Chapter XX · FABRE’S WRITINGS (CONTINUED)

In attempting to define the point of view, the method, and the style of the author of the Souvenirs, we have broadly sketched the general characteristics of his work. In order to complete our task, and to give a clear and comprehensive idea of his art, we will now venture upon a rapid analysis not of the author’s attitude but of the content of his works.

The Souvenirs entomologiques bear a sub-title which perfectly describes their essential and characteristic elements. They are offered as “Studies in the Instincts and Habits of the Insects,” which promise us both theoretical considerations and records of facts:

Fabre’s work is that of a conscientious architect who has sought to keep the shrubberies and alleys of his garden in strict order, but the racial poet lurking behind the architect has released so many blackbirds that he seems to have destroyed the tidiness of the garden. Just at first, the Souvenirs produce somewhat the same impression as the harmas, where the thousand actors of the rural stage follow one another, appear and reappear, at varied intervals, at the will of opportunity or caprice, without premeditated order. But the observer is not always master of his encounters and discoveries, and Fabre wished to give us, in his books, the faithful record of his observations, and afford us the pleasure in our turn of those unexpected encounters, those marvellous discoveries which made his life an enchantment, and which lend his narrative an interest equal to that of the most dramatic romance.

Yet there has been a selection, a definite arrangement of the vast collection of data collected in the ten volumes of the Souvenirs.

But this arrangement and this selection are by no means inspired by the official classifications. We may attempt, as many eminent naturalists have done, to class his various monographs in the classic manner. We shall then say, with M. Perrier, that he is not greatly occupied with the Lepidoptera, that he studies more particularly the Hymenoptera, Coleoptera, and Orthoptera, without neglecting the Arachnoids, which are Arthropods, not insects properly so called. It is a fact that this singular entomologist prefers the horrible Spiders, to whom all the good text-books refuse the name of insect, to the most beautiful Butterflies. It is true that he is especially attracted by the four-winged flies, the Wasps and wild Bees, the Dung-Beetles and Necrophori, the Mantes, Grasshoppers, and Scorpions; but this is not because of any particular affection for this group or on account of their quality of Hymenoptera, Coleoptera, and Orthoptera; for many of their congeners are neglected and many insects are selected out of their order. This is bound to be the case, for the official classification is conceived on totally different lines to his own, going by the form of the insect without heeding its actions and its habits. It is much the same with the official nomenclature.

So the historian of the insects takes the greatest liberties with official science and the official language.

Above all, Fabre is interested in the study of instinct. It is this that determines his choice of the species and the data with which he occupies his leisure and entertains his readers.

Led by this purpose, allured by this vision, he turns by preference to the most richly-endowed species, disdaining the inept, though they may be the most beautiful and the most resplendent, like the Butterflies; and he is often attracted by creatures, great or small, which have scarcely anything in common with the insects save their habits. Thus the ferocity of the Spiders will justify their taking rank next to the Scorpions, the Mantes and the Grasshoppers, the cruelest and most ancient of terrestrial creatures.

Fabre, in fact, seldom departed from the world of insects, because it is in this little world that the greatest miracles of instinct are manifested, in accordance with the entomologist’s motto Maxima in minimis. And, as though to increase this prodigious contrast, it often happens that the most remarkable instincts are allotted to the smallest and most despised of insects:

Among the insects it is often the case that one well known to all is a mere simpleton, while another, unknown, has real capacity. Endowed with talents worthy of attention, it remains misunderstood; rich in costume and imposing in deportment, it is familiar to us. We judge it by its coat and its size, as we judge our neighbour by the fineness of his clothes and the place which he occupies. The rest does not count.

Certainly, in order to deserve historical honours, it is as well that the insect should possess a popular reputation. It reassures the reader, who is at once precisely informed; further, it shortens the narrative, rids it of long and tedious descriptions. On the other hand, if size facilitates observation, if grace of form and brilliance of costume captivate the eye, we should do wrong not to take this outward show into account.

But far more important are the habits, the ingenious operations, which give entomological studies their serious attraction. Now it will be found that among the insects the largest, the most splendid, are usually inept creatures: a contradiction which is reproduced elsewhere. What can we expect from a Carabas, all glittering with metallic lights? Nothing but feasting in the slime of murdered snail. What of the Cetonia, escaped, one would think, from a jeweller’s show-case? Nothing but drowsing in the heart of a rose. These splendid creatures do nothing; they have no art or craft.

The small and modest, provided they are valiant and ingenious, and more generally all those that commend themselves by unusual habits or singular technical aptitudes: such are the insects investigated by the author of the Souvenirs. These he follows up for years, sometimes in their natural environment, sometimes in his laboratory. He inquires into their manner of assuring themselves and their race of a livelihood, their fashion of behaviour toward their congeners and their offspring; their industry and their habits are his two chief preoccupations, those which are brought into prominence by the sub-title of his book: “Studies in the Instincts and Habits of the Insects,” and the titles of the two volumes of selections which have been published for the general reader: La Vie des Insectes and Les Mœurs des Insectes.

It is, therefore, about these two principal themes, which are, for that matter, very closely connected and very subject to mutual interpenetration, that the data amassed in the ten volumes of the Souvenirs must be grouped and distributed, if we wish to attempt a classification in harmony with the character of the books and the nature of their contents.

By thus assuming the point of view of the author himself and adopting the principle and the form of his classifications and denominations, we shall discover, in this little entomological world, which seems to have been staged a little at random, a society as rich and varied as our own, in which almost all trades and all characters are represented, all the industries and habits of humanity.

Here, as among us, are honest toilers and free-booters, producers and parasites; good and bad husbands and wives; examples of beautiful devotion and hideous egoism; delightful amenities and ferocious cruelties, extending even to cannibalism; workers of every class and manufacturers of every kind, and, in a higher order of capacities, engineers and surgeons, chemists and physicists, naturalists and physiologists, topographers and meteorologists, geometricians and logicians, and many more, whose enumeration we will leave to the reader.

There are philosophical meditations in Fabre’s work, evoked by his observations, and, like his observations, they are not presented in a preconceived order. His arguments are scattered throughout his work. Nowhere in the Souvenirs is there any body of doctrine. They contain only studies of the habits of individual insects; and it is only when he has gathered certain data or made certain experiments that the author gives us his conclusions or explanations or attacks the errors of the theories in vogue.

Yet it is not difficult, such is their degree of prominence and continuity, to disengage and synthesise the general ideas scattered throughout this vast collection of facts. We shall make the attempt in order to give the reader at least a glimpse of the writer’s attitude toward the problems of science and of life.

From the achievements and actions of the insects, the philosophic mind of the naturalist first of all deduces, very clearly, the general laws of their activity.

What strikes us at once is the wonderful degree of knowledge presupposed by certain of their actions: for all that instinct impels the insect to do is marked by perfect wisdom, comparable and even superior to human wisdom. This first law of instinct is brought into especial prominence by the author of the Souvenirs in his study of the Hunting Wasps.

These Wasps, which are themselves purely vegetarian, know that their larvæ must have animal food; fresh succulent flesh still quivering with life.

Some, like the Common Wasp, which watches over the growth of its offspring, feed the larvæ from day to day, as the bird brings beakfuls of food to its nestlings, and these kill their prey, which they are thus able to serve to their larvæ perfectly fresh.

But the majority do not watch over the hatching or the growth of their larvæ. They are forced therefore to lay up a store of food beforehand. They know this, and are not found wanting. But here they are confronted by a most difficult problem. If the prey carried to the nest is dead, it will quickly putrefy; it cannot possibly keep fresh, as it must, for the weeks and months of the larva’s growth. If it is alive it cannot easily be seized by the larvæ, and will represent a menace or even a deadly danger. The Wasp must discover the secret of producing, in her victims, the immobility of death together with the incorruptibility of life. And the Wasps have discovered this secret, for the prey which they provide for their larvæ remain at their disposal to the end without movement and without deterioration. Do these tiny creatures know intuitively the secrets of asepsis which Pasteur discovered with so much difficulty? Such was the conclusion with which Dufour was forced to content himself. He presumed the existence, in the Hunting Wasps, of a virus which was at once a weapon of the chase and a liquid preservative, for the immolation and conservation of the victims. But even if aseptic a dead insect would shrivel up into a mummy. Now this must not occur, and as a matter of fact the Wasp’s victims remain moist indefinitely, just as if alive. And in reality they are not dead; they are still alive. Fabre has demonstrated this by proving the persistence of the organic functions, and by feeding some of them by hand. In short, it is incontestable that the victims are not put to death but merely deprived of movement, smitten with paralysis. How has this result, more miraculous even than asepsis, been obtained by the insect? By the procedure that the most skilful physiologist would employ. By plunging its sting into the victim’s body, not at random, which might kill it, but at certain definite points, exactly where the invisible nervous ganglia are located which control the various movements.

For the rest, the operative method varies according to the species and anatomy of the victim.

In his investigation of the paralysers, Dufour was unable to imagine any other weapon of the chase than the mere inoculation of a deadly virus; the Hymenopteron has invented a means of immobilising her victim without killing it, of abolishing its movements without destroying its organic functions, of dissociating the nervous system of the vegetative life from that of the life of reaction; to spare the first while annihilating the second, by the precise adaptation of this delicate surgery to the victim’s anatomy and physiology. Dufour was unable to provide anything better for the larva’s larder than mummified victims, shrivelled and more or less flavourless; the Hymenopteron provided them with living prey, endowed with the strange prerogative of keeping fresh indefinitely without food and without movement, thanks to paralysis, far superior in this connection to asepsis.

“He, the master, skilled among the skilful, trained in the finest operations of anatomy; he who, with lens and scalpel, had examined the whole entomological series, leaving not a corner unexplored; he, finally, who has nothing more to learn of the organisation of the insect, can think of nothing better than an antiseptic fluid which gives at least an appearance of an explanation of a fact that leaves him confounded,” and of which he has not discovered the full miracle. The author of this immortal discovery rightly insists on “this comparison between the insect’s instinct and the scientist’s reason, the better to reveal in its true light the crushing superiority of the insect.”

As though to give yet another verification of the words so justly applied to entomology—maxime miranda in minimis—the larva’s science is perhaps even more disconcerting than that of the perfect insect.

The Scolia’s larva stupefies us by the order in which it proceeds to devour its victim.

Starting with these typical facts, which testify to an infallible foresight and a perfect adaptation of the means to the end, the list might be indefinitely prolonged with the aid of Fabre’s memoirs. But these are enough to show us that “what instinct tells the animal is marvellously like what reason tells us,” so that we find nothing unnatural in Fabre’s exclamation when he is confronted by the profound knowledge of the Hymenopteron and “the sublime logic of her stings.” “Proud Science, humble yourself!” All this presumes, in short, in the microscopic little creatures an astonishingly rational inspiration which adapts means to the end with a logic that confounds us.

And all this would be very much to the credit of the insect and to the disadvantage of man if there were not a reverse side to the medal. But the same insect that confounds us by its knowledge and wisdom also disconcerts us by its ignorance and stupidity.

Let us consider the facts.

The Mason-Bee, excellently endowed in the matter of boring, emerges from her nest of mortar by piercing the earthen dome which covers it. Let us cover the nest from which the Bee is about to emerge with a little paper bag. If the bag is placed in contact with the nest so as to make one piece with it, so to speak, the Bee perforates it and liberates herself. If it is not in contact with the nest, she remains imprisoned and will let herself die without perforating the bag.

The Wasp, which is such a marvellous architect, and so skilful a digger, is no better able to employ her talents. During the night we place a bell-glass over a Wasp’s nest. In the morning the Wasps issue forth and struggle against the glass wall, but not one of them dreams of digging at the foot of the treacherous circle. But one Wasp, of several which have strayed from the community, coming from outside, opens up a way to the nest under the edge of the bell-glass, which is a natural enough proceeding for an insect returning from the fields, who may have to gain her nest through falls of earth in the entry. But even this particular Wasp cannot repeat the operation in order to emerge from the bell-glass, and the whole community eventually die prisoners after a week of futile agitation. The entomologist finds this ineptness of the Wasp repeated in the Necrophori, who nevertheless have a great reputation for intelligence, and, in general, in all the insects which he has had occasion to rear under a bell-glass.

The larva is subject to the same absurdities as the adult insect. The Scolia’s larva, which eats in such a scientific manner, is quite unable to apply its remarkable talents the moment it is off the beaten track. Placed on the victim’s back at a spot which is not the normal point of attack, placed on a Cetonia-grub that is immobilised without being paralysed, or merely removed for a moment from its position, it is no longer able to do anything right.

By a strange contradiction, characteristic of the instinctive faculties, profound knowledge is associated with an ignorance no less profound.… For instinct nothing is difficult, so long as the action does not diverge from the immutable cycle laid down for the insect; for instinct, again, nothing is easy if the action has to diverge from the paths habitually followed. The instinct which amazes us, which terrifies us by its supreme lucidity, astonishes us by its stupidity a moment later, when confronted with the simplest situation which is alien to its ordinary practice.… Instinct knows everything in the invariable tracks which have been laid down for it; nothing when off this track.

It would be interesting to pursue this inquiry into the general laws of instinct, and to give, as a pendant to the antithesis of its wisdom and stupidity, the no less singular antithesis of its automatism and its variations. But that we may not beyond all measure enlarge the proportions of this monograph we will pass on at once to the determination of the causes of instinct, as related by our naturalist philosopher.

The laudator temporis acti is untimely, for the world progresses. Yes, but backwards at times. In my young days, in the twopenny classics, we were taught that man is a reasoning animal; to-day, in learned volumes, it is demonstrated that human reason is only a higher degree upon a scale whose base descends into the depths of animality. There is the more and the less, and all the intermediate degrees, but nowhere a sudden solution of continuity. It begins at zero in the albumen of a cell, and rises to the mighty brain of a Newton. The noble faculty of which we were so proud is a zoological attribute.

And the prudent naturalist sifts all the anecdotes and records of habits, all the rational or sentimental achievements which the writers of books and the “glorifiers of the animal” pass from hand to hand, showing clearly that all the facts alleged in proof of the intelligence of animals are ill-observed or wrongly interpreted.

Having shown in its true light one of these fabricated facts related by Clairville, he cries:

Fabre has no greater faith in the virtue of animals than in their reason, since one cannot exist without the other. It is true that the Copris, the most richly endowed of insects in respect of the maternal instinct, does not differentiate between the care which she lavishes on strangers and that which she gives to the children of her household; but the pitiless observer shows that this is because she cannot distinguish between them.

The historian of the insects simply confronts the facts of the entomological world which he has explored under all its aspects:

To speak with certainty, we must not depart from what we really know. I am beginning to know the insect passably well after forty years of intercourse with it. Let us question the insect: not the first comer, but the best endowed, the Hymenopteron. I am generous to my opponents. Where will you find a creature richer in talents?… Well, does this refined and privileged member of the animal kingdom reason?

To all these questions the facts already cited have replied. It is evident that the Hymenopteron which provisions or closes the nest found empty under the conditions which we have seen imposed upon the Sphex or the Pelopæus, is ignorant of the why of her work and does not in any case connect it with its natural aim, which is the rearing of the larvæ.

Fabre, then, has vainly sought for “proofs” of the intervention of reason in the actions of the insect. He has not found them. He has even found the very contrary; the insect, interrogated as to its powers of reason and “the logic attributed to it,” has plainly replied that it is entirely lacking in reason and that logic is not its strong point.

Yet he is far from wishing to “belittle the merits” or “diminish the reputation” of his beloved insects. No one can be less suspected of prejudice against them, since none has “glorified” them more abundantly; no one has spoken of them with greater admiration and sympathy; no one has more fully described their high achievements, and no one has revealed such unknown and incredible marvels on their behalf. It is enough to recall the “miracles” of the science and wisdom of the paralysers.

These acts of instinct, so scientifically devised and so rationally performed by works devoid of either judgment or reason, must be explained by referring them to a proportionate cause, whence proceed the logic and the science which evidently do not proceed from the insect itself.

We heard the same language, uttered perhaps even more persuasively, from the Hairy Ammophila, among many others, one day when, as a beginner in entomology, he considered her performing her delicate and expert operations, bending over a bank on the table-land of Les Angles, in company with a friend:

The more he sees, the more he reflects, the more radiantly clear does the meaning of these facts appear to him:

Can the insect have acquired its skill gradually, from generation to generation, by a long series of casual experiments, of blind gropings? Can such order be born of chaos; such foresight of hazard; such wisdom of stupidity? Is the world subject to the fatalities of evolution, from the first albuminous atom which coagulated into a cell, or is it ruled by an Intelligence? The more I see and the more I observe, the more does this Intelligence shine behind the mystery of things. I know that I shall not fail to be treated as an abominable “final causer.” Little do I care! A sure sign of being right in the future is to be out of fashion in the present.

A long time ago [says a contemporary apologist], I was discussing matters with an astronomer who was possessed of knowledge, a certain penetration and a certain courage. He pushed this penetration and this courage to the length of declaring, before the Academy of Sciences, that the laws of nature form a harmony and reveal a plan.

I had an opportunity of congratulating him, and he was good enough to express his satisfaction. I profited by this to suggest that he was doubtless ready to develop his conclusions yet further, and that since he recognised the existence of a plan he admitted, at the origin of things, a Mind: in short, an intelligent Being.

Suddenly my astronomer turned up his nose, without offering me any argument capable of any sort of analysis.

We have said enough to show that Fabre is decidedly of the race of those great men who soar high above the vulgar prejudices, pedantries, and weaknesses, and whose wonderful discoveries bring them nearer to God as they uplift them above the common level of humanity.

Having written The Harmony of the World, and casting a final glance at the charts of the heavens and also at the long labour of his life, Kepler offered his God this homage:

O Thou, who by the light of Nature hast caused us to sigh after the light of grace, in order to reveal unto us the light of Thy glory, I thank Thee, my Creator and my God, that Thou hast permitted me to admire and to love Thy works. I have now finished the work of my life with the strength of the understanding which Thou hast vouchsafed me; I have recounted to men the glory of Thy works, in so far as my mind has been able to comprehend their infinite majesty.… Praise the Creator, O my soul! It is by Him and in Him that all exists, the material world as well as the spiritual world, all that we know and all that we do not know as yet, for there remains much for us to do that we leave unfinished.…

Uniting the point of view of exegesis with that of natural science, one of the greatest and broadest minds of antiquity, Origen, has written these noble words: