CHAPTER XX

[Contents]CHAPTER XXFABRE’S WRITINGS (CONTINUED)In attempting to define the point of view, the method, and the style of the author of theSouvenirs, 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.TheSouvenirs entomologiquesbear 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:At the very outset, and to judge only very superficially, it seems that these latter are the essential part of the work, and the author must be considered before all as an admirable anecdotist, or, if you will, a chronicler of animal life. But we very[325]soon perceive, on reading him, how much method, selection, and persevering determination have presided over all these investigations, which may appear almost incoherent, and are, on the contrary, profoundly systematic and definitely ordered.1François Coppée, in a delightful story, shows us an austere landscape gardener fiercely destroying all the sparrows and, above all, the blackbirds, which disturb and dishonour the magnificent symmetry of his paths, which were clipped straight with the aid of a taut cord. Our gentleman does not leave a single one alive.… But on the other side of the party wall is a true poet, who, not having the same æsthetic, buys every day a quantity of birds in the market, and indefatigably “puts back the blackbirds” into his neighbour’s shrubberies.2Fabre’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, theSouvenirsproduce somewhat the same impression as theharmas, where the thousand actors of the rural stage follow one another, appear and reappear, at varied intervals, at the will[326]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 theSouvenirs.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[327]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.“If, by chance, an amalgam of Greek or Latin gives a meaning which alludes to its manner of life, the reality is very often in disagreement with the name, because the classifier, working over a necropolis, has outstripped the observer, whose attention is fixed upon the community of the living.”3So the historian of the insects takes the greatest liberties with official science and the official language.A Spider is not an insect, according to the rules of classification; and as such the Epeira seems out[328]of place here. A fig for systems! It is immaterial to the student of instinct whether the animal have eight legs instead of six, or pulmonary sacs instead of air-tubes.4Above 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 mottoMaxima in minimis.[329]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[330]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.But, on the other hand, if we are seeking original inventions, artistic masterpieces and ingenious contrivance, let us apply to the humblest, more often than not unknown to all. And let us not be repulsed by appearances. Ordure reserves for us beautiful and curious things of which we should not find the like upon the rose. So far the Minotaur has enlightened us by her family habits. Long live modesty and littleness!5The 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 theSouvenirs. 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[331]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 InsectesandLes 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 theSouvenirsmust 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[332]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.“Let us assemble facts in order to obtain ideas,” said Buffon. In this process may be summed up the whole of the great Provençal naturalist’s scientific work. If he notes the least circumstances of the little lives that unfold themselves before his eyes, he does so not merely as an observer and an artist who would not miss the smallest element of knowledge or beauty, but also as a philosopher who wishes to understand all that he sees, and for that reason neglects nothing. In entomology the smallest facts are not only the most curious and picturesque, they are often the most significant:maxima in minimis. Those minute details which are in danger of being regarded as “puerilities are connected with the most solemn questions which it is possible for man to consider.”6[333]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 theSouvenirsis 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 andsynthesisethe 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[334]human wisdom. This first law of instinct is brought into especial prominence by the author of theSouvenirsin 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[335]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[336]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[337]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.“It proceeds from the less essential to the more essential, in order to preserve a remnant of life to the very last. In the first place it absorbs the blood which issues from the wound which it has made in the skin; then it proceeds to the fatty matter enveloping the internal organs; then the muscular layer lining the skin; and then, in the[338]last place, the essential organs and the nerve-centres.”7“We thus have the spectacle of an insect which is eaten alive, morsel by morsel, during a period of nearly a fortnight, becoming empty and emaciated and collapsing upon itself,” while preserving its succulence and moisture to the end.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[339]disconcerts us by its ignorance and stupidity.The best-endowed insect cannot do anything “outside the narrow circle of its attributions. Every insect displays, in its calling, in which it excels, its series of logically co-ordinated actions. There it is truly a master.”8Apart from this it is utterly incapable. And even within the cycle of its attributions, apart from the customary conditions under which it exercises them, the ineptness of the insect surpasses imagination.Let us consider the facts.One of these Hymenoptera whose impeccable science we were admiring just now, a Languedocian Sphex, is busy closing the burrow in which she has laid her egg with its store of game. We brush her aside, and plunder her nest before her eyes. Directly the passage is free, she enters and remains for a few moments. Then she emerges and proceeds to stop up the cell, as though nothing were the matter, as though she had not found her burrow empty, as though the work of closing the cell had still a motive.9The Mason-Bee, excellently endowed in the matter of boring, emerges from her nest[340]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.“Here, then, are sturdy insects for whom boring tufa is mere child’s play, which will stupidly let themselves perish imprisoned by a paper bag,”10to which it does not even occur to bite a second time through the frail envelope through which they have already bitten once when it was, so to speak, part of the earthen enclosure.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[341]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.…[342]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.Sublime inspirations of science and amazing inconsequences of stupidity are both its heritage, accordingly as it is acting under normal or accidental conditions.11It 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.[343]Thelaudator temporis actiis 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.This is an assertion of grave significance.… Assuredly we have need of ingenuousness in entomology. Without a good dose of this quality, sheer wrongheadedness in the eyes of practical folk, who could trouble himself about insects? Yes, let us be naïve, without being childishly credulous. Before making the animal reason, let us reason a little ourselves. Above all, let us consult the experimental test. Facts gathered at random, without a critical selection, cannot constitute a law.12And the prudent naturalist sifts all the anecdotes and records of habits, all the rational or sentimental achievements which the[344]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:Yet one more of the fine arguments in support of the animal’s reasoning powers that takes to flight in the light of experiment.… I admire your candid faith, my masters, you who take seriously the statements of chance observers richer in imagination than in veracity. I admire your credulous enthusiasm, when, without criticism, you support your theories on such stupidities.13Fabre 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.[345]It is not the function of impartial history to maintain a given thesis; it follows where the facts lead it.14The 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?And, first of all, what is reason? Philosophy will give us learned definitions. Let us be modest; let us stick to the simplest; we are only dealing with animals. Reason is the faculty which refers the effect to the cause, the means to the end, and directs the action by making it conform to the requirements of the accidental. Within these limits is the animal able to reason? Does it understand how to associate abecausewith awhy, and behave in accordance? Can it, confronted with an accident, alter its line of conduct?15[346]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 thewhyof her work and does not in any case connect it with its natural aim, which is the rearing of the larvæ.These expert surgeons, these marvellous anatomists know nothing whatever, not even what their victims are intended for. Their talent, which confounds our reason, is devoid of a shadow of consciousness of the work accomplished, a shadow of foresight concerning the egg.16Fabre, 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.[347]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.But far from invalidating the conclusion drawn from the obvious stupidity of the insect even in the actions which are its specialty, the science and wisdom of instinct afford it a striking confirmation. The very “slightest glimmer of intelligence” would suffice to make the insect do what it does not and leave undone what it does even within the circumference of its attributions. If it is plainly devoid of this glimmer, how much more plainly is it devoid of that “splendour of intelligence” which the “miracles” of instinct would require!17To sum up, the insect sins too greatly by excess and by defect in its instinctive actions to justify our attributing to it an understanding of these actions; we are[348]indeed compelled absolutely to deny it any such understanding. It does at once too much and too little; too much for an insect’s intelligence and too little for any intelligence whatever. Everything is against it; its knowledge as much as its ignorance; its logic as much as its inconsequences.So long as its circumstances are normal, the insect’s actions are calculated most rationally in view of the object to be attained. What could be more logical, for instance, than the devices employed by the Hunting Wasp when paralysing her prey so that it may keep fresh for her larva, while in no wise imperilling that larva’s safety? It is pre-eminently rational; we ourselves could think of nothing better; and yet the Wasp’s action is not prompted by reason. If she thought out her surgery, she would be our superior. It will never occur to anybody that the creature is able, in the smallest degree, to account for its skilful vivisections. Therefore, so long as it does not depart from the path mapped out for it, the insect can perform the most sagacious actions without entitling us in the least to attribute these to the dictates of reason.18These acts of instinct, so scientifically devised and so rationally performed by works[349]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.I consign to the meditations of philosophy these five makers of spherical conserves—[he is speaking of the Scarabæi]—and their numerous rivals. I consign to them these inventors of the spherical box, of greater volume and smaller surface, for provisions liable to dry up, and I ask them how such logical inspirations, such rational provisions, could unfold themselves in the murky intellect of the insect.… The work of the pill-makers propounds a grave problem to him who is capable of reflection. It confronts us with this alternative: either we must attribute to the flat cranium of the Dung-beetle the notable honour of having solved for itself the geometrical problem of its conserve, or we must refer it to a harmony ruling all things beneath the eye of an Intelligence that, knowing all, has foreseen all.… If the Rhynchites and its emulators in defensive means against the perils of asphyxia have taught themselves their trade; if they are really the children of their works, do not let us hesitate … let us recognise them as engineers capable of winning our diplomas and degrees; let us proclaim the microcephalic Weevil a powerful thinker, a wonderful inventor. You dare not go to these lengths; you prefer to have recourse to the chances[350]of hazard. Ah, but what a wretched resource is hazard, when such rational contrivances are in question! One might as well throw into the air the characters of the alphabet and expect to see them, on falling, form certain lines selected from a poem! Instead of loading our minds with such tortuous ideas, how much simpler and more truthful to say: “A sovereign Order rules over matter.” This is what the Sloe Weevil tells us in its humility!19We 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 Wasp acts with a precision of which science would be jealous; she knows what man hardly ever knows; she understands the complex nervous system of her victim.… I say, she knows and understands; I ought to say, she acts as though she knew and understood. Her act is all inspiration. The insect, without having any conception of what it is doing, obeys the instinct that impels it. But[351]whence comes this sublime inspiration?… For me and my friend, this was and has remained one of the most eloquent revelations of the ineffable logic that rules the world and guides the unconscious by the laws of its inspiration. Moved to the depths by this flash of truth, we felt, forming upon our eyelids, tears of indefinable emotion.20The 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 anastronomerwho[352]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.In vain did I explain that to deduce the existence of an intelligent Being because one has discovered the existence of a plan is, after all, to continue the train of reasoning which deduces the existence of a plan after observing that there is a system of laws. In vain I pointed out that I was merely making use of his own argument. My astronomer refused to go any further along the path upon which he had entered. There he would have met God, and that was what he was unwilling to do.21J. H. Fabre does not stop half-way to the truth for fear of meeting God. He is logical, loyal, and courageous to the end. He argues from the facts to laws and from laws to[353]causes, and from them to the “Cause of causes,” the “Reason of reasons,”22concerning which, says M. Perrier, he has not “the pedantic feebleness of grudging it the name of God.”23If Fabre so briskly attacks the theory of evolution, it is not so much because of the biological results which it attributes to the animalfar nienteas 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.24If 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”25of evolution. At all events, as it is presented it is merely, we[354]repeat, “a convenient pillow for the man who has not the courage to investigate more deeply.”26For 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[355]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 writtenThe 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[356]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:The providential action of God manifests itself in the minute corpuscles of the animals as well as in the superior beings; it directs with the same foresight the step of an ant and the courses of the sun and the moon. It is the same in the supernatural domain. The Holy Spirit which has inspired our sacred Scriptures has penetrated them with its inspiration to the last letter:Divina sapientia omnem Scripturam divitus datam vel adunam usque litterulam attigit.…28The reader will doubtless pardon a professor of exegesis, whose admiration for the prince of entomologists has made him his biographer, for terminating this analysis of[357]the naturalist’s philosophical and religious ideas by a synthetic view which brings him into closer communion with his hero: “all things are linked together,” as he himself has said,29and the study of the Holy Scriptures, if he could have devoted himself thereto, would certainly have led this noble and penetrating mind to render the same testimony to the truth of Christ and the Church as that which it has rendered to the truth of the soul and God.[358]1J. P. Lafitte,La Nature, March 26, 1910.↑2Jean Aicard,Eloge de F. Coppée.↑3Souvenirs,X., p. 79.↑4Souvenirs,VIII., p. 346.The Life of the Spider, chap.II., “The Banded Epeira.”↑5Souvenirs,X., pp. 78–79.↑6Souvenirs,X., p. 92.↑7Revue des Deux-Mondes, Dec. 1910, p. 875.↑8Souvenirs,I., pp. 265, 314;V., p. 99;VII., p. 48.↑9Ibid.,I., 171–175.The Hunting Wasps, chap. X., “The Ignorance of Instinct.”↑10Souvenirs,I., pp. 297–298.The Mason-Bees, chap. ii., “Experiments.”↑11Souvenirs,I., p. 165.The Hunting Wasps, chap. x., “The Ignorance of Instinct.”Ibid.,IV., p. 238;V., p. 90.The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap. vii., “The Broad-necked Scarabæus.”↑12Souvenirs,II., p. 157.The Mason-Bees, chap. vii., “Reflections upon Insect Psychology.”Ibid.,VI., pp. 116, 131, 148.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xii., “The Burying Beetles: Experiments;” alsoWonders of Instinct, chap. vi.↑13Souvenirs,VI., pp. 130, 143.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xii., “The Burying Beetles: Experiments.”↑14Souvenirs,V., pp. 141, 142, 150.The Sacred Beetle and others, chap. xvi., “The Lunary Copris.”The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xi., “The Burying Beetles.”↑15Souvenirs,II., p. 159.The Mason-Bees, chap. vii.[346]“Reflections upon Insect Psychology.”Souvenirs,VI., 116.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xi. “The Burying Beetles”; see alsoWonders of Instinct, chap. vi.↑16Souvenirs,IV., p. 238.↑17Souvenirs,II., p. 138;VI., pp. 98, 117.↑18Souvenirs,I., p. 220.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiii, “The Ammophila.”↑19Souvenirs,V., p. 130.The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap. xvi., “The Lunary Copris.”Souvenirs,VI., p. 97.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. x., “Insect Colouring.”Souvenirs,VII., p. 193.↑20Souvenirs,I., p. 220.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiii., “The Ammophila.”Souvenirs,V., p. 322.The Life of the Grasshopper, chap. viii., “The Mantis: The Nest.”↑21E. Tavernier.↑22Souvenirs,X., pp. 92, 214.↑23Revue hebdomadaire, October 22, 1910.↑24La Nature, March 26, 1910. “It will be to M. Fabre’s lasting honour that he has never known any idleness of this kind or, indeed, any kind of idleness.”↑25Souvenirs,VI., p. 75.↑26Fabre denies “by the light of the facts” almost all the ideas which evolution invokes to explain the formation of species. (Revue des Deux Mondes, p. 891.) He says: “The facts as I see them lead me away from Darwin’s theories. Whenever I try to apply selection to the facts observed, it leaves me whirling in the void. It is majestic, but sterile: evolution asserts as regards the past; it asserts as regards the future; but it tells us as little as possible about the present. Of the three terms of duration one only escapes it, and that is the very one which is free from the fantastic imaginings of hypothesis.”↑27Fabre appears to conceive a relation between instinct and the organ analogous to that which obtains between the soul and the body; for him the first element of instinct is an incorporeal element which he does not otherwise define, which he characterises merely as a native impulse, irresistible, infallible and superior to the organism as well as to the sensibility of the insect, although it is not separated from nor completely independent of these.For the rest, instinct remains a mystery. What it is at bottom, “I do not know, I shall never know. It is an inviolable secret.” Like all true scientists, Fabre recognised the narrow limits of human knowledge and did not fear to admit them. According to him, neither life nor instinct results from matter; we must seek for an[355]explanation not below butaboveit, and of all the marvels created that compel us to look upward and proclaim the Supreme Intelligence whence they are derived, this is one of the most striking and persuasive: “The more I see, the more I observe, the more this Intelligence shines forth behind the mystery of things.”Fabre thus joins hands with Pasteur, and may fitly be mentioned in the same breath with him, as one of the most distinguished defenders of spiritual science and belief against materialistic science and atheism. This is all the more remarkable in that Fabre has never attempted to make anyapologia, but simply stated whither all his observations and reflections tended.↑28Quoted from Mgr. Mignot,Lettres sur les Etudes ecclésiastiques, p. 248.↑29Souvenirs,III., p. 91.↑

[Contents]CHAPTER XXFABRE’S WRITINGS (CONTINUED)In attempting to define the point of view, the method, and the style of the author of theSouvenirs, 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.TheSouvenirs entomologiquesbear 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:At the very outset, and to judge only very superficially, it seems that these latter are the essential part of the work, and the author must be considered before all as an admirable anecdotist, or, if you will, a chronicler of animal life. But we very[325]soon perceive, on reading him, how much method, selection, and persevering determination have presided over all these investigations, which may appear almost incoherent, and are, on the contrary, profoundly systematic and definitely ordered.1François Coppée, in a delightful story, shows us an austere landscape gardener fiercely destroying all the sparrows and, above all, the blackbirds, which disturb and dishonour the magnificent symmetry of his paths, which were clipped straight with the aid of a taut cord. Our gentleman does not leave a single one alive.… But on the other side of the party wall is a true poet, who, not having the same æsthetic, buys every day a quantity of birds in the market, and indefatigably “puts back the blackbirds” into his neighbour’s shrubberies.2Fabre’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, theSouvenirsproduce somewhat the same impression as theharmas, where the thousand actors of the rural stage follow one another, appear and reappear, at varied intervals, at the will[326]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 theSouvenirs.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[327]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.“If, by chance, an amalgam of Greek or Latin gives a meaning which alludes to its manner of life, the reality is very often in disagreement with the name, because the classifier, working over a necropolis, has outstripped the observer, whose attention is fixed upon the community of the living.”3So the historian of the insects takes the greatest liberties with official science and the official language.A Spider is not an insect, according to the rules of classification; and as such the Epeira seems out[328]of place here. A fig for systems! It is immaterial to the student of instinct whether the animal have eight legs instead of six, or pulmonary sacs instead of air-tubes.4Above 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 mottoMaxima in minimis.[329]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[330]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.But, on the other hand, if we are seeking original inventions, artistic masterpieces and ingenious contrivance, let us apply to the humblest, more often than not unknown to all. And let us not be repulsed by appearances. Ordure reserves for us beautiful and curious things of which we should not find the like upon the rose. So far the Minotaur has enlightened us by her family habits. Long live modesty and littleness!5The 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 theSouvenirs. 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[331]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 InsectesandLes 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 theSouvenirsmust 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[332]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.“Let us assemble facts in order to obtain ideas,” said Buffon. In this process may be summed up the whole of the great Provençal naturalist’s scientific work. If he notes the least circumstances of the little lives that unfold themselves before his eyes, he does so not merely as an observer and an artist who would not miss the smallest element of knowledge or beauty, but also as a philosopher who wishes to understand all that he sees, and for that reason neglects nothing. In entomology the smallest facts are not only the most curious and picturesque, they are often the most significant:maxima in minimis. Those minute details which are in danger of being regarded as “puerilities are connected with the most solemn questions which it is possible for man to consider.”6[333]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 theSouvenirsis 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 andsynthesisethe 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[334]human wisdom. This first law of instinct is brought into especial prominence by the author of theSouvenirsin 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[335]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[336]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[337]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.“It proceeds from the less essential to the more essential, in order to preserve a remnant of life to the very last. In the first place it absorbs the blood which issues from the wound which it has made in the skin; then it proceeds to the fatty matter enveloping the internal organs; then the muscular layer lining the skin; and then, in the[338]last place, the essential organs and the nerve-centres.”7“We thus have the spectacle of an insect which is eaten alive, morsel by morsel, during a period of nearly a fortnight, becoming empty and emaciated and collapsing upon itself,” while preserving its succulence and moisture to the end.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[339]disconcerts us by its ignorance and stupidity.The best-endowed insect cannot do anything “outside the narrow circle of its attributions. Every insect displays, in its calling, in which it excels, its series of logically co-ordinated actions. There it is truly a master.”8Apart from this it is utterly incapable. And even within the cycle of its attributions, apart from the customary conditions under which it exercises them, the ineptness of the insect surpasses imagination.Let us consider the facts.One of these Hymenoptera whose impeccable science we were admiring just now, a Languedocian Sphex, is busy closing the burrow in which she has laid her egg with its store of game. We brush her aside, and plunder her nest before her eyes. Directly the passage is free, she enters and remains for a few moments. Then she emerges and proceeds to stop up the cell, as though nothing were the matter, as though she had not found her burrow empty, as though the work of closing the cell had still a motive.9The Mason-Bee, excellently endowed in the matter of boring, emerges from her nest[340]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.“Here, then, are sturdy insects for whom boring tufa is mere child’s play, which will stupidly let themselves perish imprisoned by a paper bag,”10to which it does not even occur to bite a second time through the frail envelope through which they have already bitten once when it was, so to speak, part of the earthen enclosure.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[341]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.…[342]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.Sublime inspirations of science and amazing inconsequences of stupidity are both its heritage, accordingly as it is acting under normal or accidental conditions.11It 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.[343]Thelaudator temporis actiis 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.This is an assertion of grave significance.… Assuredly we have need of ingenuousness in entomology. Without a good dose of this quality, sheer wrongheadedness in the eyes of practical folk, who could trouble himself about insects? Yes, let us be naïve, without being childishly credulous. Before making the animal reason, let us reason a little ourselves. Above all, let us consult the experimental test. Facts gathered at random, without a critical selection, cannot constitute a law.12And the prudent naturalist sifts all the anecdotes and records of habits, all the rational or sentimental achievements which the[344]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:Yet one more of the fine arguments in support of the animal’s reasoning powers that takes to flight in the light of experiment.… I admire your candid faith, my masters, you who take seriously the statements of chance observers richer in imagination than in veracity. I admire your credulous enthusiasm, when, without criticism, you support your theories on such stupidities.13Fabre 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.[345]It is not the function of impartial history to maintain a given thesis; it follows where the facts lead it.14The 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?And, first of all, what is reason? Philosophy will give us learned definitions. Let us be modest; let us stick to the simplest; we are only dealing with animals. Reason is the faculty which refers the effect to the cause, the means to the end, and directs the action by making it conform to the requirements of the accidental. Within these limits is the animal able to reason? Does it understand how to associate abecausewith awhy, and behave in accordance? Can it, confronted with an accident, alter its line of conduct?15[346]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 thewhyof her work and does not in any case connect it with its natural aim, which is the rearing of the larvæ.These expert surgeons, these marvellous anatomists know nothing whatever, not even what their victims are intended for. Their talent, which confounds our reason, is devoid of a shadow of consciousness of the work accomplished, a shadow of foresight concerning the egg.16Fabre, 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.[347]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.But far from invalidating the conclusion drawn from the obvious stupidity of the insect even in the actions which are its specialty, the science and wisdom of instinct afford it a striking confirmation. The very “slightest glimmer of intelligence” would suffice to make the insect do what it does not and leave undone what it does even within the circumference of its attributions. If it is plainly devoid of this glimmer, how much more plainly is it devoid of that “splendour of intelligence” which the “miracles” of instinct would require!17To sum up, the insect sins too greatly by excess and by defect in its instinctive actions to justify our attributing to it an understanding of these actions; we are[348]indeed compelled absolutely to deny it any such understanding. It does at once too much and too little; too much for an insect’s intelligence and too little for any intelligence whatever. Everything is against it; its knowledge as much as its ignorance; its logic as much as its inconsequences.So long as its circumstances are normal, the insect’s actions are calculated most rationally in view of the object to be attained. What could be more logical, for instance, than the devices employed by the Hunting Wasp when paralysing her prey so that it may keep fresh for her larva, while in no wise imperilling that larva’s safety? It is pre-eminently rational; we ourselves could think of nothing better; and yet the Wasp’s action is not prompted by reason. If she thought out her surgery, she would be our superior. It will never occur to anybody that the creature is able, in the smallest degree, to account for its skilful vivisections. Therefore, so long as it does not depart from the path mapped out for it, the insect can perform the most sagacious actions without entitling us in the least to attribute these to the dictates of reason.18These acts of instinct, so scientifically devised and so rationally performed by works[349]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.I consign to the meditations of philosophy these five makers of spherical conserves—[he is speaking of the Scarabæi]—and their numerous rivals. I consign to them these inventors of the spherical box, of greater volume and smaller surface, for provisions liable to dry up, and I ask them how such logical inspirations, such rational provisions, could unfold themselves in the murky intellect of the insect.… The work of the pill-makers propounds a grave problem to him who is capable of reflection. It confronts us with this alternative: either we must attribute to the flat cranium of the Dung-beetle the notable honour of having solved for itself the geometrical problem of its conserve, or we must refer it to a harmony ruling all things beneath the eye of an Intelligence that, knowing all, has foreseen all.… If the Rhynchites and its emulators in defensive means against the perils of asphyxia have taught themselves their trade; if they are really the children of their works, do not let us hesitate … let us recognise them as engineers capable of winning our diplomas and degrees; let us proclaim the microcephalic Weevil a powerful thinker, a wonderful inventor. You dare not go to these lengths; you prefer to have recourse to the chances[350]of hazard. Ah, but what a wretched resource is hazard, when such rational contrivances are in question! One might as well throw into the air the characters of the alphabet and expect to see them, on falling, form certain lines selected from a poem! Instead of loading our minds with such tortuous ideas, how much simpler and more truthful to say: “A sovereign Order rules over matter.” This is what the Sloe Weevil tells us in its humility!19We 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 Wasp acts with a precision of which science would be jealous; she knows what man hardly ever knows; she understands the complex nervous system of her victim.… I say, she knows and understands; I ought to say, she acts as though she knew and understood. Her act is all inspiration. The insect, without having any conception of what it is doing, obeys the instinct that impels it. But[351]whence comes this sublime inspiration?… For me and my friend, this was and has remained one of the most eloquent revelations of the ineffable logic that rules the world and guides the unconscious by the laws of its inspiration. Moved to the depths by this flash of truth, we felt, forming upon our eyelids, tears of indefinable emotion.20The 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 anastronomerwho[352]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.In vain did I explain that to deduce the existence of an intelligent Being because one has discovered the existence of a plan is, after all, to continue the train of reasoning which deduces the existence of a plan after observing that there is a system of laws. In vain I pointed out that I was merely making use of his own argument. My astronomer refused to go any further along the path upon which he had entered. There he would have met God, and that was what he was unwilling to do.21J. H. Fabre does not stop half-way to the truth for fear of meeting God. He is logical, loyal, and courageous to the end. He argues from the facts to laws and from laws to[353]causes, and from them to the “Cause of causes,” the “Reason of reasons,”22concerning which, says M. Perrier, he has not “the pedantic feebleness of grudging it the name of God.”23If Fabre so briskly attacks the theory of evolution, it is not so much because of the biological results which it attributes to the animalfar nienteas 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.24If 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”25of evolution. At all events, as it is presented it is merely, we[354]repeat, “a convenient pillow for the man who has not the courage to investigate more deeply.”26For 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[355]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 writtenThe 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[356]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:The providential action of God manifests itself in the minute corpuscles of the animals as well as in the superior beings; it directs with the same foresight the step of an ant and the courses of the sun and the moon. It is the same in the supernatural domain. The Holy Spirit which has inspired our sacred Scriptures has penetrated them with its inspiration to the last letter:Divina sapientia omnem Scripturam divitus datam vel adunam usque litterulam attigit.…28The reader will doubtless pardon a professor of exegesis, whose admiration for the prince of entomologists has made him his biographer, for terminating this analysis of[357]the naturalist’s philosophical and religious ideas by a synthetic view which brings him into closer communion with his hero: “all things are linked together,” as he himself has said,29and the study of the Holy Scriptures, if he could have devoted himself thereto, would certainly have led this noble and penetrating mind to render the same testimony to the truth of Christ and the Church as that which it has rendered to the truth of the soul and God.[358]1J. P. Lafitte,La Nature, March 26, 1910.↑2Jean Aicard,Eloge de F. Coppée.↑3Souvenirs,X., p. 79.↑4Souvenirs,VIII., p. 346.The Life of the Spider, chap.II., “The Banded Epeira.”↑5Souvenirs,X., pp. 78–79.↑6Souvenirs,X., p. 92.↑7Revue des Deux-Mondes, Dec. 1910, p. 875.↑8Souvenirs,I., pp. 265, 314;V., p. 99;VII., p. 48.↑9Ibid.,I., 171–175.The Hunting Wasps, chap. X., “The Ignorance of Instinct.”↑10Souvenirs,I., pp. 297–298.The Mason-Bees, chap. ii., “Experiments.”↑11Souvenirs,I., p. 165.The Hunting Wasps, chap. x., “The Ignorance of Instinct.”Ibid.,IV., p. 238;V., p. 90.The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap. vii., “The Broad-necked Scarabæus.”↑12Souvenirs,II., p. 157.The Mason-Bees, chap. vii., “Reflections upon Insect Psychology.”Ibid.,VI., pp. 116, 131, 148.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xii., “The Burying Beetles: Experiments;” alsoWonders of Instinct, chap. vi.↑13Souvenirs,VI., pp. 130, 143.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xii., “The Burying Beetles: Experiments.”↑14Souvenirs,V., pp. 141, 142, 150.The Sacred Beetle and others, chap. xvi., “The Lunary Copris.”The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xi., “The Burying Beetles.”↑15Souvenirs,II., p. 159.The Mason-Bees, chap. vii.[346]“Reflections upon Insect Psychology.”Souvenirs,VI., 116.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xi. “The Burying Beetles”; see alsoWonders of Instinct, chap. vi.↑16Souvenirs,IV., p. 238.↑17Souvenirs,II., p. 138;VI., pp. 98, 117.↑18Souvenirs,I., p. 220.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiii, “The Ammophila.”↑19Souvenirs,V., p. 130.The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap. xvi., “The Lunary Copris.”Souvenirs,VI., p. 97.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. x., “Insect Colouring.”Souvenirs,VII., p. 193.↑20Souvenirs,I., p. 220.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiii., “The Ammophila.”Souvenirs,V., p. 322.The Life of the Grasshopper, chap. viii., “The Mantis: The Nest.”↑21E. Tavernier.↑22Souvenirs,X., pp. 92, 214.↑23Revue hebdomadaire, October 22, 1910.↑24La Nature, March 26, 1910. “It will be to M. Fabre’s lasting honour that he has never known any idleness of this kind or, indeed, any kind of idleness.”↑25Souvenirs,VI., p. 75.↑26Fabre denies “by the light of the facts” almost all the ideas which evolution invokes to explain the formation of species. (Revue des Deux Mondes, p. 891.) He says: “The facts as I see them lead me away from Darwin’s theories. Whenever I try to apply selection to the facts observed, it leaves me whirling in the void. It is majestic, but sterile: evolution asserts as regards the past; it asserts as regards the future; but it tells us as little as possible about the present. Of the three terms of duration one only escapes it, and that is the very one which is free from the fantastic imaginings of hypothesis.”↑27Fabre appears to conceive a relation between instinct and the organ analogous to that which obtains between the soul and the body; for him the first element of instinct is an incorporeal element which he does not otherwise define, which he characterises merely as a native impulse, irresistible, infallible and superior to the organism as well as to the sensibility of the insect, although it is not separated from nor completely independent of these.For the rest, instinct remains a mystery. What it is at bottom, “I do not know, I shall never know. It is an inviolable secret.” Like all true scientists, Fabre recognised the narrow limits of human knowledge and did not fear to admit them. According to him, neither life nor instinct results from matter; we must seek for an[355]explanation not below butaboveit, and of all the marvels created that compel us to look upward and proclaim the Supreme Intelligence whence they are derived, this is one of the most striking and persuasive: “The more I see, the more I observe, the more this Intelligence shines forth behind the mystery of things.”Fabre thus joins hands with Pasteur, and may fitly be mentioned in the same breath with him, as one of the most distinguished defenders of spiritual science and belief against materialistic science and atheism. This is all the more remarkable in that Fabre has never attempted to make anyapologia, but simply stated whither all his observations and reflections tended.↑28Quoted from Mgr. Mignot,Lettres sur les Etudes ecclésiastiques, p. 248.↑29Souvenirs,III., p. 91.↑

CHAPTER XXFABRE’S WRITINGS (CONTINUED)

In attempting to define the point of view, the method, and the style of the author of theSouvenirs, 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.TheSouvenirs entomologiquesbear 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:At the very outset, and to judge only very superficially, it seems that these latter are the essential part of the work, and the author must be considered before all as an admirable anecdotist, or, if you will, a chronicler of animal life. But we very[325]soon perceive, on reading him, how much method, selection, and persevering determination have presided over all these investigations, which may appear almost incoherent, and are, on the contrary, profoundly systematic and definitely ordered.1François Coppée, in a delightful story, shows us an austere landscape gardener fiercely destroying all the sparrows and, above all, the blackbirds, which disturb and dishonour the magnificent symmetry of his paths, which were clipped straight with the aid of a taut cord. Our gentleman does not leave a single one alive.… But on the other side of the party wall is a true poet, who, not having the same æsthetic, buys every day a quantity of birds in the market, and indefatigably “puts back the blackbirds” into his neighbour’s shrubberies.2Fabre’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, theSouvenirsproduce somewhat the same impression as theharmas, where the thousand actors of the rural stage follow one another, appear and reappear, at varied intervals, at the will[326]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 theSouvenirs.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[327]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.“If, by chance, an amalgam of Greek or Latin gives a meaning which alludes to its manner of life, the reality is very often in disagreement with the name, because the classifier, working over a necropolis, has outstripped the observer, whose attention is fixed upon the community of the living.”3So the historian of the insects takes the greatest liberties with official science and the official language.A Spider is not an insect, according to the rules of classification; and as such the Epeira seems out[328]of place here. A fig for systems! It is immaterial to the student of instinct whether the animal have eight legs instead of six, or pulmonary sacs instead of air-tubes.4Above 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 mottoMaxima in minimis.[329]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[330]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.But, on the other hand, if we are seeking original inventions, artistic masterpieces and ingenious contrivance, let us apply to the humblest, more often than not unknown to all. And let us not be repulsed by appearances. Ordure reserves for us beautiful and curious things of which we should not find the like upon the rose. So far the Minotaur has enlightened us by her family habits. Long live modesty and littleness!5The 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 theSouvenirs. 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[331]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 InsectesandLes 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 theSouvenirsmust 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[332]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.“Let us assemble facts in order to obtain ideas,” said Buffon. In this process may be summed up the whole of the great Provençal naturalist’s scientific work. If he notes the least circumstances of the little lives that unfold themselves before his eyes, he does so not merely as an observer and an artist who would not miss the smallest element of knowledge or beauty, but also as a philosopher who wishes to understand all that he sees, and for that reason neglects nothing. In entomology the smallest facts are not only the most curious and picturesque, they are often the most significant:maxima in minimis. Those minute details which are in danger of being regarded as “puerilities are connected with the most solemn questions which it is possible for man to consider.”6[333]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 theSouvenirsis 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 andsynthesisethe 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[334]human wisdom. This first law of instinct is brought into especial prominence by the author of theSouvenirsin 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[335]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[336]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[337]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.“It proceeds from the less essential to the more essential, in order to preserve a remnant of life to the very last. In the first place it absorbs the blood which issues from the wound which it has made in the skin; then it proceeds to the fatty matter enveloping the internal organs; then the muscular layer lining the skin; and then, in the[338]last place, the essential organs and the nerve-centres.”7“We thus have the spectacle of an insect which is eaten alive, morsel by morsel, during a period of nearly a fortnight, becoming empty and emaciated and collapsing upon itself,” while preserving its succulence and moisture to the end.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[339]disconcerts us by its ignorance and stupidity.The best-endowed insect cannot do anything “outside the narrow circle of its attributions. Every insect displays, in its calling, in which it excels, its series of logically co-ordinated actions. There it is truly a master.”8Apart from this it is utterly incapable. And even within the cycle of its attributions, apart from the customary conditions under which it exercises them, the ineptness of the insect surpasses imagination.Let us consider the facts.One of these Hymenoptera whose impeccable science we were admiring just now, a Languedocian Sphex, is busy closing the burrow in which she has laid her egg with its store of game. We brush her aside, and plunder her nest before her eyes. Directly the passage is free, she enters and remains for a few moments. Then she emerges and proceeds to stop up the cell, as though nothing were the matter, as though she had not found her burrow empty, as though the work of closing the cell had still a motive.9The Mason-Bee, excellently endowed in the matter of boring, emerges from her nest[340]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.“Here, then, are sturdy insects for whom boring tufa is mere child’s play, which will stupidly let themselves perish imprisoned by a paper bag,”10to which it does not even occur to bite a second time through the frail envelope through which they have already bitten once when it was, so to speak, part of the earthen enclosure.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[341]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.…[342]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.Sublime inspirations of science and amazing inconsequences of stupidity are both its heritage, accordingly as it is acting under normal or accidental conditions.11It 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.[343]Thelaudator temporis actiis 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.This is an assertion of grave significance.… Assuredly we have need of ingenuousness in entomology. Without a good dose of this quality, sheer wrongheadedness in the eyes of practical folk, who could trouble himself about insects? Yes, let us be naïve, without being childishly credulous. Before making the animal reason, let us reason a little ourselves. Above all, let us consult the experimental test. Facts gathered at random, without a critical selection, cannot constitute a law.12And the prudent naturalist sifts all the anecdotes and records of habits, all the rational or sentimental achievements which the[344]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:Yet one more of the fine arguments in support of the animal’s reasoning powers that takes to flight in the light of experiment.… I admire your candid faith, my masters, you who take seriously the statements of chance observers richer in imagination than in veracity. I admire your credulous enthusiasm, when, without criticism, you support your theories on such stupidities.13Fabre 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.[345]It is not the function of impartial history to maintain a given thesis; it follows where the facts lead it.14The 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?And, first of all, what is reason? Philosophy will give us learned definitions. Let us be modest; let us stick to the simplest; we are only dealing with animals. Reason is the faculty which refers the effect to the cause, the means to the end, and directs the action by making it conform to the requirements of the accidental. Within these limits is the animal able to reason? Does it understand how to associate abecausewith awhy, and behave in accordance? Can it, confronted with an accident, alter its line of conduct?15[346]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 thewhyof her work and does not in any case connect it with its natural aim, which is the rearing of the larvæ.These expert surgeons, these marvellous anatomists know nothing whatever, not even what their victims are intended for. Their talent, which confounds our reason, is devoid of a shadow of consciousness of the work accomplished, a shadow of foresight concerning the egg.16Fabre, 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.[347]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.But far from invalidating the conclusion drawn from the obvious stupidity of the insect even in the actions which are its specialty, the science and wisdom of instinct afford it a striking confirmation. The very “slightest glimmer of intelligence” would suffice to make the insect do what it does not and leave undone what it does even within the circumference of its attributions. If it is plainly devoid of this glimmer, how much more plainly is it devoid of that “splendour of intelligence” which the “miracles” of instinct would require!17To sum up, the insect sins too greatly by excess and by defect in its instinctive actions to justify our attributing to it an understanding of these actions; we are[348]indeed compelled absolutely to deny it any such understanding. It does at once too much and too little; too much for an insect’s intelligence and too little for any intelligence whatever. Everything is against it; its knowledge as much as its ignorance; its logic as much as its inconsequences.So long as its circumstances are normal, the insect’s actions are calculated most rationally in view of the object to be attained. What could be more logical, for instance, than the devices employed by the Hunting Wasp when paralysing her prey so that it may keep fresh for her larva, while in no wise imperilling that larva’s safety? It is pre-eminently rational; we ourselves could think of nothing better; and yet the Wasp’s action is not prompted by reason. If she thought out her surgery, she would be our superior. It will never occur to anybody that the creature is able, in the smallest degree, to account for its skilful vivisections. Therefore, so long as it does not depart from the path mapped out for it, the insect can perform the most sagacious actions without entitling us in the least to attribute these to the dictates of reason.18These acts of instinct, so scientifically devised and so rationally performed by works[349]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.I consign to the meditations of philosophy these five makers of spherical conserves—[he is speaking of the Scarabæi]—and their numerous rivals. I consign to them these inventors of the spherical box, of greater volume and smaller surface, for provisions liable to dry up, and I ask them how such logical inspirations, such rational provisions, could unfold themselves in the murky intellect of the insect.… The work of the pill-makers propounds a grave problem to him who is capable of reflection. It confronts us with this alternative: either we must attribute to the flat cranium of the Dung-beetle the notable honour of having solved for itself the geometrical problem of its conserve, or we must refer it to a harmony ruling all things beneath the eye of an Intelligence that, knowing all, has foreseen all.… If the Rhynchites and its emulators in defensive means against the perils of asphyxia have taught themselves their trade; if they are really the children of their works, do not let us hesitate … let us recognise them as engineers capable of winning our diplomas and degrees; let us proclaim the microcephalic Weevil a powerful thinker, a wonderful inventor. You dare not go to these lengths; you prefer to have recourse to the chances[350]of hazard. Ah, but what a wretched resource is hazard, when such rational contrivances are in question! One might as well throw into the air the characters of the alphabet and expect to see them, on falling, form certain lines selected from a poem! Instead of loading our minds with such tortuous ideas, how much simpler and more truthful to say: “A sovereign Order rules over matter.” This is what the Sloe Weevil tells us in its humility!19We 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 Wasp acts with a precision of which science would be jealous; she knows what man hardly ever knows; she understands the complex nervous system of her victim.… I say, she knows and understands; I ought to say, she acts as though she knew and understood. Her act is all inspiration. The insect, without having any conception of what it is doing, obeys the instinct that impels it. But[351]whence comes this sublime inspiration?… For me and my friend, this was and has remained one of the most eloquent revelations of the ineffable logic that rules the world and guides the unconscious by the laws of its inspiration. Moved to the depths by this flash of truth, we felt, forming upon our eyelids, tears of indefinable emotion.20The 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 anastronomerwho[352]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.In vain did I explain that to deduce the existence of an intelligent Being because one has discovered the existence of a plan is, after all, to continue the train of reasoning which deduces the existence of a plan after observing that there is a system of laws. In vain I pointed out that I was merely making use of his own argument. My astronomer refused to go any further along the path upon which he had entered. There he would have met God, and that was what he was unwilling to do.21J. H. Fabre does not stop half-way to the truth for fear of meeting God. He is logical, loyal, and courageous to the end. He argues from the facts to laws and from laws to[353]causes, and from them to the “Cause of causes,” the “Reason of reasons,”22concerning which, says M. Perrier, he has not “the pedantic feebleness of grudging it the name of God.”23If Fabre so briskly attacks the theory of evolution, it is not so much because of the biological results which it attributes to the animalfar nienteas 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.24If 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”25of evolution. At all events, as it is presented it is merely, we[354]repeat, “a convenient pillow for the man who has not the courage to investigate more deeply.”26For 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[355]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 writtenThe 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[356]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:The providential action of God manifests itself in the minute corpuscles of the animals as well as in the superior beings; it directs with the same foresight the step of an ant and the courses of the sun and the moon. It is the same in the supernatural domain. The Holy Spirit which has inspired our sacred Scriptures has penetrated them with its inspiration to the last letter:Divina sapientia omnem Scripturam divitus datam vel adunam usque litterulam attigit.…28The reader will doubtless pardon a professor of exegesis, whose admiration for the prince of entomologists has made him his biographer, for terminating this analysis of[357]the naturalist’s philosophical and religious ideas by a synthetic view which brings him into closer communion with his hero: “all things are linked together,” as he himself has said,29and the study of the Holy Scriptures, if he could have devoted himself thereto, would certainly have led this noble and penetrating mind to render the same testimony to the truth of Christ and the Church as that which it has rendered to the truth of the soul and God.[358]

In attempting to define the point of view, the method, and the style of the author of theSouvenirs, 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.

TheSouvenirs entomologiquesbear 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:

At the very outset, and to judge only very superficially, it seems that these latter are the essential part of the work, and the author must be considered before all as an admirable anecdotist, or, if you will, a chronicler of animal life. But we very[325]soon perceive, on reading him, how much method, selection, and persevering determination have presided over all these investigations, which may appear almost incoherent, and are, on the contrary, profoundly systematic and definitely ordered.1François Coppée, in a delightful story, shows us an austere landscape gardener fiercely destroying all the sparrows and, above all, the blackbirds, which disturb and dishonour the magnificent symmetry of his paths, which were clipped straight with the aid of a taut cord. Our gentleman does not leave a single one alive.… But on the other side of the party wall is a true poet, who, not having the same æsthetic, buys every day a quantity of birds in the market, and indefatigably “puts back the blackbirds” into his neighbour’s shrubberies.2

At the very outset, and to judge only very superficially, it seems that these latter are the essential part of the work, and the author must be considered before all as an admirable anecdotist, or, if you will, a chronicler of animal life. But we very[325]soon perceive, on reading him, how much method, selection, and persevering determination have presided over all these investigations, which may appear almost incoherent, and are, on the contrary, profoundly systematic and definitely ordered.1

François Coppée, in a delightful story, shows us an austere landscape gardener fiercely destroying all the sparrows and, above all, the blackbirds, which disturb and dishonour the magnificent symmetry of his paths, which were clipped straight with the aid of a taut cord. Our gentleman does not leave a single one alive.… But on the other side of the party wall is a true poet, who, not having the same æsthetic, buys every day a quantity of birds in the market, and indefatigably “puts back the blackbirds” into his neighbour’s shrubberies.2

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, theSouvenirsproduce somewhat the same impression as theharmas, where the thousand actors of the rural stage follow one another, appear and reappear, at varied intervals, at the will[326]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 theSouvenirs.

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[327]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.

“If, by chance, an amalgam of Greek or Latin gives a meaning which alludes to its manner of life, the reality is very often in disagreement with the name, because the classifier, working over a necropolis, has outstripped the observer, whose attention is fixed upon the community of the living.”3

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

A Spider is not an insect, according to the rules of classification; and as such the Epeira seems out[328]of place here. A fig for systems! It is immaterial to the student of instinct whether the animal have eight legs instead of six, or pulmonary sacs instead of air-tubes.4

A Spider is not an insect, according to the rules of classification; and as such the Epeira seems out[328]of place here. A fig for systems! It is immaterial to the student of instinct whether the animal have eight legs instead of six, or pulmonary sacs instead of air-tubes.4

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 mottoMaxima in minimis.[329]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[330]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.But, on the other hand, if we are seeking original inventions, artistic masterpieces and ingenious contrivance, let us apply to the humblest, more often than not unknown to all. And let us not be repulsed by appearances. Ordure reserves for us beautiful and curious things of which we should not find the like upon the rose. So far the Minotaur has enlightened us by her family habits. Long live modesty and littleness!5

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[330]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.

But, on the other hand, if we are seeking original inventions, artistic masterpieces and ingenious contrivance, let us apply to the humblest, more often than not unknown to all. And let us not be repulsed by appearances. Ordure reserves for us beautiful and curious things of which we should not find the like upon the rose. So far the Minotaur has enlightened us by her family habits. Long live modesty and littleness!5

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 theSouvenirs. 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[331]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 InsectesandLes 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 theSouvenirsmust 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[332]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.

“Let us assemble facts in order to obtain ideas,” said Buffon. In this process may be summed up the whole of the great Provençal naturalist’s scientific work. If he notes the least circumstances of the little lives that unfold themselves before his eyes, he does so not merely as an observer and an artist who would not miss the smallest element of knowledge or beauty, but also as a philosopher who wishes to understand all that he sees, and for that reason neglects nothing. In entomology the smallest facts are not only the most curious and picturesque, they are often the most significant:maxima in minimis. Those minute details which are in danger of being regarded as “puerilities are connected with the most solemn questions which it is possible for man to consider.”6[333]

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 theSouvenirsis 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 andsynthesisethe 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[334]human wisdom. This first law of instinct is brought into especial prominence by the author of theSouvenirsin 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[335]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[336]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[337]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.

“It proceeds from the less essential to the more essential, in order to preserve a remnant of life to the very last. In the first place it absorbs the blood which issues from the wound which it has made in the skin; then it proceeds to the fatty matter enveloping the internal organs; then the muscular layer lining the skin; and then, in the[338]last place, the essential organs and the nerve-centres.”7“We thus have the spectacle of an insect which is eaten alive, morsel by morsel, during a period of nearly a fortnight, becoming empty and emaciated and collapsing upon itself,” while preserving its succulence and moisture to the end.

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[339]disconcerts us by its ignorance and stupidity.

The best-endowed insect cannot do anything “outside the narrow circle of its attributions. Every insect displays, in its calling, in which it excels, its series of logically co-ordinated actions. There it is truly a master.”8Apart from this it is utterly incapable. And even within the cycle of its attributions, apart from the customary conditions under which it exercises them, the ineptness of the insect surpasses imagination.

Let us consider the facts.

One of these Hymenoptera whose impeccable science we were admiring just now, a Languedocian Sphex, is busy closing the burrow in which she has laid her egg with its store of game. We brush her aside, and plunder her nest before her eyes. Directly the passage is free, she enters and remains for a few moments. Then she emerges and proceeds to stop up the cell, as though nothing were the matter, as though she had not found her burrow empty, as though the work of closing the cell had still a motive.9

The Mason-Bee, excellently endowed in the matter of boring, emerges from her nest[340]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.

“Here, then, are sturdy insects for whom boring tufa is mere child’s play, which will stupidly let themselves perish imprisoned by a paper bag,”10to which it does not even occur to bite a second time through the frail envelope through which they have already bitten once when it was, so to speak, part of the earthen enclosure.

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[341]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.…[342]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.Sublime inspirations of science and amazing inconsequences of stupidity are both its heritage, accordingly as it is acting under normal or accidental conditions.11

By a strange contradiction, characteristic of the instinctive faculties, profound knowledge is associated with an ignorance no less profound.…[342]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.

Sublime inspirations of science and amazing inconsequences of stupidity are both its heritage, accordingly as it is acting under normal or accidental conditions.11

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.[343]

Thelaudator temporis actiis 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.This is an assertion of grave significance.… Assuredly we have need of ingenuousness in entomology. Without a good dose of this quality, sheer wrongheadedness in the eyes of practical folk, who could trouble himself about insects? Yes, let us be naïve, without being childishly credulous. Before making the animal reason, let us reason a little ourselves. Above all, let us consult the experimental test. Facts gathered at random, without a critical selection, cannot constitute a law.12

Thelaudator temporis actiis 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.

This is an assertion of grave significance.… Assuredly we have need of ingenuousness in entomology. Without a good dose of this quality, sheer wrongheadedness in the eyes of practical folk, who could trouble himself about insects? Yes, let us be naïve, without being childishly credulous. Before making the animal reason, let us reason a little ourselves. Above all, let us consult the experimental test. Facts gathered at random, without a critical selection, cannot constitute a law.12

And the prudent naturalist sifts all the anecdotes and records of habits, all the rational or sentimental achievements which the[344]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:

Yet one more of the fine arguments in support of the animal’s reasoning powers that takes to flight in the light of experiment.… I admire your candid faith, my masters, you who take seriously the statements of chance observers richer in imagination than in veracity. I admire your credulous enthusiasm, when, without criticism, you support your theories on such stupidities.13

Yet one more of the fine arguments in support of the animal’s reasoning powers that takes to flight in the light of experiment.… I admire your candid faith, my masters, you who take seriously the statements of chance observers richer in imagination than in veracity. I admire your credulous enthusiasm, when, without criticism, you support your theories on such stupidities.13

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.[345]

It is not the function of impartial history to maintain a given thesis; it follows where the facts lead it.14

It is not the function of impartial history to maintain a given thesis; it follows where the facts lead it.14

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?And, first of all, what is reason? Philosophy will give us learned definitions. Let us be modest; let us stick to the simplest; we are only dealing with animals. Reason is the faculty which refers the effect to the cause, the means to the end, and directs the action by making it conform to the requirements of the accidental. Within these limits is the animal able to reason? Does it understand how to associate abecausewith awhy, and behave in accordance? Can it, confronted with an accident, alter its line of conduct?15

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?

And, first of all, what is reason? Philosophy will give us learned definitions. Let us be modest; let us stick to the simplest; we are only dealing with animals. Reason is the faculty which refers the effect to the cause, the means to the end, and directs the action by making it conform to the requirements of the accidental. Within these limits is the animal able to reason? Does it understand how to associate abecausewith awhy, and behave in accordance? Can it, confronted with an accident, alter its line of conduct?15

[346]

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 thewhyof her work and does not in any case connect it with its natural aim, which is the rearing of the larvæ.

These expert surgeons, these marvellous anatomists know nothing whatever, not even what their victims are intended for. Their talent, which confounds our reason, is devoid of a shadow of consciousness of the work accomplished, a shadow of foresight concerning the egg.16

These expert surgeons, these marvellous anatomists know nothing whatever, not even what their victims are intended for. Their talent, which confounds our reason, is devoid of a shadow of consciousness of the work accomplished, a shadow of foresight concerning the egg.16

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.[347]

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.

But far from invalidating the conclusion drawn from the obvious stupidity of the insect even in the actions which are its specialty, the science and wisdom of instinct afford it a striking confirmation. The very “slightest glimmer of intelligence” would suffice to make the insect do what it does not and leave undone what it does even within the circumference of its attributions. If it is plainly devoid of this glimmer, how much more plainly is it devoid of that “splendour of intelligence” which the “miracles” of instinct would require!17To sum up, the insect sins too greatly by excess and by defect in its instinctive actions to justify our attributing to it an understanding of these actions; we are[348]indeed compelled absolutely to deny it any such understanding. It does at once too much and too little; too much for an insect’s intelligence and too little for any intelligence whatever. Everything is against it; its knowledge as much as its ignorance; its logic as much as its inconsequences.

So long as its circumstances are normal, the insect’s actions are calculated most rationally in view of the object to be attained. What could be more logical, for instance, than the devices employed by the Hunting Wasp when paralysing her prey so that it may keep fresh for her larva, while in no wise imperilling that larva’s safety? It is pre-eminently rational; we ourselves could think of nothing better; and yet the Wasp’s action is not prompted by reason. If she thought out her surgery, she would be our superior. It will never occur to anybody that the creature is able, in the smallest degree, to account for its skilful vivisections. Therefore, so long as it does not depart from the path mapped out for it, the insect can perform the most sagacious actions without entitling us in the least to attribute these to the dictates of reason.18

So long as its circumstances are normal, the insect’s actions are calculated most rationally in view of the object to be attained. What could be more logical, for instance, than the devices employed by the Hunting Wasp when paralysing her prey so that it may keep fresh for her larva, while in no wise imperilling that larva’s safety? It is pre-eminently rational; we ourselves could think of nothing better; and yet the Wasp’s action is not prompted by reason. If she thought out her surgery, she would be our superior. It will never occur to anybody that the creature is able, in the smallest degree, to account for its skilful vivisections. Therefore, so long as it does not depart from the path mapped out for it, the insect can perform the most sagacious actions without entitling us in the least to attribute these to the dictates of reason.18

These acts of instinct, so scientifically devised and so rationally performed by works[349]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.

I consign to the meditations of philosophy these five makers of spherical conserves—[he is speaking of the Scarabæi]—and their numerous rivals. I consign to them these inventors of the spherical box, of greater volume and smaller surface, for provisions liable to dry up, and I ask them how such logical inspirations, such rational provisions, could unfold themselves in the murky intellect of the insect.… The work of the pill-makers propounds a grave problem to him who is capable of reflection. It confronts us with this alternative: either we must attribute to the flat cranium of the Dung-beetle the notable honour of having solved for itself the geometrical problem of its conserve, or we must refer it to a harmony ruling all things beneath the eye of an Intelligence that, knowing all, has foreseen all.… If the Rhynchites and its emulators in defensive means against the perils of asphyxia have taught themselves their trade; if they are really the children of their works, do not let us hesitate … let us recognise them as engineers capable of winning our diplomas and degrees; let us proclaim the microcephalic Weevil a powerful thinker, a wonderful inventor. You dare not go to these lengths; you prefer to have recourse to the chances[350]of hazard. Ah, but what a wretched resource is hazard, when such rational contrivances are in question! One might as well throw into the air the characters of the alphabet and expect to see them, on falling, form certain lines selected from a poem! Instead of loading our minds with such tortuous ideas, how much simpler and more truthful to say: “A sovereign Order rules over matter.” This is what the Sloe Weevil tells us in its humility!19

I consign to the meditations of philosophy these five makers of spherical conserves—[he is speaking of the Scarabæi]—and their numerous rivals. I consign to them these inventors of the spherical box, of greater volume and smaller surface, for provisions liable to dry up, and I ask them how such logical inspirations, such rational provisions, could unfold themselves in the murky intellect of the insect.… The work of the pill-makers propounds a grave problem to him who is capable of reflection. It confronts us with this alternative: either we must attribute to the flat cranium of the Dung-beetle the notable honour of having solved for itself the geometrical problem of its conserve, or we must refer it to a harmony ruling all things beneath the eye of an Intelligence that, knowing all, has foreseen all.… If the Rhynchites and its emulators in defensive means against the perils of asphyxia have taught themselves their trade; if they are really the children of their works, do not let us hesitate … let us recognise them as engineers capable of winning our diplomas and degrees; let us proclaim the microcephalic Weevil a powerful thinker, a wonderful inventor. You dare not go to these lengths; you prefer to have recourse to the chances[350]of hazard. Ah, but what a wretched resource is hazard, when such rational contrivances are in question! One might as well throw into the air the characters of the alphabet and expect to see them, on falling, form certain lines selected from a poem! Instead of loading our minds with such tortuous ideas, how much simpler and more truthful to say: “A sovereign Order rules over matter.” This is what the Sloe Weevil tells us in its humility!19

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 Wasp acts with a precision of which science would be jealous; she knows what man hardly ever knows; she understands the complex nervous system of her victim.… I say, she knows and understands; I ought to say, she acts as though she knew and understood. Her act is all inspiration. The insect, without having any conception of what it is doing, obeys the instinct that impels it. But[351]whence comes this sublime inspiration?… For me and my friend, this was and has remained one of the most eloquent revelations of the ineffable logic that rules the world and guides the unconscious by the laws of its inspiration. Moved to the depths by this flash of truth, we felt, forming upon our eyelids, tears of indefinable emotion.20

The Wasp acts with a precision of which science would be jealous; she knows what man hardly ever knows; she understands the complex nervous system of her victim.… I say, she knows and understands; I ought to say, she acts as though she knew and understood. Her act is all inspiration. The insect, without having any conception of what it is doing, obeys the instinct that impels it. But[351]whence comes this sublime inspiration?… For me and my friend, this was and has remained one of the most eloquent revelations of the ineffable logic that rules the world and guides the unconscious by the laws of its inspiration. Moved to the depths by this flash of truth, we felt, forming upon our eyelids, tears of indefinable emotion.20

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 anastronomerwho[352]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.In vain did I explain that to deduce the existence of an intelligent Being because one has discovered the existence of a plan is, after all, to continue the train of reasoning which deduces the existence of a plan after observing that there is a system of laws. In vain I pointed out that I was merely making use of his own argument. My astronomer refused to go any further along the path upon which he had entered. There he would have met God, and that was what he was unwilling to do.21

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 anastronomerwho[352]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.

In vain did I explain that to deduce the existence of an intelligent Being because one has discovered the existence of a plan is, after all, to continue the train of reasoning which deduces the existence of a plan after observing that there is a system of laws. In vain I pointed out that I was merely making use of his own argument. My astronomer refused to go any further along the path upon which he had entered. There he would have met God, and that was what he was unwilling to do.21

J. H. Fabre does not stop half-way to the truth for fear of meeting God. He is logical, loyal, and courageous to the end. He argues from the facts to laws and from laws to[353]causes, and from them to the “Cause of causes,” the “Reason of reasons,”22concerning which, says M. Perrier, he has not “the pedantic feebleness of grudging it the name of God.”23

If Fabre so briskly attacks the theory of evolution, it is not so much because of the biological results which it attributes to the animalfar nienteas 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.24If 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”25of evolution. At all events, as it is presented it is merely, we[354]repeat, “a convenient pillow for the man who has not the courage to investigate more deeply.”26For 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[355]

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 writtenThe 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[356]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.…

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[356]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:

The providential action of God manifests itself in the minute corpuscles of the animals as well as in the superior beings; it directs with the same foresight the step of an ant and the courses of the sun and the moon. It is the same in the supernatural domain. The Holy Spirit which has inspired our sacred Scriptures has penetrated them with its inspiration to the last letter:Divina sapientia omnem Scripturam divitus datam vel adunam usque litterulam attigit.…28

The providential action of God manifests itself in the minute corpuscles of the animals as well as in the superior beings; it directs with the same foresight the step of an ant and the courses of the sun and the moon. It is the same in the supernatural domain. The Holy Spirit which has inspired our sacred Scriptures has penetrated them with its inspiration to the last letter:Divina sapientia omnem Scripturam divitus datam vel adunam usque litterulam attigit.…28

The reader will doubtless pardon a professor of exegesis, whose admiration for the prince of entomologists has made him his biographer, for terminating this analysis of[357]the naturalist’s philosophical and religious ideas by a synthetic view which brings him into closer communion with his hero: “all things are linked together,” as he himself has said,29and the study of the Holy Scriptures, if he could have devoted himself thereto, would certainly have led this noble and penetrating mind to render the same testimony to the truth of Christ and the Church as that which it has rendered to the truth of the soul and God.[358]

1J. P. Lafitte,La Nature, March 26, 1910.↑2Jean Aicard,Eloge de F. Coppée.↑3Souvenirs,X., p. 79.↑4Souvenirs,VIII., p. 346.The Life of the Spider, chap.II., “The Banded Epeira.”↑5Souvenirs,X., pp. 78–79.↑6Souvenirs,X., p. 92.↑7Revue des Deux-Mondes, Dec. 1910, p. 875.↑8Souvenirs,I., pp. 265, 314;V., p. 99;VII., p. 48.↑9Ibid.,I., 171–175.The Hunting Wasps, chap. X., “The Ignorance of Instinct.”↑10Souvenirs,I., pp. 297–298.The Mason-Bees, chap. ii., “Experiments.”↑11Souvenirs,I., p. 165.The Hunting Wasps, chap. x., “The Ignorance of Instinct.”Ibid.,IV., p. 238;V., p. 90.The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap. vii., “The Broad-necked Scarabæus.”↑12Souvenirs,II., p. 157.The Mason-Bees, chap. vii., “Reflections upon Insect Psychology.”Ibid.,VI., pp. 116, 131, 148.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xii., “The Burying Beetles: Experiments;” alsoWonders of Instinct, chap. vi.↑13Souvenirs,VI., pp. 130, 143.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xii., “The Burying Beetles: Experiments.”↑14Souvenirs,V., pp. 141, 142, 150.The Sacred Beetle and others, chap. xvi., “The Lunary Copris.”The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xi., “The Burying Beetles.”↑15Souvenirs,II., p. 159.The Mason-Bees, chap. vii.[346]“Reflections upon Insect Psychology.”Souvenirs,VI., 116.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xi. “The Burying Beetles”; see alsoWonders of Instinct, chap. vi.↑16Souvenirs,IV., p. 238.↑17Souvenirs,II., p. 138;VI., pp. 98, 117.↑18Souvenirs,I., p. 220.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiii, “The Ammophila.”↑19Souvenirs,V., p. 130.The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap. xvi., “The Lunary Copris.”Souvenirs,VI., p. 97.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. x., “Insect Colouring.”Souvenirs,VII., p. 193.↑20Souvenirs,I., p. 220.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiii., “The Ammophila.”Souvenirs,V., p. 322.The Life of the Grasshopper, chap. viii., “The Mantis: The Nest.”↑21E. Tavernier.↑22Souvenirs,X., pp. 92, 214.↑23Revue hebdomadaire, October 22, 1910.↑24La Nature, March 26, 1910. “It will be to M. Fabre’s lasting honour that he has never known any idleness of this kind or, indeed, any kind of idleness.”↑25Souvenirs,VI., p. 75.↑26Fabre denies “by the light of the facts” almost all the ideas which evolution invokes to explain the formation of species. (Revue des Deux Mondes, p. 891.) He says: “The facts as I see them lead me away from Darwin’s theories. Whenever I try to apply selection to the facts observed, it leaves me whirling in the void. It is majestic, but sterile: evolution asserts as regards the past; it asserts as regards the future; but it tells us as little as possible about the present. Of the three terms of duration one only escapes it, and that is the very one which is free from the fantastic imaginings of hypothesis.”↑27Fabre appears to conceive a relation between instinct and the organ analogous to that which obtains between the soul and the body; for him the first element of instinct is an incorporeal element which he does not otherwise define, which he characterises merely as a native impulse, irresistible, infallible and superior to the organism as well as to the sensibility of the insect, although it is not separated from nor completely independent of these.For the rest, instinct remains a mystery. What it is at bottom, “I do not know, I shall never know. It is an inviolable secret.” Like all true scientists, Fabre recognised the narrow limits of human knowledge and did not fear to admit them. According to him, neither life nor instinct results from matter; we must seek for an[355]explanation not below butaboveit, and of all the marvels created that compel us to look upward and proclaim the Supreme Intelligence whence they are derived, this is one of the most striking and persuasive: “The more I see, the more I observe, the more this Intelligence shines forth behind the mystery of things.”Fabre thus joins hands with Pasteur, and may fitly be mentioned in the same breath with him, as one of the most distinguished defenders of spiritual science and belief against materialistic science and atheism. This is all the more remarkable in that Fabre has never attempted to make anyapologia, but simply stated whither all his observations and reflections tended.↑28Quoted from Mgr. Mignot,Lettres sur les Etudes ecclésiastiques, p. 248.↑29Souvenirs,III., p. 91.↑

1J. P. Lafitte,La Nature, March 26, 1910.↑2Jean Aicard,Eloge de F. Coppée.↑3Souvenirs,X., p. 79.↑4Souvenirs,VIII., p. 346.The Life of the Spider, chap.II., “The Banded Epeira.”↑5Souvenirs,X., pp. 78–79.↑6Souvenirs,X., p. 92.↑7Revue des Deux-Mondes, Dec. 1910, p. 875.↑8Souvenirs,I., pp. 265, 314;V., p. 99;VII., p. 48.↑9Ibid.,I., 171–175.The Hunting Wasps, chap. X., “The Ignorance of Instinct.”↑10Souvenirs,I., pp. 297–298.The Mason-Bees, chap. ii., “Experiments.”↑11Souvenirs,I., p. 165.The Hunting Wasps, chap. x., “The Ignorance of Instinct.”Ibid.,IV., p. 238;V., p. 90.The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap. vii., “The Broad-necked Scarabæus.”↑12Souvenirs,II., p. 157.The Mason-Bees, chap. vii., “Reflections upon Insect Psychology.”Ibid.,VI., pp. 116, 131, 148.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xii., “The Burying Beetles: Experiments;” alsoWonders of Instinct, chap. vi.↑13Souvenirs,VI., pp. 130, 143.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xii., “The Burying Beetles: Experiments.”↑14Souvenirs,V., pp. 141, 142, 150.The Sacred Beetle and others, chap. xvi., “The Lunary Copris.”The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xi., “The Burying Beetles.”↑15Souvenirs,II., p. 159.The Mason-Bees, chap. vii.[346]“Reflections upon Insect Psychology.”Souvenirs,VI., 116.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xi. “The Burying Beetles”; see alsoWonders of Instinct, chap. vi.↑16Souvenirs,IV., p. 238.↑17Souvenirs,II., p. 138;VI., pp. 98, 117.↑18Souvenirs,I., p. 220.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiii, “The Ammophila.”↑19Souvenirs,V., p. 130.The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap. xvi., “The Lunary Copris.”Souvenirs,VI., p. 97.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. x., “Insect Colouring.”Souvenirs,VII., p. 193.↑20Souvenirs,I., p. 220.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiii., “The Ammophila.”Souvenirs,V., p. 322.The Life of the Grasshopper, chap. viii., “The Mantis: The Nest.”↑21E. Tavernier.↑22Souvenirs,X., pp. 92, 214.↑23Revue hebdomadaire, October 22, 1910.↑24La Nature, March 26, 1910. “It will be to M. Fabre’s lasting honour that he has never known any idleness of this kind or, indeed, any kind of idleness.”↑25Souvenirs,VI., p. 75.↑26Fabre denies “by the light of the facts” almost all the ideas which evolution invokes to explain the formation of species. (Revue des Deux Mondes, p. 891.) He says: “The facts as I see them lead me away from Darwin’s theories. Whenever I try to apply selection to the facts observed, it leaves me whirling in the void. It is majestic, but sterile: evolution asserts as regards the past; it asserts as regards the future; but it tells us as little as possible about the present. Of the three terms of duration one only escapes it, and that is the very one which is free from the fantastic imaginings of hypothesis.”↑27Fabre appears to conceive a relation between instinct and the organ analogous to that which obtains between the soul and the body; for him the first element of instinct is an incorporeal element which he does not otherwise define, which he characterises merely as a native impulse, irresistible, infallible and superior to the organism as well as to the sensibility of the insect, although it is not separated from nor completely independent of these.For the rest, instinct remains a mystery. What it is at bottom, “I do not know, I shall never know. It is an inviolable secret.” Like all true scientists, Fabre recognised the narrow limits of human knowledge and did not fear to admit them. According to him, neither life nor instinct results from matter; we must seek for an[355]explanation not below butaboveit, and of all the marvels created that compel us to look upward and proclaim the Supreme Intelligence whence they are derived, this is one of the most striking and persuasive: “The more I see, the more I observe, the more this Intelligence shines forth behind the mystery of things.”Fabre thus joins hands with Pasteur, and may fitly be mentioned in the same breath with him, as one of the most distinguished defenders of spiritual science and belief against materialistic science and atheism. This is all the more remarkable in that Fabre has never attempted to make anyapologia, but simply stated whither all his observations and reflections tended.↑28Quoted from Mgr. Mignot,Lettres sur les Etudes ecclésiastiques, p. 248.↑29Souvenirs,III., p. 91.↑

1J. P. Lafitte,La Nature, March 26, 1910.↑

1J. P. Lafitte,La Nature, March 26, 1910.↑

2Jean Aicard,Eloge de F. Coppée.↑

2Jean Aicard,Eloge de F. Coppée.↑

3Souvenirs,X., p. 79.↑

3Souvenirs,X., p. 79.↑

4Souvenirs,VIII., p. 346.The Life of the Spider, chap.II., “The Banded Epeira.”↑

4Souvenirs,VIII., p. 346.The Life of the Spider, chap.II., “The Banded Epeira.”↑

5Souvenirs,X., pp. 78–79.↑

5Souvenirs,X., pp. 78–79.↑

6Souvenirs,X., p. 92.↑

6Souvenirs,X., p. 92.↑

7Revue des Deux-Mondes, Dec. 1910, p. 875.↑

7Revue des Deux-Mondes, Dec. 1910, p. 875.↑

8Souvenirs,I., pp. 265, 314;V., p. 99;VII., p. 48.↑

8Souvenirs,I., pp. 265, 314;V., p. 99;VII., p. 48.↑

9Ibid.,I., 171–175.The Hunting Wasps, chap. X., “The Ignorance of Instinct.”↑

9Ibid.,I., 171–175.The Hunting Wasps, chap. X., “The Ignorance of Instinct.”↑

10Souvenirs,I., pp. 297–298.The Mason-Bees, chap. ii., “Experiments.”↑

10Souvenirs,I., pp. 297–298.The Mason-Bees, chap. ii., “Experiments.”↑

11Souvenirs,I., p. 165.The Hunting Wasps, chap. x., “The Ignorance of Instinct.”Ibid.,IV., p. 238;V., p. 90.The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap. vii., “The Broad-necked Scarabæus.”↑

11Souvenirs,I., p. 165.The Hunting Wasps, chap. x., “The Ignorance of Instinct.”Ibid.,IV., p. 238;V., p. 90.The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap. vii., “The Broad-necked Scarabæus.”↑

12Souvenirs,II., p. 157.The Mason-Bees, chap. vii., “Reflections upon Insect Psychology.”Ibid.,VI., pp. 116, 131, 148.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xii., “The Burying Beetles: Experiments;” alsoWonders of Instinct, chap. vi.↑

12Souvenirs,II., p. 157.The Mason-Bees, chap. vii., “Reflections upon Insect Psychology.”Ibid.,VI., pp. 116, 131, 148.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xii., “The Burying Beetles: Experiments;” alsoWonders of Instinct, chap. vi.↑

13Souvenirs,VI., pp. 130, 143.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xii., “The Burying Beetles: Experiments.”↑

13Souvenirs,VI., pp. 130, 143.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xii., “The Burying Beetles: Experiments.”↑

14Souvenirs,V., pp. 141, 142, 150.The Sacred Beetle and others, chap. xvi., “The Lunary Copris.”The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xi., “The Burying Beetles.”↑

14Souvenirs,V., pp. 141, 142, 150.The Sacred Beetle and others, chap. xvi., “The Lunary Copris.”The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xi., “The Burying Beetles.”↑

15Souvenirs,II., p. 159.The Mason-Bees, chap. vii.[346]“Reflections upon Insect Psychology.”Souvenirs,VI., 116.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xi. “The Burying Beetles”; see alsoWonders of Instinct, chap. vi.↑

15Souvenirs,II., p. 159.The Mason-Bees, chap. vii.[346]“Reflections upon Insect Psychology.”Souvenirs,VI., 116.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. xi. “The Burying Beetles”; see alsoWonders of Instinct, chap. vi.↑

16Souvenirs,IV., p. 238.↑

16Souvenirs,IV., p. 238.↑

17Souvenirs,II., p. 138;VI., pp. 98, 117.↑

17Souvenirs,II., p. 138;VI., pp. 98, 117.↑

18Souvenirs,I., p. 220.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiii, “The Ammophila.”↑

18Souvenirs,I., p. 220.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiii, “The Ammophila.”↑

19Souvenirs,V., p. 130.The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap. xvi., “The Lunary Copris.”Souvenirs,VI., p. 97.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. x., “Insect Colouring.”Souvenirs,VII., p. 193.↑

19Souvenirs,V., p. 130.The Sacred Beetle and Others, chap. xvi., “The Lunary Copris.”Souvenirs,VI., p. 97.The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles, chap. x., “Insect Colouring.”Souvenirs,VII., p. 193.↑

20Souvenirs,I., p. 220.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiii., “The Ammophila.”Souvenirs,V., p. 322.The Life of the Grasshopper, chap. viii., “The Mantis: The Nest.”↑

20Souvenirs,I., p. 220.The Hunting Wasps, chap. xiii., “The Ammophila.”Souvenirs,V., p. 322.The Life of the Grasshopper, chap. viii., “The Mantis: The Nest.”↑

21E. Tavernier.↑

21E. Tavernier.↑

22Souvenirs,X., pp. 92, 214.↑

22Souvenirs,X., pp. 92, 214.↑

23Revue hebdomadaire, October 22, 1910.↑

23Revue hebdomadaire, October 22, 1910.↑

24La Nature, March 26, 1910. “It will be to M. Fabre’s lasting honour that he has never known any idleness of this kind or, indeed, any kind of idleness.”↑

24La Nature, March 26, 1910. “It will be to M. Fabre’s lasting honour that he has never known any idleness of this kind or, indeed, any kind of idleness.”↑

25Souvenirs,VI., p. 75.↑

25Souvenirs,VI., p. 75.↑

26Fabre denies “by the light of the facts” almost all the ideas which evolution invokes to explain the formation of species. (Revue des Deux Mondes, p. 891.) He says: “The facts as I see them lead me away from Darwin’s theories. Whenever I try to apply selection to the facts observed, it leaves me whirling in the void. It is majestic, but sterile: evolution asserts as regards the past; it asserts as regards the future; but it tells us as little as possible about the present. Of the three terms of duration one only escapes it, and that is the very one which is free from the fantastic imaginings of hypothesis.”↑

26Fabre denies “by the light of the facts” almost all the ideas which evolution invokes to explain the formation of species. (Revue des Deux Mondes, p. 891.) He says: “The facts as I see them lead me away from Darwin’s theories. Whenever I try to apply selection to the facts observed, it leaves me whirling in the void. It is majestic, but sterile: evolution asserts as regards the past; it asserts as regards the future; but it tells us as little as possible about the present. Of the three terms of duration one only escapes it, and that is the very one which is free from the fantastic imaginings of hypothesis.”↑

27Fabre appears to conceive a relation between instinct and the organ analogous to that which obtains between the soul and the body; for him the first element of instinct is an incorporeal element which he does not otherwise define, which he characterises merely as a native impulse, irresistible, infallible and superior to the organism as well as to the sensibility of the insect, although it is not separated from nor completely independent of these.For the rest, instinct remains a mystery. What it is at bottom, “I do not know, I shall never know. It is an inviolable secret.” Like all true scientists, Fabre recognised the narrow limits of human knowledge and did not fear to admit them. According to him, neither life nor instinct results from matter; we must seek for an[355]explanation not below butaboveit, and of all the marvels created that compel us to look upward and proclaim the Supreme Intelligence whence they are derived, this is one of the most striking and persuasive: “The more I see, the more I observe, the more this Intelligence shines forth behind the mystery of things.”Fabre thus joins hands with Pasteur, and may fitly be mentioned in the same breath with him, as one of the most distinguished defenders of spiritual science and belief against materialistic science and atheism. This is all the more remarkable in that Fabre has never attempted to make anyapologia, but simply stated whither all his observations and reflections tended.↑

27Fabre appears to conceive a relation between instinct and the organ analogous to that which obtains between the soul and the body; for him the first element of instinct is an incorporeal element which he does not otherwise define, which he characterises merely as a native impulse, irresistible, infallible and superior to the organism as well as to the sensibility of the insect, although it is not separated from nor completely independent of these.

For the rest, instinct remains a mystery. What it is at bottom, “I do not know, I shall never know. It is an inviolable secret.” Like all true scientists, Fabre recognised the narrow limits of human knowledge and did not fear to admit them. According to him, neither life nor instinct results from matter; we must seek for an[355]explanation not below butaboveit, and of all the marvels created that compel us to look upward and proclaim the Supreme Intelligence whence they are derived, this is one of the most striking and persuasive: “The more I see, the more I observe, the more this Intelligence shines forth behind the mystery of things.”

Fabre thus joins hands with Pasteur, and may fitly be mentioned in the same breath with him, as one of the most distinguished defenders of spiritual science and belief against materialistic science and atheism. This is all the more remarkable in that Fabre has never attempted to make anyapologia, but simply stated whither all his observations and reflections tended.↑

28Quoted from Mgr. Mignot,Lettres sur les Etudes ecclésiastiques, p. 248.↑

28Quoted from Mgr. Mignot,Lettres sur les Etudes ecclésiastiques, p. 248.↑

29Souvenirs,III., p. 91.↑

29Souvenirs,III., p. 91.↑

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