The individual stands out from the mass. He shows himself all at once admirably provided with the instruments necessary for the support and sustenance of the individual existence. He is born greedy and _absorbent_. But this very absorbingness is exactly the service which Nature expects of him. It is his mission to purify and disencumber the world; to clear it of morbid or extinct animal matter, which acts as an obstacle to the growth of life; to save the latter from the consequences of its excessive fecundity, the danger of its abundance. No other being, as we shall prove, exercises so great an influence upon our globe; no other throws itself into the condition of general existence with so vital an energy. But this extraordinary strength, in such disproportion to the size, bulk, and weight of the insect, is subject to a severe law; the rapid, absolute, and complete renewal, at each generation, of the individual. _Love implies death._ To engender and to beget is to die. He who is born, by the very act of his birth kills. This is a sentence common to all beings, but carried out upon none more literally than upon the insect. In the first place, it is death for the father to love. It is indispensable that he should surrender all his powers, and exhaust the best part of his vitality; that he should perish in himself, to revive in him to whom he shall have transmitted his germ of resurrection. And for the mother, too, in most of the insect species, the condemnation is the same. She will love, give birth, and speedily die. Love for her shall not have its prize and recompense. She shall not see her sons. She shall not enjoy the consolations of death in seeing herself survive in her image.