THE NATURAL 



ceding period, finally perform their office. Superstitions 

 before being rejected ought to be minutely observed and 

 analysed, there is nearly always a kernel of truth in 

 the gross envelope. 



In the hermaphrodism of echinoderms, of fish, there 

 is never auto-fecundation; either the sexual products 

 meet outside the animals, which have neither copulating 

 organs, nor a related genital life; it is a simple growth 

 of germs; or, in a more complex phase the individuals 

 have exterior male organs, and female organs, but they 

 can not use them without the aid of another individual 

 acting either as male, or as female. Here a new dis- 

 tinction is imposed: either the animal will be successively 

 male, and then female; or it will be both at once. This 

 union of the two sexes seems useless, according to human 

 logic, when the two genital glands ripen at different sea- 

 sons ; one understands it better when the reciprocal fecun- 

 dation is simultaneous, since this doubles the number 

 of females and better assures the conservation of the 

 specie. One must set aside the idea of pleasure. Apart 

 from the fact that we can judge it only by a very distant 

 and even dubious analogy considering the difference be- 

 tween the nervous systems of man and mollusk, one must 

 set it aside as useless. Pleasure is a result not an aim. 

 In most animal species coition is but a prelude to death, 

 and often love and death work their supreme act in the 

 same instant. Copulation of insects is suicide: would it 

 be reasonable to consider it as produced by a desire to 

 die? One must dissociate the idea of pleasure and the 

 idea of love, if one wants to understand anything of the 

 tragic movements which perpetually beget life at the 

 108 



