The abolition of slavery and the education of woman: these are two enormous strides upon the path of moral progress. Our descendants will go farther. They will see, with a lucidity capable of piercing every obstacle, that war is the most hopeless of all absurdities. That our conquerors, victors of battles and destroyers of nations, are detestable scourges; that a clasp of the hand is preferable to a rifle-shot; that the happiest people is not that which possesses the largest battalions, but that which labours in peace and produces abundantly; and that the amenities of existence do not necessitate the existence of frontiers, beyond which we meet with all the annoyances of the custom-house, with its officials who search our pockets and rifle our luggage. Our descendants will see this and many other marvels which to-day are extravagant dreams. To what ideal height will the process of evolution lead mankind? To no very magnificent height, it is to be feared. We are afflicted by an indelible taint, a kind of original sin, if we may call sin a state of things with which our will has nothing to do. We are made after a certain pattern and we can do nothing to change ourselves. We are marked with the mark of the beast, the taint of the belly, the inexhaustible source of bestiality. The intestine rules the world. In the midst of our most serious affairs there intrudes the imperious question of bread and butter. So long as there are stomachs to digest--and as yet we are unable to dispense with them--we must find the wherewithal to fill them, and the powerful will live by the sufferings of the weak. Life is a void that only death can fill. Hence the endless butchery by which man nourishes himself, no less than beetles and other creatures; hence the perpetual holocausts which make of this earth a knacker's yard, beside which the slaughter-houses of Chicago are as nothing. But the feasters are legion, and the feast is not abundant in proportion. Those that have not are envious of those that have; the hungry bare their teeth at the satisfied. Then follows the battle for the right of possession. Man raises armies; to defend his harvests, his granaries, and his cellars, he resorts to warfare. When shall we see the end of it? Alas, and many times alas! As long as there are wolves in the world there must be watch-dogs to defend the flock. This train of thought has led us far away from our beetles. Let us return to them. What was my motive in provoking the massacre of this peaceful procession of caterpillars who were on the point of self-burial when I gave them over to the butchers? Was it to enjoy the spectacle of a frenzied massacre? By no means; I have always pitied the sufferings of animals, and the smallest life is worthy of respect. To overcome this pity there needed the exigencies of scientific research--exigencies which are often cruel.