PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



male, the couple must be established and permanent. 

 The male osmie (sort of solitary bee) sees the light be- 

 fore his female; he could prepare the nest, or at least 

 choose its situation, guide the female to it, work or 

 watch; but he belongs to a series of animals in which 

 the males are merely male organs, and all his role is con- 

 tained in the gestures of mating. The couple is not 

 yet formed. When it is formed, as in other kinds of 

 insects, scarabs, copris, sisyphs, geotrupes, the work is 

 equally shared between the two sexes. Here the parallel 

 ends, for the social evolution of the insect has led to 

 functional differentiations extremely complicated, and 

 if not unknown, at least abnormal, to humanity. Bee 

 society has the female for base, human society has the 

 couple. They are organisms so different that no com- 

 parison of them is possible, or even useful. Only in 

 ignorance of them, can one envy bees; a community 

 without sexual relations is really without attraction for 

 a member of the human community. The hive is not 

 a society but a hatchery. 



The couple is only possible with a dimorphism, real 

 but moderate. There must be a difference, especially of 

 strength, in order for there to be a true union, that is 

 to say subordination. A couple formed of equal ele- 

 ments, like a society of equal elements, would be in a 

 state of permanent anarchy; two creatures suffice for 

 anarchy, as for war. A couple formed of elements too 

 unequal, would, by the crushing of the weaker, find itself 

 reduced to tyrannized unity. Man and woman, as is the 

 case with other primates and the carnivora (for most 

 herbivora are polygamous) represent two sexes made to 

 S3 



