the maternal instinct in the making

“but what is the use of this history, what is the use of all this minute research? i well know that it will not produce a fall in the price of paper, a rise in that of crates of rotten cabbages, or other serious events of that kind, which cause fleets to be manned and set people face to face intent on one another’s extermination. the insect does not aim at so much glory. it confines itself to showing us life in the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations; it helps us to decipher in some small measure the obscurest book of all—the book of ourselves.”—henri fabre.