The Sacred Beetle and Others 



does it know of absolute reality? Nothing. 

 The world interests us only because of the 

 ideas which we form of it. Remove the 

 idea and everything becomes a desert, chaos, 

 nothingness. An omnium-gatherum of facts 

 is not knowledge, but at most a cold 

 catalogue which we must thaw and quicken 

 at the fire of the mind; we must bring to it 

 thought and the light of reason; we must 

 interpret. 



Let us adopt this course to explain the 

 work of the Sacred Beetle. Perhaps we 

 shall end by attributing our own logic to the 

 insect. After all, it will be just as remark- 

 able to see a wonderful agreement prevail 

 between that which reason dictates to us and 

 that which instinct dictates to the insect. 



A grave danger threatens the Sacred Beetle 

 in his grub state: the drying-up of the food. 

 The crypt in which the larval life is spent 

 has a layer of earth, some four inches thick, 

 for a ceiling. Of what avail is this flimsy 

 screen against the torrid heat that beats 

 down upon the soil, baking it like a brick 

 to a far greater depth than that? At times 

 the temperature of the grub's abode mounts 

 towards boiling-point; when I thrust my 

 hand into it, I feel the hot air of a Turkish 

 bath. 



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