Do not believe that these riches are simply the gifts of genial climates; that these glittering festal garments which they assume to love and die in are only the sheen of the sun, the all-powerful, decorator, which with its rays intensifies the enamel and gems we admire upon their wings. Another sun—a sun which shines for the whole earth, even for the ice-regions of the pole—profits them far more considerably. It exalts in them the inner life, evokes all their powers, and, on the given day, calls forth the supreme flower. Yonder scintillating colours are their visible energies which become speaking and eloquent. It is the pride of a complete life, which, having attained its climax, displays its energy in triumph, wishes to expand and diffuse; it is the tradition of desire, the imperious prayer and urgent appeal to the beloved objects.In pale and temperate climates, you will meet with those brilliant liveries which one would think belonged to the tropics. Who, under our gloomy and variable sky, has not seen the sparkling Spanish fly? Even in the fatal deserts where summer beams but for an instant, as if in despite of the sun,—in despite of the poor and naked earth,—love supports some beings of a sumptuous splendour, of opulent raiment and rich decoration. Miserable Siberia sees the princes and great lords of the Insect World simultaneously displaying their grandeur. The tyrannical Russian climate cannot prevent enormous beetles, pitiless hunters, fiercer than Ivan the Terrible, from appearing in green, black, violet, or deep blue morocco, shaded with purple sapphires. While some, usurping the ancient copes consecrated to the czars and the porphyrogeniti, stalk to and fro in robes of purple, broidered with Byzantine gold.In our neighbouring Siberias, I mean our lofty mountains,—under the hailstorms, for instance, of the Pyrenean glaciers,—without being discouraged by their rude blows, fly noble insects, of exquisite appearance, the rosalia in a mantle of pearl-gray satin, spotted with black velvet.Among the lofty Alps, at the Grindelwald,—the formidable descent where that glacier comes to us, and you may touch itsaiguilles, and its keen breath freezes you—I once admired a timid but touching protestation of love. Among some miserable birches, martyr trees, which undergo an eternal chastisement, a poor little plant, elegant and delicate, persists in flowering, with a rose-hued blossom, but a violet rose, not unworthy of the mournful region. The brother of this tragical rose is a very tiny insect which, all feeble as it is, mounts higher than any other species, and is found shivering among the lofty snows of Mont Blanc. There, above you, is only the heaven, and, beneath, the vast shroud of ice. The poetic creature has assumed exactly two tints: the celestial blue of its wings, incredibly delicate, seems lightly kindled with the whitepowder of the hoar-frost. The storms and avalanches which overthrow the rocks awaken in it no sensations of terror. Under the breath of the terrible giant, in his ice-bristling beard and formidable frown, it, the little one, flies daringly, as if conscious that this king of the everlasting winters would hesitate to destroy the last winged flower of love which, in his realm of death, preserves for him a reflection of heaven.Book the Second.MISSION AND ARTS OF THE INSECT.I.—SWAMMERDAM.CHAPTER I.SWAMMERDAM.What was known of the Infinite prior to 1600? Nothing whatever. Nothing of the infinitely great; nothing of the infinitely little. The celebrated page of Pascal, very frequently cited upon this subject, is the frank astonishment of a humanity so old and yet so young, which begins to be aware of its prodigious ignorance, opens its eyes to the Real, and awakens between two abysses.No one forgets that in 1610 Galileo, having received from Holland a magnifying lens, constructed the telescope, elevated it in position, and saw the firmament. But it is less generally known that Swammerdam, seizing, with the instinct of genius, on the imperfect microscope, directed it to the lower world, and was the first to detect the living infinite, the world of animated atoms! These great men succeeded one another. At the epoch of the famous Italian's death (1632) was born the Hollander, the Galileo of the infinitely little (1637).An astounding revolution! The abyss of life was unfolded in its profundity with myriads upon myriads of unknown beings and fantastic organizations of which men had not even dared to dream. But the most surprising circumstance is, that the very method of the sciences underwent a total change. Hitherto men had relied upon their senses. The severest observation invoked their testimony, and they thought that no appeal could lie from their judgment. But now behold experiment and the senses themselves, rectified by a powerful auxiliary, confess that not only have they concealed from us the greater part of things, but that, in those they have laid bare, they have every moment been mistaken!Nothing is more curious than to observe the very opposite impressions produced by these two revolutions upon their authors. Galileo before the infinite of heaven, where all appeared harmonious and marvellously ordered, felt more of joy than of surprise; he announced his discoveries to Europe in a style of the greatest enthusiasm. Swammerdam, before the infinite of the microscopic world, seemed overcome with terror. He recoiled before the spectacle of Nature at war, devouring her very self. He grew perturbed; he seemed to fear that all his ideas and beliefs would be overthrown: a melancholy and singular condition, which, added to his incessant labours, shortened his days. Let us pause awhile to dwell upon this creator of science, who was also its martyr.The eminent physician Boerhaave, who, a hundred years after Swammerdam's time, published with pious care his "Bible of Nature," gave utterance to a surprising observation, which sets one a-dreaming:—"He had an ardent imagination of impassioned melancholy, which raised him to the sublime."Thus, this surpassing master in all the works of patient inquiry, this insatiable observer of the most minute details, who pursued Nature so far into the imperceptible, was a poetic soul, a man of imagination, one of those mournful spirits who groan after nothing less than the infinite, and die because they fail to conquer it.His was a remarkable combination of mental endowments which, at the first glance, seem opposed to one another: a love of the great, and a taste for the subtlest researches; a sublimity of aim, and that obstinacy of analysis which would subdivide the atom, and yet never cry, "Hold, enough!" But, in reality, are these qualities of so contradictory a nature? By no means. Men whose hearts are filled with the love of Nature will declare that they harmonize admirably. Nothing great and nothing little. For the lover a simple hair is worth as much as, frequently more than, a world.He was born in a cabinet of natural history; and his birth decided his destiny. The cabinet, formed by his father, an apothecary of Amsterdam, was a pell-mell, a chaos. The child wished to arrange it, and drew up a catalogue of it. A modest ambition led him from point to point, until he became the greatest naturalist of the century.His father was one of the zealot collectors who then became common in Holland—insatiable treasurers of diverse rarities. It was not with pictures—though Rembrandt was then in his glory—it was not with antiquities, that he filled his house. But all that the ships brought back from the two Indies of minerals, plants, fantastic and extraordinary animals, he acquired at any cost, and heaped up in piles. These marvels of the unknown world, contrasting by their splendour and tropical magnificence with the gloomy climate which received them and the pale sea of the North, aroused in the young Hollander's mind a lively curiosity and a passionate devotion to Nature.A very good Dutch painter has drawn a charming picture of the young Grotius: a universal scholar at twelve years of age, surrounded by folios, maps, charts, and all the appliances of learning. How much I should have preferred that the same artist—or rather the all-powerful magician, Rembrandt—had revealed to us the mysterious study, that brilliant chaos of the three kingdoms, and the young Swammerdam endeavouring to grasp the grand enigma!The crowds and prodigious movement of Amsterdam favoured his solitude. The Babylons of commerce are for the thinker profound deserts. In that dumb ocean of men of mercantile activity, on the border of sluggish canals, he lived almost like Robinson Crusoe in hisisland. Isolated even in the midst of his family, who could not comprehend him, he seldom emerged from his cabinet, and descended on the fewest possible occasions into the paternal shop.His sole recreation was to go in search of insects in the little soil which Holland offers above the waters. The melancholy meads, covered with Paul Potter's herds, possess, in the moist warmth of the summer, a great variety of animal life. The traveller is much impressed when he sees the crane, the stork, and the crow, elsewhere hostile, reconciled here by the abundance of their food, which they frequently hunt in company on terms of perfect accord. Hence the landscape acquires a peculiar charm. The cattle assume an air of placid security which they do not elsewhere exhibit. The summer is short, and early assumes the gravity of autumn. Man and Nature—all appears of a pacific character, harmonized in a great moral sweetness and remarkable seriousness of mood.Enthusiastic collector as his father was, he grieved to see the youth of Swammerdam thus employed. It had been his ambition to make of his son a renowned minister who should shine in controversy, and an eloquent preacher. But his son seemed daily to grow more dumb. The chagrined father lowered his views from glory to money. In that golden city, so feverish and so diseased, no career is more lucrative than that of a physician. But here arose another difficulty. Swammerdam threw himself heartily into his medical studies; but on condition that he created them—as yet they did not exist. Therefore, the basis on which he desired to rest them was the preliminary creation ofthe natural sciences. How cure the sick man unless you understood the healthy? And how understand the latter without studying side by side the inferior animals which translate and explain disease? But can one see into such delicate mysteries with the eye alone? Does not the feebleness of the sense of vision lead us astray? The serious creation of science would suppose a reform of our senses and the creation of optics.A veritable creation! Look at the microscope. Is it a simple spy-glass? To the eyes which the instrument possessed, Swammerdam added two arms, one of which bears the glass and the other the object. He himself says, in reference to his more difficult investigations, "that he had attempted to obtain the assistance of another person, but that such assistance proved, in fact, an obstacle." It was for this reason that he organized a dumb man of copper, a discreet servant ready for every work; thanks to whom the observer disposes of supplementary hands and numerous eyes of different degrees of power. In the same manner as the birds expand or contract their visual organs, either to grasp objects in a whole or to scrutinize with searching glance the smallest detail, Swammerdam created the method of successive enlargement; the art of employing lenses of different sizes and varying curvature, which permit the observer to seeen masse, and to study each separate portion, and finally to survey the whole for the purpose of properly replacing the details and reconstituting the general harmony.Was this all? No. To observe dead bodies, time is required; but then time robs us of them. Death, which seemingly conduces to study by its immobility, is deceitful; it fixes the mask for a moment, and the object beneath melts away. Now came a new creation of Swammerdam's. He not only taught us to see and investigate, but he devised means for our permanent investigation. By preservative injections he fixed these ephemeral objects; he compelled time to halt, and forced death to endure. The Czar Peter, who, a long time afterwards, saw in the dissecting-room of one of Swammerdam's disciples the beautiful body, supple and fresh, of a little child, with its exquisite carnation tint, thought that the rose was living, and could not be prevented from embracing it.All this is soon said; but it was long to do. How many attempts!What miracles of patience, of delicacy, of skilful management! In exact proportion as one descends the scale of littleness, the insufficiency of our means proves more and more embarrassing. We can touch nothing without breaking it. Our large fingers will hold no more: they cast a shadow, they throw obstacles in our way. Our instruments are too coarse to seize upon such atoms; therefore we refine them. But then how can we put the invisible point in an invisible object? The two terms in sight avoid us. Only one single passion—the unconquerable love of life and Nature, the undefinable, indescribable tenderness, a feminine sensibility directed by a masculine, scientific genius—could succeed in so great an aim. Our Hollander loved the tiny creatures. He dreaded wounding them so much that he spared the scalpel. He avoided as far as he could the steel, and preferred the firm but nevertheless the delicate ivory. He fashioned in it infinitely small instruments, sharpened by aid of the microscope, which would not work rapidly, and compelled the student to make his observations with due patience.His tender respect for Nature found its reward. While still a youth, and a simple student at Leyden University, he had two strong holds upon her in her highest and lowest manifestations. He was the first to see and understand the maternity of the insect and the human maternity. The latter subject, so delicate and yet so grand—in which he laboured conjointly with his master at Leyden—I put aside: let us dwell upon the former. He dissected and described the ovaries of the bee: found them in the pretended "king;" and proved that she was a queen, or rather a mother. In like manner he explained the maternity of the ant; an all-important discovery, which revealed the true mystery of the superior insect, and initiated us into the real character of these societies, which are not monarchies, but maternal republics and vast public nurseries, each of which raises up a people.The most general fact in the life of insects, and the great law of their existence, is the Metamorphosis. Changes which in other creatures are obscure, are in them exceedingly conspicuous. The three ages of the insect appear to be three creatures. Who would have dared to assert that the grub, with its heavy luxuriance of digestive organs andits great hairy feet, was identical with a winged and ethereal being, the butterfly?He dared to say, and by the most delicate anatomy he demonstrated, that the larva, the pupa, and the butterfly represented three conditions of the same individual, three natural and legitimate evolutions of its life.How did learned Europe welcome this novel science of metamorphoses? That was the question. Swammerdam, young and without authority, without any position in the academy or university, lived in his cabinet. Scarcely anything of his works was published during his life, nor even fifty years afterwards, so that his discoveries might circulate and advantage all, rather than himself and his fame.Holland remained indifferent. Eminent professors in the University of Leyden were opposed to him; and took umbrage at the fact that a simple student placed himself by his discoveries on a level with them, or even above them.The miserable and necessitous condition in which his father left him was not calculated to recommend him greatly in a country like Holland. In his costly labours he was supported by the generosity of his friends. At Leyden it was Van Horn, his professor of anatomy, who defrayed all his expenses.At this epoch two illustrious academies were founded,—the Royal Society of London and theAcadémie des Sciencesof Paris. But the former, specially inspired by the genius of Harvey, a pupil of Padua, turned its gaze towards Italy, and addressed its inquiries to the distinguished and very accurate observer, Malpighi, who furnished at its request the anatomy of the silkworm. I know not why the Englishmen turned aside from Holland, and did not also interrogate the genius of Swammerdam.He was honoured only in France. It was here, in the neighbourhood of Paris, that he made the first public demonstration of his discovery. His friend Thévenot, the famous traveller and publisher of travels, collected around him at Issy different classes ofsavants, linguists, orientalists, and, before all, inquiring students of Nature. Such was the origin of theAcadémie des Sciences. One might justly say that the revelation of the illustrious Hollander inaugurated its cradle.A Frenchman rescued from the hands of the Inquisition the last manuscripts of Galileo. A Frenchman also—Thévenot—supported Swammerdam with his purse and credit. He was desirous of establishing him at Paris. On the other hand, the Grand-Duke of Tuscany invited him to Florence. But the fate of Galileo was too strong a warning. Even in France there was little safety. The mystic Morin was burned at Paris in 1664; the very year in which Molière performed the first acts of his "Tartuffe." Swammerdam, who was then residing there, might have been present at both spectacles.He himself, notwithstanding his positivism, showed very singular tendencies towards mysticism. The more deeply he entered into details, the more eagerly did he long to reascend to the general source of love and life; an impotent effort which consumed him. Already, at the age of thirty-two, excessive toil, chagrin, and religious melancholy brought him to the grave. From his early years he had suffered from the fevers so common in Holland, that land of swamp and morass, and had not paid due attention to them. He studied with his microscope every day from dawn till noon; the remainder of the day he wrote. And for his studies he preferred the summer days, with their strong light and burning sunshine. Then he would remain, with his head bare that he might not lose the smallest ray, frequently until deluged and bathed in sweat. His eyesight grew very weak.He was already in a feeble condition when, in 1669, he published in a preliminary essay the principle of the metamorphosis of insects. He was sure of being immortal; but so much the more in danger of dying of hunger. His father thenceforth withdrew from him all assistance. Swammerdam by his discoveries (as of the lymphatic vessels and hernias) had very considerably promoted the progress of medicine, and even of surgery; but he was not a physician. From a spirit of obedience he had attempted to practise: he could not continue, and fell ill. He was now without a home. His father shut up his house, retired to live with his son-in-law, and bade Swammerdam provide for himself, and lodge where he would. A wealthy friend had often solicited him to reside with him. When expelled from the paternalroof, he made an effort to seek out this friend and remind him of his offer; but he remembered it no longer.Misfortunes now accumulated upon his head. Poor and infirm, and dragging himself along the streets of Amsterdam with a large collection which he knew not where to store away, he received another terrible shock—the ruin of his country. The earth sunk under his feet.It was the fatal year of 1672, when Holland seemed crushed by the invasion of Louis XIV. Assuredly his fatherland had not spoiled Swammerdam; but nevertheless it was the native home of science, of free reason, the asylum of human thought. And lo! she sank, engulfed by the hosts of the French; engulfed in the ocean which she had summoned to her assistance. She lived only by committing suicide. Did she live? Yes; but to be thenceforth no more than the shadow of her former greatness.The infinite melancholy of such a change has had its painter and its poet in Ruysdaël, who was born and who died in Swammerdam's time, and, like him, at the age of forty. When I contemplate in the Louvre the inestimable picture which that Museum possesses of him, the one leads me to think of the other. The little man who followed the gloomy route of the dunes at the approach of the storm reminds me of my insect-hunter; and the sublime marine picture of the palisade in the red-brown waters, chafing so terribly, and electrified by the tempest, seems a dramatic expression of the moral tempests which poor Swammerdam experienced when he wrote "The Ephemera"—"among tears and sobs."The Ephemera is the fly which is born but to die, living a single hour of love.But Swammerdam did not enjoy that hour; and it seems as if he spent his too brief life in a state of complete isolation. At the age of thirty-six he was already drawing near his end. The depths of imagination and universal tenderness in his nature could not be alimented by the barren controversies of the age. In this condition there accidentally fell into his hand an unknown work,—a woman's book. This sweet voice spoke to his very soul, and somewhat consoled him. It was one of theopusculaof a celebrated mystic of that age, Mademoiselle Bourignon.Poor as was Swammerdam, he undertook a pilgrimage to Germany, where she resided, and went to see his consoler. He found in the journey a very real assistance in escaping at the least from his contention with thesavants, his rivals, in forgetting every collision, and in remitting to God alone his defence and his discoveries.He longed to withdraw himself into a profound solitude. For this purpose it was necessary he should dispose of the dear and precious cabinet on which he had spent his days, in which he had enshrined his heart, and which had at length become a portion of himself. He must tear himself from it. At this cost he calculated that he would obtain a revenue sufficient for his wants; but the very loss and separation he longed for he could not undergo. Neither in Holland nor in France could buyers be found for the cabinet. Perhaps the wealthy amateurs, who think of nothing but emptyéclat, did not find in it the glittering species which give us a child's pleasure. The great inventor's collection offered things more serious: the logical order and arrangement of his discoveries; that eloquent and living method which had guided his genius to new achievements. Alas! it perished, scattered abroad.Having been for a long time ill, in 1680, either through weakness, or a disgust for life and men, he shut himself up, and would not go out any more. He bequeathed his manuscripts to his faithful and life-long friend, whom, when dying, he himself styled the "incomparable,"—the Frenchman Thévenot. He died aged forty-three.What really killed him? His own science. The too abrupt revelationwounded and seized upon him. If Pascal saw an imaginary abyss opening before him, what would happen to this Dutch Pascal, who saw the real abyss and the limitless profundity of the unexpected world? It was not a matter of a decreasing scale of abstract greatnesses or of inorganic atoms, but of the successive envelopment and prodigious movements of beings which are the one in the other. For the little we see, each animal is a tiny planet, a small world inhabited by animals still more diminutive, which in their turn are inhabited by others very much smaller. And this, too, without end or rest, except from the powerlessness of our senses and the imperfection of optical science.All men now began to fathom, and incessantly toil in, that infinity which the hand of Swammerdam had opened up to them. From that time Europe laboured therein with diverse aims. Leuwenhoek, precipitating himself upon it, discovered and conquered new worlds. The Italian positivist, Malpighi, showed perhaps the highest boldness. He proved that the insect has a heart—a heart which beats like man's. One has not far to go to endow it also with a soul. Swammerdam, who was living then, was terrified by the fact. He drew back affrighted from the declivity; he wished to keep his footing, and was fain to doubt the existence of the heart.It seemed to him that the science to which he had given the first impulse, which he had launched on the flood of his discoveries, was conducting him to something great and terrible which he shrank from seeing: like one who, adrift on the enormous sea of fresh water which dashes headlong in the Niagara Falls, perceives himself impelled by a calm but invincible and mighty movement—whither? He will not, and he dare not, think!II.—THE MICROSCOPE.CHAPTER II.THE MICROSCOPE:—HAS THE INSECT A PHYSIOGNOMY?Armed with that sixth sense which man has achieved for himself, I can move forward, at pleasure, in any direction. It is in my power to track out, to reach, to compute the spheres, and gravitate with them in their vast orbits. But I feel much more strongly attracted towards the other abyss—that of the infinitely little. In its atoms I discover an intensity of energy which charms and astounds me. And I myself, what am I but an atom? Neither Jupiter nor Sirius, those enormous globes at so great a distance from, and possessing so little sympathy with me, will teach me the secret of terrestrial life. But these, on the contrary, surround and press upon me, injure me or lend me their assistance. If they are not of my own kind, they are at all events associated with me.Ay, fatally associated.And yet I cannot fly from them: swarms haunt the very air which I breathe,—what do I say? float in the fluids of my body. It is my interest to know them. But my sovereign interest is to escape from my deplorable and wretched ignorance, and not to quit this world until I have peered into the infinite.Full of such ideas, I addressed myself to one of the philosophers of the present day who have made the greatest and most successful use of the microscope,—the celebrated Dr. Robin. Under his direction, I purchased from the skilful optician Nachet an excellent instrument, and planted myself before my window on a very beautiful day.I have said it,—the microscope is much more than a mere magnifying glass. It is an aid, a servant who has hands to supplement your own—eyes, and movable eyes, which by their changes enable you to see an object at a suitable magnitude, and either in detail or as a whole. One perfectly understands the all-absorbing attraction which it exercises; however great the fatigue it causes, one cannot separate one's-self from it. Itsdébut, as we have seen, was signalized by its slaying its creator, Swammerdam. How many workmen has it not since deprived, if not of life, at least of sight? The first of the two Hubers became blind at a comparatively early age. The illustrious author of the great work on the cockchafer, M. Strauss, is nearly so. Our pallid but enthusiastic Robin is already on the same descent, but pursues his studies without pause. The seduction is too potent. Who can renounce the truth, after once beholding it? Who can willingly return into the world of errors wherein men exist? Better not to see at all, than always to see things falsely.Behold me, then, face to face with my little man of copper. I lost not an instant in interrogating the oracle. And its first and somewhat rough reply respecting the two objects I presented was:—One was the human hand, white and delicate,—the left hand, the idler, and that of a person who did no work.The other, a spider's foot.To the naked eye the former object seemed agreeable enough; the other, a tiny, obscure blade, of a dirty brown, and somewhat repulsive.In the microscope the effect was precisely the opposite. In the spider's foot, easily cleansed of a few downy spots, appeared a magnificent comb of the most beautiful shell, which, far from being dirty, by its extreme polish was rendered incapable of being soiled; everything glided off it. This object would seem to serve two ends: that of a very delicate hand, through which the spinner, in rising or descending, suffers its thread to glide; and that of a comb, with which the attentive labourer holds its stuff, while at work, in the required position, until the woven threads—more like a cloud—grow firm and strong, are dried by the air, and no longer fall back floating and wavy, but useless.As for the human hand, the part exposed under the microscope seemed, even with the smallest lens, a vague and immense substance, incomprehensible through its very coarseness.Even with a medium lens, of only twelve or fifteen times magnifying power, it seemed to be a yellowish, reddish tissue, coarse and dry, ill-woven,—a kind of wiry taffeta, in which each mesh was irregularly puffed up.Nothing could be more humiliating!This pitiless judge, pitiless even in its treatment of the flowers, behaves with terrible severity towards the human flower. The freshest and most charming will act wisely in not attempting the experiment. She would shudder at herself. Her dimples would deepen into abysses! The light down of the peach which crowns her beautiful skin with the bloom of delicacy would show like rough thickets, or rather like savage forests.After my first experiment, I felt that the too truthful oracle not only altered our ideas of proportion, but of appearances, colours, forms—transfiguring everything, in fact, from the false to the true.Let us be resigned. Whatever the organ of truth may tell us, I thank it, and I will welcome it though it declare me to be a monster. But such is not the case. If it change with some severity our notions of the surface, on the other hand it reveals to us worlds of truly unbounded beauty beneath it. A hundred things in anatomy which seem horrible to the unassisted sight, acquire a touching and impressivedelicacy, and a poetical charm which approaches the sublime. This is not the place for discussing such a subject. But a mere drop of blood, of a brickdust-red by no means agreeable to the naked eye, heavy, thick, and opaque, if you look at it when dry, under the magnifying glass, presents to you a delicious rose-bloom arborescence, with delicate ramifications as fine and subtle as those of the coral are coarse and dull.But let us keep to our insects. Let us select the most miserable—the wonderfully little butterfly of the clothes-moth, that dirty white butterfly which seems the lowest of created beings. Take only his wing. Nay, far less, only a little dust, the light powder which covers his wing. You are astounded at seeing that Nature, exhausting the most ingenious industry in order that this offcast of creation may fly at his ease, and without fatigue, has scattered over his wing, not dust, but a multitude of tiny balloons. Or, if you prefer it, so many parachutes, most convenient instruments for flight, which, when opened, sustain the little aeronaut without fatigue and for an indefinite period; which, as they are more or less expanded, enable it to rise or sink; and when folded up, permit of its remaining quiet. The least of the butterflies, thus supported, has a faculty of flight as unlimited as the noblest bird of heaven.One grows keenly interested in these curious apparatus, which have anticipated our human inventions. One observes their strange and surprising modes of action, as one would observe the inhabitants of another planet, if he were miraculously transported thither. But what one most yearns to see, what one burns to detect, is some reflection fromwithin, some gleam of the torch which is concealed in their inner existence, some appearance of thought. Have they a physiognomy? Can I seize in their strange visage any trace of an intelligence which, judging by their works, so closely resembles our own? Of the expression which touches me in the eye of the dog, and of other animals related to me, shall I detect nothing in the bee, the ant, in those ingenious beings, those creators, which accomplish so many things the dog cannot accomplish?A clever man once said to me: "As a boy I was very partial to insects; I searched about for caterpillars, and made a collection of them.I was especially curious to look in their faces, but never succeeded. All that I could distinguish was confused, dull, melancholy. This discouraged me. I left off making collections."I was but a child in this new study; that is, I was fresh to it, and curious. My special anxiety was to interrogate the countenance of the dumb little world, and to surprise there, in default of voice, the silent thought. Thought? At least, the dream, the obscure and floating instinct.I addressed myself to the ant; an humble being in form and colour, but endowed with a prodigious amount of social instinct and of the educational capacity; not to speak of its quickness of resource, of the promptitude with which it confronts perils, and chances, and embarrassments.I take then an ant of the commonest species—a neutral ant—one of the workers who are relieved from the wants of love, and in whom therefore the sex, diminished to a minimum for the advantage of labour, develops so much more powerfully its extraordinary instinct; who alone perform all the diverse trades of the little community, and are purveyors, nurses, architects, and inventors.I selected a very fine, serene, and luminous day—not luminous with the glare of summer, but the calm radiance of autumn (1st September 1856). I was alone, in a state of perfect silence and repose, and in that complete forgetfulness of the world which is so rarely obtained. After the manifold agitations of the past and present, my heart for a moment was at peace.Never was I more ready to hear the mute voices which do not address themselves to the ear, to penetrate in a calm and benevolent spirit the mystery of the little world which on every side surrounds us, and yet has hitherto remained out of our reach and apart from our communications.Alone with my ant, armed with a tolerably good lens, with a magnifying power of twelve, I placed it delicately on a large sheet of fine white paper which covered nearly the whole table.With the microscope I could have seen but a part and not the whole. A very considerable enlargement would also have exaggeratedthe merely secondary details—such as the scanty hairs with which the ant is provided. Finally, its mobility would not have suffered me to keep it in the focus of the microscope; but the lens, as easily shifted as itself, followed it in all its motions.Not, however, without some difficulty. It was lively, alert, disquieted, and impatient to quit the table. I was looking at it in the middle of the sheet, when it was already nearly at the edge. I was obliged toetherizeit a little, so as to stupefy it, and render it less uneasy.It appeared very clean, and highly varnished. Though a neuter, and not a female, its belly was rather large, and was joined to the chest by two small swellings. From the chest the head, which was strong and nearly round, detached itself cleanly and distinctly.This head, seen as it wereen masse, resembled a bird's. But instead of a beak it had a circular prolongation, in which, on attentive examination, I detected the reunion of two tiny crescents joined at the point. These were its teeth, or mandibles, which do not operate like ours, from above to below, but horizontally and sideways. The insect employs its mandibles for the most widely different purposes; they are not only its weapons and instruments of mastication, but the tools it uses for every art, supplying the place of hands in masonry, plastering, carving, and in lifting and transplanting burdens which are frequently of enormous weight.It was well for it that its body was wrapped in a complete coat of mail. The ether affected it but slightly, and only stupefied it. After a moment's immobility it partly recovered, and made a few movements like those of an intoxicated person, or as if it were affected with a fit of vertigo. It seemed to say, "Where am I?" and endeavoured to make out the ground where it was walking, the great sheet of white paper. It attempted a few tottering steps, tumbling first on one side and then on the other. It carried before it a couple of instruments which at first I took to be feet, but which I found, on more careful inspection, were wholly different.They sprang from a point near either eye, and, like the eyes, were evidently instruments of observation. These antennæ, as they arecalled, long, delicate, yet robust, and vibrating at the slightest touch, are fleshy, articulated in twenty pieces, and disposed one in another. They form an instrument admirably adapted for feeling and groping. But it is useful in many other ways: by means of it the ants transmit in a second very complicated advices, as, for instance, when they change their course and retire, or suddenly take a wholly different road; evidently they have a language like that of the telegraph. This supposed marvellous organ of touch is more probably a species of hearing apparatus, and so mobile that it quivers at the slightest vibrations of the air, and feels every wave of sound.The perfect accord of every movement of the delicate and subtle tactile and telegraphic apparatus, the strong head, in fine, which seeminglythinks, completed the illusion. Its attitudes, its gropings, its efforts to obtain a knowledge of the situation, showed precisely what we should have been under similar circumstances. Shakespeare's Queen Mab, in her nut-shell chariot, occurred to my mind. And more, the chronicles of the Hubers; those impressive and almost terrifying narratives which would lead us to believe that the ants are far advanced in a knowledge of good and evil.It turned its back upon me obstinately, as if it dreaded to see its persecutor. It looked upon me as a horrible giant, and, despite its semi-intoxicated condition, made constant and energetic efforts to escape me, and place itself in security.I brought it back very softly and cautiously. But I could not make it show me its face. Its antipathy and its terror, undoubtedly, were too powerful. I therefore decided to take hold of it with a small pair of pincers, and to keep it on its back, using as little pressure as possible. The pressure, though light, acting on the small lateral orifices (or stigmata) through which it breathes, was infinitely painful, to judge from the resistance it offered. With its minute claws and mandibles it held the pincers so firmly that I could hear the air vibrate with every motion. I hastily profited by the painful position in which I had placed my ant; I looked it in the face.That which is most disconcerting, and gives it a peculiar appearance, are the teeth or mandibles placed outside the mouth, and springing, one on the right side, the other on the left, in a horizontal direction, so as to meet together: ours are vertical. These projecting teeth seem to offer battle, though, as I have said, they are also used for pacific purposes, andserve as hands.Behind the teeth may be seen several little threads or palpi at the entrance of the mouth; which are, in reality, thelittle hands of the mouth,—feeling, and handling, and turning over whatever is brought there.In front emerge the antennæ, theotherhands; but these are set externally, are mobile and susceptible to an excess,—in a word,electric hands.Behind the head, at the chest, commence the paws or feet, two in front of great dexterity, and rightly named by Kirby the arms.An apparatus of such complexity, placed in the fore part of the body, cannot fail to obscure and overcloud its physiognomy. What would be the case with our own, if from our eyes and mouth six hands started, to say nothing of those which proceed from the shoulders, and of four others placed lower down?The whole is intended for action and defence. The face which the insect shows is its resisting skull, its bony case, which cannot move. This frames, encloses, and fixes the eyes, which are also immovable; but, being exterior and multiple, motion is not necessary: those of the ant are divided into fifty facets, which reveal everything to it either in front or rear. Thus, then, its sight is admirable, but it cannotlook. No external muscle sets the mask in motion. And, therefore, it has no physiognomy.But, in compensation, its pantomime was extremely expressive,—I may even say, very pathetic. On discovering that it was so feeble and incapable of walking, it did exactly what prudent and sagacious man would have done, and attempted to recover its energies by the very means which we should have employed. It commenced a methodical friction of its entire body, from above to below. Seated like a little monkey, it skilfully made use of its arms or anterior feet in such a manner as to rub its back and side. Occasionally it returned to itshead, took it between its two hands, as if it would fain have shaken it clear of the fatal intoxication which rendered it so little able to provide for its own safety. One would have said it was questioning itself, collecting its thoughts, and saying, as we do after a bad dream, "Is it true, or is it false?—Poor head!—Alas! what ails thee, then?"At that moment I felt that we were living in two worlds, and that there were no means of understanding each other. How could I reassure it? My language, that of the voice; its, that of the antennæ. Not one of my words could obtain access to the electric telegraph which served as its organ of hearing.The continuous bony case which envelops its body isolates the insect from us, and conceals us from the insect. It has a heart which beats like ours; but we cannot see its pulsations beneath its thick coat of mail. It does not even command that wordless language which touches us in so many dumb beings. It is wholly wrapped up in mystery and silence.It breathes, or rather imbibes air, through the sides, not through the face or head. No palpitation or respiratory movement can be detected in it. Therefore, how should it speak, how complain? Of all our languages it has not one; it makes a sound, but does not possess a voice.Is the fixed and immovable mask, thus condemned to perpetual silence, that of a monster or a spectre? No. After watching its movements, its numerous actions indicative of reflection, its arts so much more advanced than those of the larger animals, we are not unwilling to believe that in this head exists a personality. And from the highest to the lowest in the scale of life, we recognize the identity of the soul.
Do not believe that these riches are simply the gifts of genial climates; that these glittering festal garments which they assume to love and die in are only the sheen of the sun, the all-powerful, decorator, which with its rays intensifies the enamel and gems we admire upon their wings. Another sun—a sun which shines for the whole earth, even for the ice-regions of the pole—profits them far more considerably. It exalts in them the inner life, evokes all their powers, and, on the given day, calls forth the supreme flower. Yonder scintillating colours are their visible energies which become speaking and eloquent. It is the pride of a complete life, which, having attained its climax, displays its energy in triumph, wishes to expand and diffuse; it is the tradition of desire, the imperious prayer and urgent appeal to the beloved objects.
In pale and temperate climates, you will meet with those brilliant liveries which one would think belonged to the tropics. Who, under our gloomy and variable sky, has not seen the sparkling Spanish fly? Even in the fatal deserts where summer beams but for an instant, as if in despite of the sun,—in despite of the poor and naked earth,—love supports some beings of a sumptuous splendour, of opulent raiment and rich decoration. Miserable Siberia sees the princes and great lords of the Insect World simultaneously displaying their grandeur. The tyrannical Russian climate cannot prevent enormous beetles, pitiless hunters, fiercer than Ivan the Terrible, from appearing in green, black, violet, or deep blue morocco, shaded with purple sapphires. While some, usurping the ancient copes consecrated to the czars and the porphyrogeniti, stalk to and fro in robes of purple, broidered with Byzantine gold.
In our neighbouring Siberias, I mean our lofty mountains,—under the hailstorms, for instance, of the Pyrenean glaciers,—without being discouraged by their rude blows, fly noble insects, of exquisite appearance, the rosalia in a mantle of pearl-gray satin, spotted with black velvet.
Among the lofty Alps, at the Grindelwald,—the formidable descent where that glacier comes to us, and you may touch itsaiguilles, and its keen breath freezes you—I once admired a timid but touching protestation of love. Among some miserable birches, martyr trees, which undergo an eternal chastisement, a poor little plant, elegant and delicate, persists in flowering, with a rose-hued blossom, but a violet rose, not unworthy of the mournful region. The brother of this tragical rose is a very tiny insect which, all feeble as it is, mounts higher than any other species, and is found shivering among the lofty snows of Mont Blanc. There, above you, is only the heaven, and, beneath, the vast shroud of ice. The poetic creature has assumed exactly two tints: the celestial blue of its wings, incredibly delicate, seems lightly kindled with the whitepowder of the hoar-frost. The storms and avalanches which overthrow the rocks awaken in it no sensations of terror. Under the breath of the terrible giant, in his ice-bristling beard and formidable frown, it, the little one, flies daringly, as if conscious that this king of the everlasting winters would hesitate to destroy the last winged flower of love which, in his realm of death, preserves for him a reflection of heaven.
Book the Second.
MISSION AND ARTS OF THE INSECT.
I.—SWAMMERDAM.
I.—SWAMMERDAM.
CHAPTER I.SWAMMERDAM.What was known of the Infinite prior to 1600? Nothing whatever. Nothing of the infinitely great; nothing of the infinitely little. The celebrated page of Pascal, very frequently cited upon this subject, is the frank astonishment of a humanity so old and yet so young, which begins to be aware of its prodigious ignorance, opens its eyes to the Real, and awakens between two abysses.No one forgets that in 1610 Galileo, having received from Holland a magnifying lens, constructed the telescope, elevated it in position, and saw the firmament. But it is less generally known that Swammerdam, seizing, with the instinct of genius, on the imperfect microscope, directed it to the lower world, and was the first to detect the living infinite, the world of animated atoms! These great men succeeded one another. At the epoch of the famous Italian's death (1632) was born the Hollander, the Galileo of the infinitely little (1637).
CHAPTER I.
SWAMMERDAM.
What was known of the Infinite prior to 1600? Nothing whatever. Nothing of the infinitely great; nothing of the infinitely little. The celebrated page of Pascal, very frequently cited upon this subject, is the frank astonishment of a humanity so old and yet so young, which begins to be aware of its prodigious ignorance, opens its eyes to the Real, and awakens between two abysses.
No one forgets that in 1610 Galileo, having received from Holland a magnifying lens, constructed the telescope, elevated it in position, and saw the firmament. But it is less generally known that Swammerdam, seizing, with the instinct of genius, on the imperfect microscope, directed it to the lower world, and was the first to detect the living infinite, the world of animated atoms! These great men succeeded one another. At the epoch of the famous Italian's death (1632) was born the Hollander, the Galileo of the infinitely little (1637).
An astounding revolution! The abyss of life was unfolded in its profundity with myriads upon myriads of unknown beings and fantastic organizations of which men had not even dared to dream. But the most surprising circumstance is, that the very method of the sciences underwent a total change. Hitherto men had relied upon their senses. The severest observation invoked their testimony, and they thought that no appeal could lie from their judgment. But now behold experiment and the senses themselves, rectified by a powerful auxiliary, confess that not only have they concealed from us the greater part of things, but that, in those they have laid bare, they have every moment been mistaken!
Nothing is more curious than to observe the very opposite impressions produced by these two revolutions upon their authors. Galileo before the infinite of heaven, where all appeared harmonious and marvellously ordered, felt more of joy than of surprise; he announced his discoveries to Europe in a style of the greatest enthusiasm. Swammerdam, before the infinite of the microscopic world, seemed overcome with terror. He recoiled before the spectacle of Nature at war, devouring her very self. He grew perturbed; he seemed to fear that all his ideas and beliefs would be overthrown: a melancholy and singular condition, which, added to his incessant labours, shortened his days. Let us pause awhile to dwell upon this creator of science, who was also its martyr.
The eminent physician Boerhaave, who, a hundred years after Swammerdam's time, published with pious care his "Bible of Nature," gave utterance to a surprising observation, which sets one a-dreaming:—
"He had an ardent imagination of impassioned melancholy, which raised him to the sublime."
Thus, this surpassing master in all the works of patient inquiry, this insatiable observer of the most minute details, who pursued Nature so far into the imperceptible, was a poetic soul, a man of imagination, one of those mournful spirits who groan after nothing less than the infinite, and die because they fail to conquer it.
His was a remarkable combination of mental endowments which, at the first glance, seem opposed to one another: a love of the great, and a taste for the subtlest researches; a sublimity of aim, and that obstinacy of analysis which would subdivide the atom, and yet never cry, "Hold, enough!" But, in reality, are these qualities of so contradictory a nature? By no means. Men whose hearts are filled with the love of Nature will declare that they harmonize admirably. Nothing great and nothing little. For the lover a simple hair is worth as much as, frequently more than, a world.
He was born in a cabinet of natural history; and his birth decided his destiny. The cabinet, formed by his father, an apothecary of Amsterdam, was a pell-mell, a chaos. The child wished to arrange it, and drew up a catalogue of it. A modest ambition led him from point to point, until he became the greatest naturalist of the century.
His father was one of the zealot collectors who then became common in Holland—insatiable treasurers of diverse rarities. It was not with pictures—though Rembrandt was then in his glory—it was not with antiquities, that he filled his house. But all that the ships brought back from the two Indies of minerals, plants, fantastic and extraordinary animals, he acquired at any cost, and heaped up in piles. These marvels of the unknown world, contrasting by their splendour and tropical magnificence with the gloomy climate which received them and the pale sea of the North, aroused in the young Hollander's mind a lively curiosity and a passionate devotion to Nature.
A very good Dutch painter has drawn a charming picture of the young Grotius: a universal scholar at twelve years of age, surrounded by folios, maps, charts, and all the appliances of learning. How much I should have preferred that the same artist—or rather the all-powerful magician, Rembrandt—had revealed to us the mysterious study, that brilliant chaos of the three kingdoms, and the young Swammerdam endeavouring to grasp the grand enigma!
The crowds and prodigious movement of Amsterdam favoured his solitude. The Babylons of commerce are for the thinker profound deserts. In that dumb ocean of men of mercantile activity, on the border of sluggish canals, he lived almost like Robinson Crusoe in hisisland. Isolated even in the midst of his family, who could not comprehend him, he seldom emerged from his cabinet, and descended on the fewest possible occasions into the paternal shop.
His sole recreation was to go in search of insects in the little soil which Holland offers above the waters. The melancholy meads, covered with Paul Potter's herds, possess, in the moist warmth of the summer, a great variety of animal life. The traveller is much impressed when he sees the crane, the stork, and the crow, elsewhere hostile, reconciled here by the abundance of their food, which they frequently hunt in company on terms of perfect accord. Hence the landscape acquires a peculiar charm. The cattle assume an air of placid security which they do not elsewhere exhibit. The summer is short, and early assumes the gravity of autumn. Man and Nature—all appears of a pacific character, harmonized in a great moral sweetness and remarkable seriousness of mood.
Enthusiastic collector as his father was, he grieved to see the youth of Swammerdam thus employed. It had been his ambition to make of his son a renowned minister who should shine in controversy, and an eloquent preacher. But his son seemed daily to grow more dumb. The chagrined father lowered his views from glory to money. In that golden city, so feverish and so diseased, no career is more lucrative than that of a physician. But here arose another difficulty. Swammerdam threw himself heartily into his medical studies; but on condition that he created them—as yet they did not exist. Therefore, the basis on which he desired to rest them was the preliminary creation ofthe natural sciences. How cure the sick man unless you understood the healthy? And how understand the latter without studying side by side the inferior animals which translate and explain disease? But can one see into such delicate mysteries with the eye alone? Does not the feebleness of the sense of vision lead us astray? The serious creation of science would suppose a reform of our senses and the creation of optics.
A veritable creation! Look at the microscope. Is it a simple spy-glass? To the eyes which the instrument possessed, Swammerdam added two arms, one of which bears the glass and the other the object. He himself says, in reference to his more difficult investigations, "that he had attempted to obtain the assistance of another person, but that such assistance proved, in fact, an obstacle." It was for this reason that he organized a dumb man of copper, a discreet servant ready for every work; thanks to whom the observer disposes of supplementary hands and numerous eyes of different degrees of power. In the same manner as the birds expand or contract their visual organs, either to grasp objects in a whole or to scrutinize with searching glance the smallest detail, Swammerdam created the method of successive enlargement; the art of employing lenses of different sizes and varying curvature, which permit the observer to seeen masse, and to study each separate portion, and finally to survey the whole for the purpose of properly replacing the details and reconstituting the general harmony.
Was this all? No. To observe dead bodies, time is required; but then time robs us of them. Death, which seemingly conduces to study by its immobility, is deceitful; it fixes the mask for a moment, and the object beneath melts away. Now came a new creation of Swammerdam's. He not only taught us to see and investigate, but he devised means for our permanent investigation. By preservative injections he fixed these ephemeral objects; he compelled time to halt, and forced death to endure. The Czar Peter, who, a long time afterwards, saw in the dissecting-room of one of Swammerdam's disciples the beautiful body, supple and fresh, of a little child, with its exquisite carnation tint, thought that the rose was living, and could not be prevented from embracing it.
All this is soon said; but it was long to do. How many attempts!What miracles of patience, of delicacy, of skilful management! In exact proportion as one descends the scale of littleness, the insufficiency of our means proves more and more embarrassing. We can touch nothing without breaking it. Our large fingers will hold no more: they cast a shadow, they throw obstacles in our way. Our instruments are too coarse to seize upon such atoms; therefore we refine them. But then how can we put the invisible point in an invisible object? The two terms in sight avoid us. Only one single passion—the unconquerable love of life and Nature, the undefinable, indescribable tenderness, a feminine sensibility directed by a masculine, scientific genius—could succeed in so great an aim. Our Hollander loved the tiny creatures. He dreaded wounding them so much that he spared the scalpel. He avoided as far as he could the steel, and preferred the firm but nevertheless the delicate ivory. He fashioned in it infinitely small instruments, sharpened by aid of the microscope, which would not work rapidly, and compelled the student to make his observations with due patience.
His tender respect for Nature found its reward. While still a youth, and a simple student at Leyden University, he had two strong holds upon her in her highest and lowest manifestations. He was the first to see and understand the maternity of the insect and the human maternity. The latter subject, so delicate and yet so grand—in which he laboured conjointly with his master at Leyden—I put aside: let us dwell upon the former. He dissected and described the ovaries of the bee: found them in the pretended "king;" and proved that she was a queen, or rather a mother. In like manner he explained the maternity of the ant; an all-important discovery, which revealed the true mystery of the superior insect, and initiated us into the real character of these societies, which are not monarchies, but maternal republics and vast public nurseries, each of which raises up a people.
The most general fact in the life of insects, and the great law of their existence, is the Metamorphosis. Changes which in other creatures are obscure, are in them exceedingly conspicuous. The three ages of the insect appear to be three creatures. Who would have dared to assert that the grub, with its heavy luxuriance of digestive organs andits great hairy feet, was identical with a winged and ethereal being, the butterfly?
He dared to say, and by the most delicate anatomy he demonstrated, that the larva, the pupa, and the butterfly represented three conditions of the same individual, three natural and legitimate evolutions of its life.
How did learned Europe welcome this novel science of metamorphoses? That was the question. Swammerdam, young and without authority, without any position in the academy or university, lived in his cabinet. Scarcely anything of his works was published during his life, nor even fifty years afterwards, so that his discoveries might circulate and advantage all, rather than himself and his fame.
Holland remained indifferent. Eminent professors in the University of Leyden were opposed to him; and took umbrage at the fact that a simple student placed himself by his discoveries on a level with them, or even above them.
The miserable and necessitous condition in which his father left him was not calculated to recommend him greatly in a country like Holland. In his costly labours he was supported by the generosity of his friends. At Leyden it was Van Horn, his professor of anatomy, who defrayed all his expenses.
At this epoch two illustrious academies were founded,—the Royal Society of London and theAcadémie des Sciencesof Paris. But the former, specially inspired by the genius of Harvey, a pupil of Padua, turned its gaze towards Italy, and addressed its inquiries to the distinguished and very accurate observer, Malpighi, who furnished at its request the anatomy of the silkworm. I know not why the Englishmen turned aside from Holland, and did not also interrogate the genius of Swammerdam.
He was honoured only in France. It was here, in the neighbourhood of Paris, that he made the first public demonstration of his discovery. His friend Thévenot, the famous traveller and publisher of travels, collected around him at Issy different classes ofsavants, linguists, orientalists, and, before all, inquiring students of Nature. Such was the origin of theAcadémie des Sciences. One might justly say that the revelation of the illustrious Hollander inaugurated its cradle.
A Frenchman rescued from the hands of the Inquisition the last manuscripts of Galileo. A Frenchman also—Thévenot—supported Swammerdam with his purse and credit. He was desirous of establishing him at Paris. On the other hand, the Grand-Duke of Tuscany invited him to Florence. But the fate of Galileo was too strong a warning. Even in France there was little safety. The mystic Morin was burned at Paris in 1664; the very year in which Molière performed the first acts of his "Tartuffe." Swammerdam, who was then residing there, might have been present at both spectacles.
He himself, notwithstanding his positivism, showed very singular tendencies towards mysticism. The more deeply he entered into details, the more eagerly did he long to reascend to the general source of love and life; an impotent effort which consumed him. Already, at the age of thirty-two, excessive toil, chagrin, and religious melancholy brought him to the grave. From his early years he had suffered from the fevers so common in Holland, that land of swamp and morass, and had not paid due attention to them. He studied with his microscope every day from dawn till noon; the remainder of the day he wrote. And for his studies he preferred the summer days, with their strong light and burning sunshine. Then he would remain, with his head bare that he might not lose the smallest ray, frequently until deluged and bathed in sweat. His eyesight grew very weak.
He was already in a feeble condition when, in 1669, he published in a preliminary essay the principle of the metamorphosis of insects. He was sure of being immortal; but so much the more in danger of dying of hunger. His father thenceforth withdrew from him all assistance. Swammerdam by his discoveries (as of the lymphatic vessels and hernias) had very considerably promoted the progress of medicine, and even of surgery; but he was not a physician. From a spirit of obedience he had attempted to practise: he could not continue, and fell ill. He was now without a home. His father shut up his house, retired to live with his son-in-law, and bade Swammerdam provide for himself, and lodge where he would. A wealthy friend had often solicited him to reside with him. When expelled from the paternalroof, he made an effort to seek out this friend and remind him of his offer; but he remembered it no longer.
Misfortunes now accumulated upon his head. Poor and infirm, and dragging himself along the streets of Amsterdam with a large collection which he knew not where to store away, he received another terrible shock—the ruin of his country. The earth sunk under his feet.
It was the fatal year of 1672, when Holland seemed crushed by the invasion of Louis XIV. Assuredly his fatherland had not spoiled Swammerdam; but nevertheless it was the native home of science, of free reason, the asylum of human thought. And lo! she sank, engulfed by the hosts of the French; engulfed in the ocean which she had summoned to her assistance. She lived only by committing suicide. Did she live? Yes; but to be thenceforth no more than the shadow of her former greatness.
The infinite melancholy of such a change has had its painter and its poet in Ruysdaël, who was born and who died in Swammerdam's time, and, like him, at the age of forty. When I contemplate in the Louvre the inestimable picture which that Museum possesses of him, the one leads me to think of the other. The little man who followed the gloomy route of the dunes at the approach of the storm reminds me of my insect-hunter; and the sublime marine picture of the palisade in the red-brown waters, chafing so terribly, and electrified by the tempest, seems a dramatic expression of the moral tempests which poor Swammerdam experienced when he wrote "The Ephemera"—"among tears and sobs."
The Ephemera is the fly which is born but to die, living a single hour of love.
But Swammerdam did not enjoy that hour; and it seems as if he spent his too brief life in a state of complete isolation. At the age of thirty-six he was already drawing near his end. The depths of imagination and universal tenderness in his nature could not be alimented by the barren controversies of the age. In this condition there accidentally fell into his hand an unknown work,—a woman's book. This sweet voice spoke to his very soul, and somewhat consoled him. It was one of theopusculaof a celebrated mystic of that age, Mademoiselle Bourignon.
Poor as was Swammerdam, he undertook a pilgrimage to Germany, where she resided, and went to see his consoler. He found in the journey a very real assistance in escaping at the least from his contention with thesavants, his rivals, in forgetting every collision, and in remitting to God alone his defence and his discoveries.
He longed to withdraw himself into a profound solitude. For this purpose it was necessary he should dispose of the dear and precious cabinet on which he had spent his days, in which he had enshrined his heart, and which had at length become a portion of himself. He must tear himself from it. At this cost he calculated that he would obtain a revenue sufficient for his wants; but the very loss and separation he longed for he could not undergo. Neither in Holland nor in France could buyers be found for the cabinet. Perhaps the wealthy amateurs, who think of nothing but emptyéclat, did not find in it the glittering species which give us a child's pleasure. The great inventor's collection offered things more serious: the logical order and arrangement of his discoveries; that eloquent and living method which had guided his genius to new achievements. Alas! it perished, scattered abroad.
Having been for a long time ill, in 1680, either through weakness, or a disgust for life and men, he shut himself up, and would not go out any more. He bequeathed his manuscripts to his faithful and life-long friend, whom, when dying, he himself styled the "incomparable,"—the Frenchman Thévenot. He died aged forty-three.
What really killed him? His own science. The too abrupt revelationwounded and seized upon him. If Pascal saw an imaginary abyss opening before him, what would happen to this Dutch Pascal, who saw the real abyss and the limitless profundity of the unexpected world? It was not a matter of a decreasing scale of abstract greatnesses or of inorganic atoms, but of the successive envelopment and prodigious movements of beings which are the one in the other. For the little we see, each animal is a tiny planet, a small world inhabited by animals still more diminutive, which in their turn are inhabited by others very much smaller. And this, too, without end or rest, except from the powerlessness of our senses and the imperfection of optical science.
All men now began to fathom, and incessantly toil in, that infinity which the hand of Swammerdam had opened up to them. From that time Europe laboured therein with diverse aims. Leuwenhoek, precipitating himself upon it, discovered and conquered new worlds. The Italian positivist, Malpighi, showed perhaps the highest boldness. He proved that the insect has a heart—a heart which beats like man's. One has not far to go to endow it also with a soul. Swammerdam, who was living then, was terrified by the fact. He drew back affrighted from the declivity; he wished to keep his footing, and was fain to doubt the existence of the heart.
It seemed to him that the science to which he had given the first impulse, which he had launched on the flood of his discoveries, was conducting him to something great and terrible which he shrank from seeing: like one who, adrift on the enormous sea of fresh water which dashes headlong in the Niagara Falls, perceives himself impelled by a calm but invincible and mighty movement—whither? He will not, and he dare not, think!
II.—THE MICROSCOPE.
II.—THE MICROSCOPE.
CHAPTER II.THE MICROSCOPE:—HAS THE INSECT A PHYSIOGNOMY?Armed with that sixth sense which man has achieved for himself, I can move forward, at pleasure, in any direction. It is in my power to track out, to reach, to compute the spheres, and gravitate with them in their vast orbits. But I feel much more strongly attracted towards the other abyss—that of the infinitely little. In its atoms I discover an intensity of energy which charms and astounds me. And I myself, what am I but an atom? Neither Jupiter nor Sirius, those enormous globes at so great a distance from, and possessing so little sympathy with me, will teach me the secret of terrestrial life. But these, on the contrary, surround and press upon me, injure me or lend me their assistance. If they are not of my own kind, they are at all events associated with me.
CHAPTER II.
THE MICROSCOPE:—HAS THE INSECT A PHYSIOGNOMY?
Armed with that sixth sense which man has achieved for himself, I can move forward, at pleasure, in any direction. It is in my power to track out, to reach, to compute the spheres, and gravitate with them in their vast orbits. But I feel much more strongly attracted towards the other abyss—that of the infinitely little. In its atoms I discover an intensity of energy which charms and astounds me. And I myself, what am I but an atom? Neither Jupiter nor Sirius, those enormous globes at so great a distance from, and possessing so little sympathy with me, will teach me the secret of terrestrial life. But these, on the contrary, surround and press upon me, injure me or lend me their assistance. If they are not of my own kind, they are at all events associated with me.
Ay, fatally associated.
And yet I cannot fly from them: swarms haunt the very air which I breathe,—what do I say? float in the fluids of my body. It is my interest to know them. But my sovereign interest is to escape from my deplorable and wretched ignorance, and not to quit this world until I have peered into the infinite.
Full of such ideas, I addressed myself to one of the philosophers of the present day who have made the greatest and most successful use of the microscope,—the celebrated Dr. Robin. Under his direction, I purchased from the skilful optician Nachet an excellent instrument, and planted myself before my window on a very beautiful day.
I have said it,—the microscope is much more than a mere magnifying glass. It is an aid, a servant who has hands to supplement your own—eyes, and movable eyes, which by their changes enable you to see an object at a suitable magnitude, and either in detail or as a whole. One perfectly understands the all-absorbing attraction which it exercises; however great the fatigue it causes, one cannot separate one's-self from it. Itsdébut, as we have seen, was signalized by its slaying its creator, Swammerdam. How many workmen has it not since deprived, if not of life, at least of sight? The first of the two Hubers became blind at a comparatively early age. The illustrious author of the great work on the cockchafer, M. Strauss, is nearly so. Our pallid but enthusiastic Robin is already on the same descent, but pursues his studies without pause. The seduction is too potent. Who can renounce the truth, after once beholding it? Who can willingly return into the world of errors wherein men exist? Better not to see at all, than always to see things falsely.
Behold me, then, face to face with my little man of copper. I lost not an instant in interrogating the oracle. And its first and somewhat rough reply respecting the two objects I presented was:—
One was the human hand, white and delicate,—the left hand, the idler, and that of a person who did no work.
The other, a spider's foot.
To the naked eye the former object seemed agreeable enough; the other, a tiny, obscure blade, of a dirty brown, and somewhat repulsive.
In the microscope the effect was precisely the opposite. In the spider's foot, easily cleansed of a few downy spots, appeared a magnificent comb of the most beautiful shell, which, far from being dirty, by its extreme polish was rendered incapable of being soiled; everything glided off it. This object would seem to serve two ends: that of a very delicate hand, through which the spinner, in rising or descending, suffers its thread to glide; and that of a comb, with which the attentive labourer holds its stuff, while at work, in the required position, until the woven threads—more like a cloud—grow firm and strong, are dried by the air, and no longer fall back floating and wavy, but useless.
As for the human hand, the part exposed under the microscope seemed, even with the smallest lens, a vague and immense substance, incomprehensible through its very coarseness.
Even with a medium lens, of only twelve or fifteen times magnifying power, it seemed to be a yellowish, reddish tissue, coarse and dry, ill-woven,—a kind of wiry taffeta, in which each mesh was irregularly puffed up.
Nothing could be more humiliating!
This pitiless judge, pitiless even in its treatment of the flowers, behaves with terrible severity towards the human flower. The freshest and most charming will act wisely in not attempting the experiment. She would shudder at herself. Her dimples would deepen into abysses! The light down of the peach which crowns her beautiful skin with the bloom of delicacy would show like rough thickets, or rather like savage forests.
After my first experiment, I felt that the too truthful oracle not only altered our ideas of proportion, but of appearances, colours, forms—transfiguring everything, in fact, from the false to the true.
Let us be resigned. Whatever the organ of truth may tell us, I thank it, and I will welcome it though it declare me to be a monster. But such is not the case. If it change with some severity our notions of the surface, on the other hand it reveals to us worlds of truly unbounded beauty beneath it. A hundred things in anatomy which seem horrible to the unassisted sight, acquire a touching and impressivedelicacy, and a poetical charm which approaches the sublime. This is not the place for discussing such a subject. But a mere drop of blood, of a brickdust-red by no means agreeable to the naked eye, heavy, thick, and opaque, if you look at it when dry, under the magnifying glass, presents to you a delicious rose-bloom arborescence, with delicate ramifications as fine and subtle as those of the coral are coarse and dull.
But let us keep to our insects. Let us select the most miserable—the wonderfully little butterfly of the clothes-moth, that dirty white butterfly which seems the lowest of created beings. Take only his wing. Nay, far less, only a little dust, the light powder which covers his wing. You are astounded at seeing that Nature, exhausting the most ingenious industry in order that this offcast of creation may fly at his ease, and without fatigue, has scattered over his wing, not dust, but a multitude of tiny balloons. Or, if you prefer it, so many parachutes, most convenient instruments for flight, which, when opened, sustain the little aeronaut without fatigue and for an indefinite period; which, as they are more or less expanded, enable it to rise or sink; and when folded up, permit of its remaining quiet. The least of the butterflies, thus supported, has a faculty of flight as unlimited as the noblest bird of heaven.
One grows keenly interested in these curious apparatus, which have anticipated our human inventions. One observes their strange and surprising modes of action, as one would observe the inhabitants of another planet, if he were miraculously transported thither. But what one most yearns to see, what one burns to detect, is some reflection fromwithin, some gleam of the torch which is concealed in their inner existence, some appearance of thought. Have they a physiognomy? Can I seize in their strange visage any trace of an intelligence which, judging by their works, so closely resembles our own? Of the expression which touches me in the eye of the dog, and of other animals related to me, shall I detect nothing in the bee, the ant, in those ingenious beings, those creators, which accomplish so many things the dog cannot accomplish?
A clever man once said to me: "As a boy I was very partial to insects; I searched about for caterpillars, and made a collection of them.I was especially curious to look in their faces, but never succeeded. All that I could distinguish was confused, dull, melancholy. This discouraged me. I left off making collections."
I was but a child in this new study; that is, I was fresh to it, and curious. My special anxiety was to interrogate the countenance of the dumb little world, and to surprise there, in default of voice, the silent thought. Thought? At least, the dream, the obscure and floating instinct.
I addressed myself to the ant; an humble being in form and colour, but endowed with a prodigious amount of social instinct and of the educational capacity; not to speak of its quickness of resource, of the promptitude with which it confronts perils, and chances, and embarrassments.
I take then an ant of the commonest species—a neutral ant—one of the workers who are relieved from the wants of love, and in whom therefore the sex, diminished to a minimum for the advantage of labour, develops so much more powerfully its extraordinary instinct; who alone perform all the diverse trades of the little community, and are purveyors, nurses, architects, and inventors.
I selected a very fine, serene, and luminous day—not luminous with the glare of summer, but the calm radiance of autumn (1st September 1856). I was alone, in a state of perfect silence and repose, and in that complete forgetfulness of the world which is so rarely obtained. After the manifold agitations of the past and present, my heart for a moment was at peace.
Never was I more ready to hear the mute voices which do not address themselves to the ear, to penetrate in a calm and benevolent spirit the mystery of the little world which on every side surrounds us, and yet has hitherto remained out of our reach and apart from our communications.
Alone with my ant, armed with a tolerably good lens, with a magnifying power of twelve, I placed it delicately on a large sheet of fine white paper which covered nearly the whole table.
With the microscope I could have seen but a part and not the whole. A very considerable enlargement would also have exaggeratedthe merely secondary details—such as the scanty hairs with which the ant is provided. Finally, its mobility would not have suffered me to keep it in the focus of the microscope; but the lens, as easily shifted as itself, followed it in all its motions.
Not, however, without some difficulty. It was lively, alert, disquieted, and impatient to quit the table. I was looking at it in the middle of the sheet, when it was already nearly at the edge. I was obliged toetherizeit a little, so as to stupefy it, and render it less uneasy.
It appeared very clean, and highly varnished. Though a neuter, and not a female, its belly was rather large, and was joined to the chest by two small swellings. From the chest the head, which was strong and nearly round, detached itself cleanly and distinctly.
This head, seen as it wereen masse, resembled a bird's. But instead of a beak it had a circular prolongation, in which, on attentive examination, I detected the reunion of two tiny crescents joined at the point. These were its teeth, or mandibles, which do not operate like ours, from above to below, but horizontally and sideways. The insect employs its mandibles for the most widely different purposes; they are not only its weapons and instruments of mastication, but the tools it uses for every art, supplying the place of hands in masonry, plastering, carving, and in lifting and transplanting burdens which are frequently of enormous weight.
It was well for it that its body was wrapped in a complete coat of mail. The ether affected it but slightly, and only stupefied it. After a moment's immobility it partly recovered, and made a few movements like those of an intoxicated person, or as if it were affected with a fit of vertigo. It seemed to say, "Where am I?" and endeavoured to make out the ground where it was walking, the great sheet of white paper. It attempted a few tottering steps, tumbling first on one side and then on the other. It carried before it a couple of instruments which at first I took to be feet, but which I found, on more careful inspection, were wholly different.
They sprang from a point near either eye, and, like the eyes, were evidently instruments of observation. These antennæ, as they arecalled, long, delicate, yet robust, and vibrating at the slightest touch, are fleshy, articulated in twenty pieces, and disposed one in another. They form an instrument admirably adapted for feeling and groping. But it is useful in many other ways: by means of it the ants transmit in a second very complicated advices, as, for instance, when they change their course and retire, or suddenly take a wholly different road; evidently they have a language like that of the telegraph. This supposed marvellous organ of touch is more probably a species of hearing apparatus, and so mobile that it quivers at the slightest vibrations of the air, and feels every wave of sound.
The perfect accord of every movement of the delicate and subtle tactile and telegraphic apparatus, the strong head, in fine, which seeminglythinks, completed the illusion. Its attitudes, its gropings, its efforts to obtain a knowledge of the situation, showed precisely what we should have been under similar circumstances. Shakespeare's Queen Mab, in her nut-shell chariot, occurred to my mind. And more, the chronicles of the Hubers; those impressive and almost terrifying narratives which would lead us to believe that the ants are far advanced in a knowledge of good and evil.
It turned its back upon me obstinately, as if it dreaded to see its persecutor. It looked upon me as a horrible giant, and, despite its semi-intoxicated condition, made constant and energetic efforts to escape me, and place itself in security.
I brought it back very softly and cautiously. But I could not make it show me its face. Its antipathy and its terror, undoubtedly, were too powerful. I therefore decided to take hold of it with a small pair of pincers, and to keep it on its back, using as little pressure as possible. The pressure, though light, acting on the small lateral orifices (or stigmata) through which it breathes, was infinitely painful, to judge from the resistance it offered. With its minute claws and mandibles it held the pincers so firmly that I could hear the air vibrate with every motion. I hastily profited by the painful position in which I had placed my ant; I looked it in the face.
That which is most disconcerting, and gives it a peculiar appearance, are the teeth or mandibles placed outside the mouth, and springing, one on the right side, the other on the left, in a horizontal direction, so as to meet together: ours are vertical. These projecting teeth seem to offer battle, though, as I have said, they are also used for pacific purposes, andserve as hands.
Behind the teeth may be seen several little threads or palpi at the entrance of the mouth; which are, in reality, thelittle hands of the mouth,—feeling, and handling, and turning over whatever is brought there.
In front emerge the antennæ, theotherhands; but these are set externally, are mobile and susceptible to an excess,—in a word,electric hands.
Behind the head, at the chest, commence the paws or feet, two in front of great dexterity, and rightly named by Kirby the arms.
An apparatus of such complexity, placed in the fore part of the body, cannot fail to obscure and overcloud its physiognomy. What would be the case with our own, if from our eyes and mouth six hands started, to say nothing of those which proceed from the shoulders, and of four others placed lower down?
The whole is intended for action and defence. The face which the insect shows is its resisting skull, its bony case, which cannot move. This frames, encloses, and fixes the eyes, which are also immovable; but, being exterior and multiple, motion is not necessary: those of the ant are divided into fifty facets, which reveal everything to it either in front or rear. Thus, then, its sight is admirable, but it cannotlook. No external muscle sets the mask in motion. And, therefore, it has no physiognomy.
But, in compensation, its pantomime was extremely expressive,—I may even say, very pathetic. On discovering that it was so feeble and incapable of walking, it did exactly what prudent and sagacious man would have done, and attempted to recover its energies by the very means which we should have employed. It commenced a methodical friction of its entire body, from above to below. Seated like a little monkey, it skilfully made use of its arms or anterior feet in such a manner as to rub its back and side. Occasionally it returned to itshead, took it between its two hands, as if it would fain have shaken it clear of the fatal intoxication which rendered it so little able to provide for its own safety. One would have said it was questioning itself, collecting its thoughts, and saying, as we do after a bad dream, "Is it true, or is it false?—Poor head!—Alas! what ails thee, then?"
At that moment I felt that we were living in two worlds, and that there were no means of understanding each other. How could I reassure it? My language, that of the voice; its, that of the antennæ. Not one of my words could obtain access to the electric telegraph which served as its organ of hearing.
The continuous bony case which envelops its body isolates the insect from us, and conceals us from the insect. It has a heart which beats like ours; but we cannot see its pulsations beneath its thick coat of mail. It does not even command that wordless language which touches us in so many dumb beings. It is wholly wrapped up in mystery and silence.
It breathes, or rather imbibes air, through the sides, not through the face or head. No palpitation or respiratory movement can be detected in it. Therefore, how should it speak, how complain? Of all our languages it has not one; it makes a sound, but does not possess a voice.
Is the fixed and immovable mask, thus condemned to perpetual silence, that of a monster or a spectre? No. After watching its movements, its numerous actions indicative of reflection, its arts so much more advanced than those of the larger animals, we are not unwilling to believe that in this head exists a personality. And from the highest to the lowest in the scale of life, we recognize the identity of the soul.