PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



For a long time people thought that the whole genital 

 apparatus was situated in the feelers of the male, but 

 anatomy could find nothing there to resemble it. Savigny 

 thought that the introduction of the feelers into the 

 vulva was merely an excitative manoeuvre, and that the 

 true copulation followed. One had only observed half 

 the act, the second phase. The first consists in the male's 

 gathering up the semence in his own belly with the 

 feelers; he then places it in the female organ. The 

 maxillary peripalpe or antenna, thus transformed into a 

 penis, contains a spiral canal which the male fills in 

 placing it against the opening of his spermatic canals. 

 One sees the joint of one of the knuckles open, letting 

 appear a white bourrelet (pad with a hole in the mid- 

 dle), this is bent, and plunged into the vulva, it emerges 

 and the insect flees. System marvellously adapted to the 

 circumstances, for the female is ferocious and quite ready 

 to devour her suitor. But is it the ferocity of the female 

 which has modified the fecundating system, or is it the 

 system, so lacking in tenderness, which has led the recep- 

 tress to find only an enemy in the aspirant who advances 

 horn to the fore? Acts which produce constant and useful 

 results always seem to us ordered by an admirable logic; 

 one need only give oneself up to a certain laziness of 

 mind, to be led quite gently to call them providential 

 and to fall little by little into the innocent nets of 

 finalism. 



Doubtless and undeniable there is a general finality, 



but one must conceive it as represented entire by the 



present state of nature. This will not be a conception 



of order, but a conception of fact, and in any case, the 



"3 



