PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



result of making thought run in a set track, like a horse 

 in a circus. Kantian ignorantism is the masterpiece of 

 these training exercises, where, starting from the categoric 

 stable the learned quadruped necessarily thither returns, 

 having jumped through all the paper disks of scholastic 

 reasoning. Observers of animal habits fall regularly into 

 the prejudice of attributing, regularly, to beasts directive 

 principles which only a long philosophic education and 

 especially Christianity have rammed into restive human 

 docility. Toussenel and Romanes are rarely superior to 

 the possessors of a prodigious dog or miraculous cat: one 

 must reject as apocryphal the anecdotes of animals' in- 

 telligence, and especially those boasting their sensibility, 

 or celebrating their virtues; not that these are of neces- 

 sity, inexact, but because the manner of interpreting them 

 has vitiated, in principle, the manner of observation. 

 One sole observer appears to me trustworthy in these mat- 

 ters, namely J. H. Fabre, the man who, since Reaumur, 

 has penetrated furthest into the intimacy of insects, and 

 whose work is veritably the creator, perhaps without his 

 having suspected it, of a general psychology of animals. 

 The madness of attributing to beasts the intuitive 

 knowledge of our moral catechism has created the legend 

 of the elephant's sexual modesty. These chaste monsters 

 hide, they say, to make love; animated by a wholly 

 romantic sensibility, they can not give way to their feel- 

 ings save in the mystery of the jungle, in the labyrinth of 

 the virgin forests: that is why they have never been 

 known to breed in captivity. Nothing is more idiotic; 

 the elephant in the public garden or the circus is ready 

 enough to make love, although with less enthusiasm than 

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