Observe that the most advanced works are executed by those (as, for example, the ants) who have no special implements to facilitate them, but must supply the want by skill and invention.
Were they not so diminutive, what consideration we should extend to their arts and labours! Comparing the cities of the termites with the cabins of the negro, the subterranean galleries of the ants with the little excavations of our Tourangeaux of the Loire, how we should dwell on the superior skill of the insects! Is it stature, then, which changes your moral judgments? What are the proportions which will merit your esteem?
Let us add, that if this book do not modify the opinion of the reader, it has greatly modified our own. This, in the course of our labour, has undergone a considerable change. We thought we were going to study things, and found them souls.
Close daily observation, initiating us into their ways and habits, developed in our minds a sentiment which animated our study, but also complicated it,—respect for their persons and lives.
"What say you? An ant's existence? Nature holds them cheaply, renews them incessantly, prodigalizes lives, sacrifices them to one another."
