f twenty days before his heart
was torn out. But they are scarcely less unfortunate in their high
fortune. Imagine youths brought up in the knowledge that they are
destined to become royal bridegrooms for a single night,--that after
their bridal they will have no moral right to live,--that marriage, for
each and all of them, will signify certain death,--and that they cannot
even hope to be lamented by their young widows, who will survive them
for a time of many generations...!

V

But all the foregoing is no more than a proem to the real "Romance of
the Insect-World."

--By far the most startling discovery in relation to this astonishing
civilization is that of the suppression of sex. In certain advanced
forms of ant-life sex totally disappears in the majority of
individuals;--in nearly all the higher ant-societies sex-life appears
to exist only to the extent absolutely needed for the continuance of
the species. But the biological fact in itself is much less startling
than the ethical suggestion which it offers;--for this practical
suppression, or regulation, of sex-faculty appears to be voluntary!
Voluntary, at least, so far as the species is concerned. It is now
believed that they wonderful creatures have learned how to develop, or
to arrest the development, of sex in their young,--by some particular
mode of nutrition. They have succeeded in placing under perfect control
what is commonly supposed to be the most powerful and unmanageable of
instincts. And this rigid restraint of sex-life to within the limits
necessary to provide against extinction is but one (though the most
amazing) of many vital economies effected by the race. Every capacity
for egoistic pleasure--in the common meaning of the word
"egoistic"--has been equally repressed through physiological
modification. No indulgence of any natural appetite is possible except
to that degree in which such indulgence can directly or indirectly
benefit the species;--even the indispensable requirements of food and
sleep being satisfied only to the exact extent necessary for the
maintenance of healthy activity. The individual can exist, act, think,
only for the communal good; and the commune triumphantly refuses, in so
far as cosmic law permits, to let itself be ruled either by Love or
Hunger.

Most of us have been brought up in the belief that without some kind of
religious creed--some hope of future reward or fear of future
punishment--no civilization could e