SYMBOLIC ANALOGIES. 299 



from the seed up to the flower and fruit it scarcely needs, 

 the above admitted, to remark that the human mind finds its 

 natural parallel (only one yet more striking) in the insect as 

 well as in the vegetable world. 



In the shapes also of good or evil, which the expanding 

 mind assumes, we shall still find, in insect forms and their 

 marked characteristics, similitudes if not more apt, at least 

 more easily observed, than those presented by larger tribes. 

 In proportion as, diverging by perversity of free will from 

 our divine type and pattern, we resemble or make ourselves 

 the moral counterparts of the tiger, the fox, the hawk, the 

 serpent, we are of course as justly symbolized by those in- 

 sects which have been observed to concentrate in their pigmy 

 forms the very essence of the same instinctive dispositions, such 

 as the cruel Mantis, the fierce predatory beetles, the wily ant- 

 lion, the treacherous and cruel spider. 



The same applies to those among us of gentler frame, the 

 lambs and doves amidst the wolves and hawks of human 

 society, which are in like manner aptly symbolized by insect 

 tribes of gentle habits (especially the horned and vegetable- 

 feeding beetles), which have been considered to represent the 

 grazing quadrupeds. 



Others of our qualities our industry, our prudence, our 

 fickleness, our temerity are exhibited also in the tiny in- 

 dividualities and miniature institutions of insects and insect 

 societies, none of the larger animals, solitary or gregarious, 



