160 
“LEX SANITATIS.” 
—tlie useful nibblers and miners, which have elaborated and prepared 
the globe. 
Is their work terminated ? By no means. Immense zones remain 
in what may still be called an ancient condition, condemned to a terrible 
and unwholesome fecundity. In the centre of America the richest 
forests of the world seem ever to repel the approach of man, who enters 
them only to die. His arms, enfeebled by fever, have not even strength 
enough to collect their treasures. If a tree fall across his path, it 
becomes an insurmountable obstacle to the indifferent adventurer. He 
turns aside, and you may trace his circuit through the tall herbage. 
Fortunately the termites do not recoil so easily. If they find them¬ 
selves confronted by a tree, they do not avoid it, do not turn its flank. 
They attack it bravely in the front, set to work as many labourers as 
are necessary—millions, perhaps: in two or three days the tree is 
devoured, and the road open. 
The great law of nature, and in these countries the law of safety, 
is the rapid destruction of everything decaying, languishing, stagnant, 
and therefore injurious; its ardent purification in the crucible of life. 
And that crucible is, before all things, the insect. We must not blame 
its fury of absorption. Who thinks of accusing the flame ? The flame 
is worthy of reproach only when it does not burn. And, in like manner, 
that living fire, the insect, is created to devour. Necessity demands that 
it should be eager, cruel, blind, and of an implacable appetite. It can 
have no sobriety, no moderation, no pity. All the virtues of man and 
of superior beings would be nonsense which one cannot even imagine. 
Can you conceive of an insect with the sensibility and tenderness of 
the dog ? which should weep like the beaver ? which should nourish 
the aspirations and poetry of the nightingale ? or, finally, the compas¬ 
sionateness of man ? Such an insect would be incapable; thoroughly 
unfit for its profession as the anatomist, dissector, and destroyer—we 
may say, more justly, the universal medium of nature, which, pre¬ 
cipitating death by suppressing long periods of decay, in this way 
accelerates the brilliant return of life. Thus disembarrassed and free, 
it says, with a savage pleasure, “ No maladies, no old age ! Shame upon 
