THE NATURAL 



without fecundation lay eggs which will hatch into males; 

 but copulation is necessary in order to produce females 

 and queens; now as only the queen can receive the 

 male, a hive without a queen is doomed. That is the 

 practical point of view, the sexual point of view leads 

 to other reflections. A female can, quite alone, give 

 birth to a male: but to have an egg hatch female, it 

 must be fecundated by a male born spontaneously: one 

 observes here the real exteriorization of the male organ, 

 a segmentation of the genital power, into two forces, the 

 male force and the female. Thus disunited, it acquires 

 a new faculty which will fully unfold itself by the reinte- 

 gration of the two halves of the initial force into a single 

 force. But why do the virgin-born ovules necessarily 

 give birth to males, among bees, and to females among 

 plant lice? That is the question defying answer. All 

 that one sees is that parthenogenesis is always transitory, 

 and that after a number of virginal generations, normal 

 fecundation always intervenes. 



One can not say that the mother bee is a true queen, 

 a veritable chief, but she is the important personage in 

 the hive, the one without whom life stops. The workers 

 have the air of being mistresses; in reality their nervous 

 centre is in the queen; they act only for her, and by her. 

 Her disappearance sets the hive crazy, and drives it 

 to absurd endeavours, such as the transformation of a 

 nurse into a layer, though she will give eggs of one sex 

 only, so many useless mouths. In reflecting on this last 

 expedient one can measure the importance of sex, and 

 understand the absolutism of its royalty. Sex is king, 

 and there is no royalty save the sexual. The making 

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