AN ESSAY ON THE FUTURE EXISTENCE 
778 
governed by choice and directed to an end. They use food and 
drink from which they derive nutriment, and are therefore pro- 
vided with a digestive apparatus. They have great muscular 
power, and limbs and muscles of strength and flexibility are given 
to them. They are susceptible of the same appetites, and ob- 
noxious to the same passions. We cannot for a moment deny that 
these creatures have hearts, arteries, veins, muscles, nerves, circu- 
lating fluids, and all the concomitant apparatus of a living or- 
ganized body 1 If so, why may they not be actuated by “ an 
immaterial principle,” as well as higher animals 1 
If we might j udge from the strength and energy of the living 
principle as exhibited in some of the smaller animals, we should 
conclude that the quantity of matter as an element in animal life 
would give us no idea of the quantity of spirit. “ Compare 
the leap of a fly with the spring of the lion or tiger ; — there is no 
comparison. The march of an ant over rough gravel is as great, 
in comparison to its volume, as if a dray horse were to cross indis- 
criminately over London in a straight line ; and the distance over 
which it can travel, among such obstacles, is as much in propor- 
tion to its bulk, as it would be to the horse to do forty or fifty 
miles of this sort of steeple chase in the course of a day*.” We 
are apt to refer to the wings of the eagle as organs of mighty 
power in the way of flight ; and to admire the beautifully smooth 
motion of a kite as it glides down the wind, or the graceful float- 
ing of a kestrel as it leans on the viewless air ; but splendid and 
graceful, and easily performed, as those motions are, they sink into 
absolute insignificance when compared with those of the winged 
insects. “ Even the shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hum, that 
rings night’s yawning peal,” as the arch poet of nature most truly 
and graphically expresses it, has more power of wing than all the 
eagles that ever breasted the tempest athwart the mountain top. 
Ascending from the earth, in which he has a power of burrowing 
downwards as great in comparison as if a miner were to work 
his way from the surface some twenty or thirty fathoms down to a 
copper lode, by mere bodily exertion, without “ pick or gad,” or 
the removal of any part of the rubbish, and shouldering aside 
clods and pebbles many times his own weight, he elevates his 
shards, his wing-covers or elytra, unfolds the filmy expanses of 
his wings, and winnows the air with them, until the energy pro- 
duces the humming sound ; and any one against whom such a 
beetle has impinged, when “ wheeling his droning flight,” can tell 
with what impetus he cleaves the air. 
This, too, is one of the most sluggish-winged insects. Regard, 
* Mudie. 
