PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



there is scarcely a hunter who is not game in his turn. 

 One does not find in nature the purely human invention 

 of breeding for slaughter, or the more extraordinary one 

 of breeding for hunting. Ants know how to milk their 

 cows, the plant-lice, or their goats the staphylins; they 

 do not know how to fatten them and to slit their gullets. 

 A hundred other signs of animal cruelty are scattered 

 through this book. One may collect many others, and 

 this might form a work edifying in this era of sentimental- 

 ism. Not because one wishes quite the contrary to 

 offer them to men as so many examples; but because this 

 might teach them that the first duty of a living being 

 is to live, and that all life is nothing but a sum sufficient 

 of murders. Men or tigers, sphex or carabes are under 

 the same necessity: to kill or to die, or to shed blood or 

 eat grass. But to eat grass, is not much better than sui- 

 cide: ask the lambkins. 



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