There is really something very human in the life even of an insect. Many a life story have I watched in the insect world, which, if transferred to the human world, would be full of interest. There is also one great advantage in the insect life, namely, that as it only consists of a year or two, the events of several successive generations come under the observation of a single historian.
First, a number of tiny, purposeless beings come into the world, spreading about much at random, and seeming to have no other object except to eat. It is but just to them to say that they don’t cry, and are always contented with the food that is given them.
They rapidly increase in size, pass through a regular series of childish complaints, which we mass together under this single term, “moulting,” but which are probably to their senses as distinct as measles, and chicken-pox, and hooping-cough.
They outgrow a great many suits of clothes in a wonderfully short period; they retire for a time to finish their education; and then come before the world in all the glory of their new attire.
Up to this time they are nearly exactly alike in habits and manners; but, when freed from the trammels that held them, they diverge, each in his appointed way, each exulting for a short space in the buoyancy of youth, and fluttering indeterminately in the new world, but soon settling down to the business for which they were made.
So even in insects a human soul can find a companionship, and a solitary man need never feel entirely alone as long as he can watch the life of a humble moth, and see in that despised creature some manifestations of the same feelings which actuate himself.
And it even seems that, through this companionship, the higher nature communicates itself in some degree to the lower, as is shown by the many instances of men who have tamed spiders and other creatures quite as far removed from the human nature. In such a case it seems very clear that either the higher nature gives to the lower an intelligence not its own, or that it develops powers which would have lain dormant had they not been called forth by the contact of a superior being.
This subject is a very wide one, and well worth following up. But as it runs through the whole creation, and this book is only to consist of a few pages, it must suffice merely to put forth the idea.
To pass to another insect.