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condition the next month or the next year, or what will be the 
future necessities of their offspring which perhaps are yet unborn ? 
We are hardly prepared to attribute to them such superhuman in¬ 
telligence. If they do not know, then what is it that prompts 
them to take such wise and far-reaching precautions ? Who will 
answer ? I ask the question, but I shall hear no response, for 
there is no earthly intelligence which can solve the mystery. 
I can conceive of the formation of a planet, by the condensation 
of nebulous matter, in obedience to the law of gravitation. I can 
form some idea, however unsatisfactory, of the development of or¬ 
ganic bodies by the operation of physical laws, responsive to the 
impressions of surrounding circumstances. But that an insect 
which was born yesterday, and which will die to-morrow, can, 
without the invocation of a wisdom superiors to her own, adopt a 
systematic course of conduct having for its object the safety and 
welfare of her future progeny, which will not spring into active 
existence till long after she herself shall have perished,—this, it 
passes the bounds of my imagination to conceive. 
It is said that Galen was converted from Atheism by the con¬ 
templation of the human skeleton ; but I confess that nothing has 
so strongly impressed upon my own mind the presence of an all- 
pervading intelligence in nature, as the wonderful prophetic in¬ 
stincts of insects. 
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