The Sacred Beetle: the Release 



The ancients were unacquainted with the 

 wonders of the metamorphosis. To them 

 a larva was a worm born of corruption. 

 The wretched creature had no future to lift 

 it from its abject state: as worm it appeared 

 and as worm it must disappear. It was not 

 a mask whereunder a higher form of life 

 was being elaborated; it was a definite entity, 

 supremely contemptible and doomed soon to 

 return to the putrescence of which it was the 

 offspring. 



To the Egyptian author, then, the Scarab's 

 larva was unknown. And, if by chance he 

 had had before his eyes the Insect's shell in- 

 habited by a fat, pot-bellied grub, he would 

 never have suspected in the foul and ugly ani- 

 mal the sober beauty of the future Scarab. 

 According to the ideas of the time, ideas that 

 were long maintained, the sacred insect had 

 neither father nor mother: an error excusable 

 among the untutored ancients, for here the 

 two sexes are outwardly indistinguishable. 

 It was born of the ordure that formed its 

 ball; and its birth dated from the appearance 

 of the nymph, that amber jewel displaying in 

 a perfectly recognizable shape, the features 

 of the adult insect. 



In the eyes of antiquity, the life of the 

 Sacred Beetle began at the moment when he 



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