other, the mind is merely a secondary agent, acting 

 under the influence of stimulants, and frequently not aware of 

 the consequences, or, although aware, often so infatuated as 

 not to regard them, however fatal. It has been also long known 

 to the naturalist that not a few of these propensities arise from 

 the form and structure of the body, from the manner in which 

 the optic nerve is affected by colours, the olfactory by smells, 

 the gustatory by taste, and the auditory by sounds ; from the 

 different ways in which the fauces are affected by thirst, the 

 stomach by hunger, and the genital parts by orgasm. Besides 

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