Note 24 — Chapter XX · FABRE’S WRITINGS (CONTINUED)

If Fabre so briskly attacks the theory of evolution, it is not so much because of the biological results which it attributes to the animal far niente as because it offers such a convenient pretext for that sort of intellectual laziness that willingly relies upon an explanation provided beforehand and readily exonerates itself from the difficult task of searching more deeply into the domain of facts as well as that of causes.24 If the explanation were not notoriously insufficient one might overlook the abuses which it covers, innocently enough, but, to speak only of the insect, all its analyses, were they admissible, leave the problem of instinct untouched: “How did the insect acquire so discerning an art? An eternal problem if we do not rise above the dust to dust”25 of evolution. At all events, as it is presented it is merely, we repeat, “a convenient pillow for the man who has not the courage to investigate more deeply.”26 For him, he has this courage and this power of ascension, and he readily spreads his wings to rise above matter and the night of this world and soar to those radiant heights where Divinity reveals itself, together with the supreme explanation of the light which lightens this darkness and the life that inspires this matter.27