PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



creature manages, as he can, the acts which he wants to, 

 or should, do. 



The forefeet of scarabs are so little destined for model- 

 ling and rolling mud-balls that their tarses are worn out 

 in the process, as human fingers would perhaps be worn 

 if they had to knead the raw clay and mortar. In con- 

 sidering the scarab one has to think of a humanity lack- 

 ing fingers, having lost them by a long and slow diminu- 

 tion of nails, bones, flesh. The scarab is a modeller, 

 nothing would be more useful to him than fingers; instead 

 of losing them by use, he ought to have grown them 

 longer and more supple. He has lost them, and it is 

 with the arm stumps that he turns the little balls which 

 are to be food for himself or his offspring. This insect 

 is condemned to a labour that will become increasingly 

 difficult as the species grows increasingly older. It re- 

 mains to know whether the ancestors of the sacred scarab 

 had tarses. Horus Apollo grants them as many fingers 

 as the month has days, that is thirty, which corresponds 

 quite well with the six feet and five tarses of the scarab. 

 If he was a good observer, the question is answered, but 

 a single testimony is insufficient, and moreover it is un- 

 likely that so great a wearing-away would have occurred 

 in so small a number of centuries. Horus, and a savant 

 like Latreille himself, have been the dupes of symmetry; 

 if either has looked closely at a scarab, and if he has seen 

 the forefeet lacking tarses, he has put this down to chance 

 or to accident. Fabre has at least noted one indisputable 

 fact, it is that neither as nymph nor adult has the scarab 

 tarses on his forefeet. If it ever had them, our reasoning 

 draws new vigour from the negation, for then less than 

 195 



