A NEW METAMORPHOSIS. 
113 
sustenance, has no mouth but by agreement, and is so completely freed 
from digestion that frequently it has not even an inferior orifice ? It 
abandons without difficulty its thenceforth useless furniture, and ex¬ 
pectorates the skin of its stomach ! 
This is grand and magnificent,—no spectacle is grander! For life 
at such a point to change, to dominate over the organs, to rise victorious, 
so entirely free of the ancient Ego ! To those who have revealed to us 
such a prodigy of transfiguration, from the bottom of my heart I say, 
“ Thanks!” 
How marvellous the security in this being which abandons every¬ 
thing, which unhesitatingly dismisses its strong and solid existence, the 
complicated organism which just now was itself ’ its own individuality ! 
We call it its larva, its mask; but why? The personality seems at 
least as energetic in the vigorous grub as in the delicate butterfly. 
And, therefore, it is most indubitably its individual being which it 
courageously leaves to shrivel up and perish, to become—what ? 
Nothing reassuring, nothing but a little, soft, whitish substance. 
Open the nymph soon after it has spun its cocoon : in its shroud you 
shall find nothing but a kind of milky fluid, wherein you see, or fancy 
you see, certain dubious lineaments. After awhile you may, with a 
fine needle, separate these I know not what,—and figure to yourself 
that they are the limbs of the future butterfly. A frightful lacuna! 
For many species a moment occurs when nothing of the old any longer 
appears, and nothing of the new as yet has come. When iEson, cut in 
pieces, was thrown, in order to rejuvenate him, into the caldron of 
Medea, you would have found, on groping there, the limbs of JEson. 
But here there is nothing parallel. 
Trustfully, nevertheless, the mummy surrounds its body with its 
bands, docilely accepting the shadows, the inertness, and the captivity of 
the sepulchre. It feels in itself a force, a raison d'etre, a causa vivendi, 
—a reason for living; still. And what reason ? What cause ? The 
vitality accumulated by its previous toil. All that, like a laborious 
grub, it has accumulated, is its obstacle to death,—its incapability of 
perishing,—the reason why it will immediately live again; and not 
only live, but with a light and tender existence, whose facility is 
8 
