THE MASTER INSTINCT 
minute crimson stars of the nut-producing flowers 
you will not see without close inspection. Thus do 
sex characteristics run throughout organic nature. 
Whitman speaks of the sexuality of the earth, hav- 
ing in mind, no doubt, its fertility and the passive 
feminine relation it sustains to the orbs above. 
Truly the breeding-instinct, with the whole train 
of subsidiary instincts that go with it, is close to 
Nature’s heart, closer than the instinct of self- 
preservation. Life is conserved only that it may 
produce more life. In the insect world, certain forms 
utterly exhaust themselves in the art of reproduc- 
tion; others in the act of providing housing and food 
for their unborn offspring. The May-fly develops 
into winged liberty, experiences the love-festival, 
deposits its eggs, when both sexes die, all within the 
compass of a few hours. Of some species of thread- 
worms itis said that “the young live at the expense 
of the mother till she is reduced to a mere husk.” 
Fabre tells us of a species of dung-beetle the male of 
which scours the fields for food for the young, which 
he carries home and, with his trident, reduces to a 
powder, till, after the labor of months, without 
nourishment himself, he becomes utterly exhausted 
and dies. 
In eating up her lover after he has served her pur- 
pose, the female spider seems to be carrying domes- 
tic economy to unwarranted lengths. Yet genera- 
tion after generation of male spiders court the 
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