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PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
It appears from the experiments of the immortal, that the mole 
professes for vegetable diet so sovereign a contempt, that it will 
allow itself to die of hunger rather than to touch with its teeth 
the most savory vegetables. I boldly protest against this conclu- 
sion, and in the name of all powerful analogy, I demand that the 
academician should repeat his experiment, substituting for the car- 
rot, the truffle, and I bet any amount that the mole will yield to 
the seduction of the truffle, for without that the analogy of the 
snout would be faulty, and henceforth what principle can be 
trusted ? 
That a beast like the mole cannot be the emblem of an individ- 
ual human type may be easily conceived. The mole is in fact not 
the emblem of a single character. It is the emblem of a whole 
social period — the period of infancy — the most painful and the 
darkest period of the whole lymbic phase, the Cyclopean period. 
The mole does not symbolize a single vice. It symbolizes them 
all, for it is the most complete allegorical expression of the abso- 
lute predominance of brute force over spiritual force. I almost 
regret to have been obliged to rank at the head of the Probos- 
cidians the elephant, which wears a trunk, and is consequently a 
little related to the tapir and to the mole. But the elephant is 
exclusively herbivorous, and symbolizes by its frugality the inno- 
cent and modest manners of the Paradisaical period. 
The mole is that vase of impurity mentioned in the sacred 
books. Take equal parts of Nero, of Sardanapalus, of Messalina, 
and the Marquis of Sade, rub the whole in a mortar, heat and 
distil ; you shall obtain the mole. The one-eyed Cyclop who 
plows into the bowels of the earth ; the Titan who piles Pelion 
upon Ossa ; the Enceladus whose convulsions give to Etna such 
terrible nauseas, and which cause it to vomit torrents of inflamed 
lava — ^behold the mole ! It is also the mole which piles hillock 
upon hillock, mountain upon mountain, and multiplies eruptions 
of the soil over the surface of the meadows. 
The Cyclop who nourishes himself with human blood, who 
knocks down the lovers of Galatea with huge masses of rock, 
who finds every orgie tame if blood does not flow — it is the mole, 
the male of the mole, who only obtains possession of his female 
