110 THE MIRACULOUS IN NATURE. 
the grave, which makes us the mock of destiny? It sleeps in the egg, 
and afterwards sleeps again in the nymph. It is thrice born; and it 
dies thrice—as larva, nymph, and beetle. In each of these existences 
the larva or mask is the prefigurement of the succeeding existence. It 
prepares, begets, and hatches itself. From the most repulsive sepulchre 
it emerges sparkling. On the dust it shines; on the gray Egyptian 
plain, in its season of aridity, it shimmers, and eclipses everything. 
Its jewelled wing mirrors the all-powerful sun. 
Where was it? In the foul shadow, in night and death. A deity 
has summoned it forth, and will yet do much more for this beloved 
soul! Sweet, tender ray! The hope was surely founded upon justice, 
on the impartial love of the Creator of all life. 
Accordingly, the widow draws from its death the brilliant pledge 
of the future, and gives utterance to this woman’s ery :—“ Merciful 
Heaven! do for my husband and for me what thou hast done for the 
insect. Do not grant less to man; do not grant to my best-beloved less 
than thou accordest to this brother of the gnat !” 
Has modern science swept away the ancient poesy ? Has it com- 
pletely eliminated the miraculous from nature ? 
The inaugurator of this science, Swammerdam, has discovered that 
the grub already contains the nymph; nay more, even the butterfly. 
In the grub he has detected the rudiment of the wing and proboscis 
of the future being. 
This is not all. Malpighi saw the nymph of the silkworm in its 
virgin slumber, already furnished with the attributes of its coming 
maternity,—containing the eggs which, as a butterfly, it would 
fecundate. 
And yet again, this is not all. Réaumur, in the oak-grub, im a grub 
scarcely a few howrs old, found the eggs of the future butterfly. In 
other words, the infant insect, at that very stage when the grub itself, 
as Harvey points out, is simply a mobile egg, already possesses eggs 
and children. 
It is the identity of three beings. It seems as if there could be no 
intermediary deaths; one single life is continuously carried on. 
