of the eviscerated
victims. For myself, I possess this ear, and am full of remorse for
having provoked such sufferings.

Now the beetles are rummaging in all directions through the heap of
dead and dying, each tugging and tearing at a morsel which he carries
off to swallow in peace, away from the inquisitive eyes of his fellows.
This mouthful disposed of, another is hastily cut from the body of some
victim, and the process is repeated so long as there are bodies left. In
a few minutes the procession is reduced to a few shreds of still
palpitating flesh.

There were a hundred and fifty caterpillars; the butchers were
twenty-five. This amounts to six victims dispatched by each beetle. If
the insect had nothing to do but to kill, like the knackers in the meat
factories, and if the staff numbered a hundred--a very modest figure as
compared with the staff of a lard or bacon factory--then the total
number of victims, in a day of ten hours, would be thirty-six thousand.
No Chicago "cannery" ever rivalled such a result.

The speed of assassination is the more remarkable when we consider the
difficulties of attack. The beetle has no endless chain to seize its
victim by one leg, hoist it up, and swing it along to the butcher's
knife; it has no sliding plank to hold the victim's head beneath the
pole-axe of the knacker; it has to fall upon its prey, overpower it, and
avoid its feet and its mandibles. Moreover, the beetle eats its prey on
the spot as it kills. What slaughter there would be if the insect
confined itself to killing!

What do we learn from the slaughter-houses of Chicago and the fate of
the beetle's victims? This: That the man of elevated morality is so far
a very rare exception. Under the skin of the civilised being there lurks
almost always the ancestor, the savage contemporary of the cave-bear.
True humanity does not yet exist; it is growing, little by little,
created by the ferment of the centuries and the dictates of conscience;
but it progresses towards the highest with heartbreaking slowness.

It was only yesterday that slavery finally disappeared: the basis of the
ancient social organism; only yesterday was it realised that man, even
though black, is really man and deserves to be treated accordingly.

What formerly was woman? She was what she is to-day in the East: a
gentle animal without a soul. The question was long discussed by the
learned. The great divine of the seventeenth century, Bossuet himself,