20 
THE INSECT AN ENIGMA. 
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cuirass the Insect remains impenetrable. Does its 
heart—for it has one—beat after the fashion of mine ? 
Its senses are infinitely subtle, but do they resemble 
my senses ? It seems as if they still remained apart, 
unknown, ay, and without a name. 
It escapes us; Nature has created for it, with 
respect to man, a perpetual alibi. If she reveals it 
to us for a moment in a single gleam of love, she hides 
it for years in the depths of the shadowy earth or in 
the discreet bosom of the oaks. And even when dis¬ 
covered, captured, opened, dissected, and examined by 
a microscope in every detail, it still remains to us an 
enigma. 
reassuring 
And an enigma of by no means 
character,—whose singularity almost scandalizes, while 
it so confuses our ideas. What shall we say of a 
being which breathes through its side and flanks ? 
of a paradoxical walker, which, contrary to all other 
organisms, presents its back to the earth and its belly 
to the sky ? In many respects, we may look upon 
the insect as a creature of contradictions. 
Add, moreover, that its littleness contributes to 
the misunderstanding. Every organ appears to us 
fantastic and threatening, because our weak eyes do 
not see it with sufficient clearness to be able to 
explain its structure and utility. What is imperfectly 
seen always perplexes; and therefore provisionally, 
we kill it! And it is so little, too, that we do not 
trouble ourselves to be just towards it. 
We are in no want of systems. We could willingly accept the 
