Would you by chance reduce man to the life of the Processional caterpillars, content to nibble the pine-needles among which they live, and which, satisfied to march continually along the same tracks, find within reach an abundant, easy, and idle subsistence? All have the same size, the same strength, the same aptitudes. No initiative. "What one does the others do, with equal zeal, neither better nor worse." On the other hand, there is "no sex, no love." And what would be a society in which there was no work done for pleasure and from which love and the family were banished? What would be the effect upon its progress, its welfare, its happiness? Would not all that make the charm of life disappear for good? However imperfect our present society may be, however mysterious its destinies, it is not in socialism that Fabre foresees the perfection of future humanity, for to him the true humanity does not as yet exist; it is making its way, it is slowly progressing, and in this evolution he wishes with all his heart to believe. Modern humanity is as yet only a shapeless grimacing caricature, and its life is like a play written by madmen and played by drunken actors; according to those profound words of the great poet, with which his mind is in some sort imbued; which he often repeats, and which he has transcribed at the head of one of his last records as an epigraph and a constant reminder. And you who groan over the distressing problem of depopulation, lend an ear to the lesson of the Copris, "which trebles its customary batch of offspring in times of abundance, and in times of dearth imitates the artisan of the city who has only just enough to live on, or the bourgeois, whose numerous wants are more and more costly to satisfy, limiting the number of its offspring lest they should go in want, often reducing the number of its children to a single one." (15/15.) Instead of running after so many false appearances and false pleasures, learn to return to simpler tastes, to more rustic manners; free yourselves from a mass of factitious needs; steep yourself anew in the antique sobriety, whose desires were sager; return to the fields, the source of abundance, and the earth, the eternal foster-mother! And in this appeal to return to nature, which perhaps since the time of Rousseau has never been worded so eloquently, Fabre has in view if not the strong, the predestined, who are called elsewhere, and who are actuated by the sense of great tasks to be performed, at least all those of rural origin, all those for whom the love of the family, the daily task, and a peaceful heart are really the great things of life, the things that count, the things that suffice.