PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



exude a delectable liquor, at least one sees the ants suck 

 these hairs with great eagerness. These animals permit 

 it. They are so much at home, that the same observer 

 (Muller, traduit par Brulle, dans le Dictionnaire d'his- 

 toirc naturelle de Guerin, au mot Pselaphiens} has seen 

 them coupling without fear in the midst of the busy ant 

 people, the male hunched on the back of the female, 

 solidly crammed against the mellifluous tuft of ant's 

 delicacies. 



One knows that the red ants make war on the black 

 ants and steal their nymphs, who, retained in captivity, 

 make them excellent domestics, attentive and obedient. 

 White humanity also, at one point in its history, found 

 itself faced with a like opportunity, but less prudent 

 than the red ant, it let it pass, from sentimentalism, thus 

 betraying its destiny, renouncing, under Christian inspira- 

 tion, the complete and logical development of its civiliza- 

 tion. Is it not amusing that slavery is presented to us as 

 anti-natural, when it is on the contrary, normal and ex- 

 cessively natural to the most intelligent of animals? 

 And in an order of ideas more closely related to the sub- 

 ject of this book, if the making neuter of a part of the 

 population, placing them in castes vowed to continence, 

 is an anti-natural attempt, how is it that social hymenop- 

 tera, ants, bees, bumble-bees, and termites among neurop- 

 tera, have managed it so well, and have made it the 

 basis of their social state? Doubtless there is nothing 

 like it among animals; but mammals, apart from man, 

 that monster, even including beavers, are infinitely in- 

 ferior to insects. If the habits of social birds (for there 

 are such) were better known, one might find analogous 

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