"How did a miserable grub acquire its marvellous knowledge? Are its habits,
its aptitudes, and its industries the integration of the infinitely little,
acquired by successive experiences on the limitless path of time?"
It is in these words that Fabre presents the problem of evolution.
Difficult though it may be to follow the sequence of forms which have
endlessly succeeded and replaced one another on the face of the earth,
since the beginning of the world, it is certain that all living creatures
are closely related; and the magnificent and fertile hypothesis of
evolution, which seeks to explain how extant forms are derived from
extinct, has the immense advantage of giving a plausible reason for the
majority of the facts which at least cease to be completely unintelligible.
Otherwise we can certainly never imagine how so many instincts, and these
so complex and perfect, could have issued suddenly "from the urn of
hazard."
But Fabre will suppose nothing; he will only record the facts. Instead of
wandering in the region of probabilities, he prefers to confine himself to
the reality, and for the rest to reply simply that "we do not know."
This stern, positive, rigorous, independent, and observant mind, nourished
upon geometry and the exact sciences, which has never been able to content
itself with approximations and probabilities, could but distrust the
seductions of hypotheses.
His robust common sense, which was always his protection against
precipitate conclusions, too clearly comprehends the limits of science and
the necessity of accumulating facts "upon the thorny path of observation
and experiment" to indulge in generalization. He feels that life has
secrets which our minds are powerless to probe, and that "human knowledge
will be erased from the archives of the world before we know the last word
concerning the smallest fly."
This is why he was regarded as "suspect" by the company of official
scientists, to whom he was a dissenter, almost a traitor, especially at a
moment when the theories of evolution, then in the first flush of their
novelty, were everywhere the cause of a general elation.
No one as yet was capable of divining the man of the future in this modest
thinker who would not accept the word of the masters interested, but in
opposing the theory of transformation, far from being reactionary, Fabre
revealed himself, at least in the domain of animal psychology, as an
innovator, a true precursor.
Moreover, his observations, always so direct and personal, often revealed
the contrary of what was asserted or foreseen by the magic formulae
suggested by the mind.
To the ingenious mechanism invented by the transformists he preferred to
oppose, not contrary argument, but the naked undeniable fact, the obvious
testimony, the certain and irrefragable example. "Is it," he would ask
them, "to repulse their enemies that certain caterpillars smear themselves
with a corrosive product? But the larva of the Calosoma sycophanta, which
feeds on the Processional caterpillar of the oak-tree, pays no heed to it,
neither does the Dermestes, which feeds on the entrails of the Processional
caterpillar of the pine-tree."
And consider mimicry. According to the theory of evolution, certain insects
would utilize their resemblance to certain others in order to conceal
themselves, and to introduce themselves into the dwellings of the latter as
parasites living at their expense. Such would be the case with the
Volucella, a large fly whose costume, striped with brown and yellow bands,
gives it a rude resemblance to the wasp. Obliged, if not for its own sake
at least for that of its family, to force itself into the wasp's dwelling
as a parasite, it deceitfully dresses itself, we are told, in the livery of
its victim, thus affording the most curious and striking example of
mimicry; and naturalists insufficiently informed would regard it as one of
the greatest triumphs of evolution.
Now what does the Volucella do? It is true that it lays its eggs without
being disturbed in the nest of the wasp. But, as the rigorous observer will
tell you, it is a precious auxiliary and not an enemy of the community. Its
grubs, far from disguising or concealing themselves, "come and go openly
upon the combs, although every stranger is immediately massacred and thrown
out." Moreover, "they watch the hygiene of the city by clearing the nest of
its dead and ridding the larvae of the wasps of their excretory products."
Plunging successively into each chamber of the dormitory the forepart of
their bodies, "they provoke the emission of that fluid excrement of which
the larvae, owing to their cloistration, contain an extreme reserve." In a
word, the grubs of the Volucella "are the nurses of the larvae," performing
the most intimate duties." (9/1.)
What an astonishing conclusion! What a disconcerting and unexpected reply
to the "theories in vogue"!
Fabre, however, with his poetic temperament and ardent imagination, seemed
admirably prepared to grasp all that vast network of relations by which all
creatures are connected; but what proves the solidity of his imperishable
work is that all theories, all doctrines, and all systems may resort to it
in turn and profit by his proofs and arguments.
And he himself, although he boasts with so much reason of putting forward
no pretensions, no theories, no systems, has he not even so yielded
somewhat to the suggestions of the prevailing school of thought, and have
not his verdicts against evolution often been the more excessive in that he
has paid so notable a tribute to the evolutionary progress of creation?
In the first place, he is far from excluding the undeniable influence of
environing causes; the immense role of those myriad external circumstances
on which Lamarck so strongly insisted; but the work of these factors is, in
his eyes, only accessory and wholly secondary in the economy of nature; and
in any case it is far from explaining the definite direction and the
transcendent harmony which characterize evolution, both in its totality and
in its most infinitesimal details.
In one of his admirable little textbooks, intended to teach and to
popularize science, he complacently enumerates the happy modifications
effected by that "sublime magician," selection as understood by Darwin. He
evokes the metamorphoses of the potato, which, on the mountains of Chili,
is merely a wretched venomous tubercle, and those of the cabbage, which on
the rocky face of oceanic precipices is nothing but a weed, "with a tall
stem and scanty disordered leaves of a crude green, an acrid savour, and a
rank smell"; he speaks of wheat, formerly a poor unknown grass; the
primitive pear-tree "an ugly intractable thorny bush, with detestable
bitter fruit"; the wild celery, which grows beside ponds, "green all over,
hard, with a repulsive flavour, and which gradually becomes tenderer,
sweeter, whiter," and "ceases to distil its poison." (9/2.)
With profound exactitude this great biologist has also perceived the degree
to which size may be modified; may dwindle to dwarfness when a niggardly
soil refuses to furnish beast and plant alike with a sufficient
nourishment.
Without any communication with the other scientists who were occupied by
the same questions, knowing nothing of the results which these
experimenters had attained in the case of small mammiferous animals, and
which prove that dwarfness has often no other cause than physiological
poverty, he confirmed and expanded their ideas from an entomological point
of view. (9/3.)
Scarcely ever, indeed, was he first inspired by the doings of others in
this or that direction; he read scarcely anything, and nature was his sole
teacher. He considered that the knowledge to be obtained from books is but
so much vapour compared with the realities; he borrowed only from himself,
and resorted directly to the facts as nature presented them. One has only
to see his scanty library of odd volumes to be convinced how little he owes
to others, whether writers or workers.
A true naturalist philosopher, this profound observer has also thrown a
light upon certain singular anomalies which, in the insect world, seem to
constitute an exception, at all events in our Europe, to the general rules.
It is not only to the curiosity and for the amusement of entomologists that
he proposes these curious anatomical problems, but also, and chiefly, to
the Darwinian wisdom of the evolutionists.
Why, for example, is the Scarabaeus sacer born and why does it remain
maimed all its life; that is to say, deprived of all the digits on the
anterior limbs?
"If it is true that every change in the form of an appendage is only the
sign of a habit, a special instinct, or a modification in the conditions of
life, the theory of evolution should endeavour to account for this
mutilation, for these creatures are, like all others, constructed on the
same plan and provided with absolutely the same appendages."
The posterior limbs of the Geotrupes stercorarius, "perfectly developed in
the adult, are atrophied in the larvae, reduced to mere specks."
The general history of the species, of its migrations and its changes, will
doubtless one day throw light upon these strange infirmities, here
temporary and there permanent, which may perhaps be explained by unforeseen
encounters with undiscovered specimens, strayed perhaps into distant
countries. (9/4.)
What invaluable documents for the entomologist and the historian of the
evolution of the species are those multiple and fabulous metamorphoses of
the Sitares and the Meloïdae which this indefatigable inquirer has revealed
in all their astonishing phases!
One of the finest examples of scientific investigation is the pursuit,
through a period of twenty-five years, with a sagacity which seems to
border on divination, of this problem of HYPER-METAMORPHOSIS. The larvae of
those coleoptera which we have seen introduced, with infernal cunning, into
the cells of the Anthophora (See Chapter 8 above.), suffer no less than
four moults before they become nymphs.
These merely external transformations, which involve only the envelope, and
respect the internal structure, correspond each with a change of
environment and of diet. Each time the organism adapts itself to its new
mode of existence, "as perfectly as when it becomes adult"; and we see the
insect, which was clear-sighted, become blind; it loses its feet, to
recover them later; its slender body becomes ventripotent; hard, it grows
soft; its mandibles, at first steely, become hollowed out spoonwise, each
modification of conformation having its motive in a fresh modification of
the conditions of the creature's life.
How explain this strange evolution of a fourfold larval existence, these
successive appearances of organs, which become entirely unlike what they
were, to serve functions each time different?
What is the reason, the intention, the high law which presides over these
visible changes, these successive envelopments of creatures one within the
other, these multiple transfigurations?
By what bygone adaptations has the Sitaris successively acquired these
diverse extraordinary phases of life, indicating possibly for each
corresponding age some ancient and remote heredity? (9/5.)
How many other arguments might evolution derive from his books, and what
illustrations of the Darwinian philosophy has he unconsciously furnished!
Does he not even allow the admission to escape him that "the spirit of
cunning and deception is transmitted"? He sees in the persecutions of the
Dytiscus, the "pirate of the ponds," the origin of the faculty which the
Phryganea has of refashioning its shield when demanded of it. "To evade the
assault of the brigand, the Phryganea must hastily abandon its mantle; it
allows itself to sink to the bottom, and promptly removes itself; necessity
is the mother of invention." (9/6.)
Returning to the lacunae which it so amazes Fabre to discover in our
organization, even in the most perfect of us, are they fundamentally very
real? These mysterious and unknown senses which he has so greatly
contributed to elucidate in the case of the inferior species: why, he asks,
have we not inherited them, if we are truly the final term and the supreme
goal of creation?
But in cultivating our intuition, as Bergson invites us to do, would it be
impossible to re-awaken, deep within us, these strange faculties, which
perhaps are only slumbering? What of that species of indefinable memory
which permits the red ant, the Bembex, the Cerceris, the Pompilus, the
Chalicodoma and so many others to "find themselves," to orientate
themselves with infallible certainty and incredible accuracy? Is it not to
be found, according to travellers, in those men who have remained close to
nature and accustomed from their remotest origins to listen to the silence
of the great deserts?
Finally, the evolutionists, who "reconstruct the world in imagination," and
who see in the relationship of neighbouring species a proof of descent or
derivation, and a whole ideal series, will not fail to perceive throughout
his work, in the elementary operations of the Eumenes and the Odynerus,
cousins of the Cerceris, which sting their prey in places as yet ill
determined, not indeed so many isolated attempts, but an incomplete process
of invention, an attempt at procedures still in the fact of formation: in a
word, the birth of that marvellous instinct which ends in the transcendent
art of the Sphex and the Ammophila.
Although they have acquired such prodigious deftness, these master
paralysers are not, in fact, always infallible. Occasionally the Sphex
blunders and gropes, "operates clumsily"; the cricket revives, gets upon
its feet, turns round and round, and tries to walk. But, inquires Fabre, do
you say that having profited by a fortuitous act, which has turned out to
be favourable to them, they have perfected themselves by contact with their
elders, "thanks to the imitation of example," and that they have thus
crystallized their experiences, which have been transmitted by heredity--
thereby fixed in the race? (9/7.)
How much we should prefer that it were so! How much more comprehensible and
interesting their life would become!
But "when the hymenopteron breaks its cocoon, where are its masters! Its
predecessors have long ago disappeared. How then can it receive education
by example?"
You who "shape the world to your whim," you will reply: "Doubtless there
are no longer masters to-day; but go back to the first ages of the globe,
when the world in its newness, as Lucretius has so superbly said, as yet
knew neither bitter cold nor excessive heat (9/8.); an eternal springtide
bathed the earth, and the insects, not dying, as to-day, at the first touch
of frost, two successive generations lived side by side, and the younger
generation could profit at leisure by the lessons of example." (9/9.)
Let us return to Fabre's laboratory, to the covers of wire-gauze, and note
what becomes, at the approach of winter, of the survivors of the vespine
city.
In the mild and comfortable retreat where the wasps are kept under
observation they die no less, despite their well-being and all the care
expended on them, when once "the inexorable hour" has struck, and once the
exact capital of life which seems to have been imparted to them ages ago is
exhausted. With no apparent cause, we see death busy among them. "Suddenly
the wasps begin to fall as though struck by lightning; for a few moments
the abdomen quivers and the legs gesticulate, then finally remain inert,
like a clockwork machine whose spring has run down to the last coil."
(9/10.) This law is general; "the insect is born orphaned both of mother
and father, excepting the social insect, and again excepting the dung-
beetle, which dies full of days." (9/11.)
Moreover, Fabre is never weary of demonstrating that the insect, perfectly
unconscious of the motive which makes it act, this thereby incapable of
profiting by the lessons of experience and of innovation in its habits,
beyond a very narrow circle. "No apprentices, no masters." In this world
each obeys "the inner voice" on its own account; each sets itself to
accomplish its task, not only without troubling as to what its neighbour is
doing, but without thinking any further as to what it is doing itself;
instance the Epeïra, turning its back on its work, yet "the latter proceeds
of itself, so well is the mechanism devised"; and if by ill chance the
spider acted otherwise it would probably fail.
Darwin knew barely the tenth part of the colossal work of Fabre. He had
read firstly in the "Annals of Natural Science" of the habits of the
Cerceris and the fabulous history of the Meloidae. Finally he saw the first
volume of the "Souvenirs" appear, and was interested in the highest degree
by the beautiful study on the sense of location and direction in the Mason-
bees.
This was already more than enough to excite his curiosity and to make him
wonder whether all his philosophy would not stumble over this obstacle.
After having succeeded in explaining so luminously--and with what a lofty
purview--the origin of species and the whole concatenation of animal forms,
would it not be as though he halted midway in his task were the sanctuary
of the origin of instinct to remain for ever inscrutable?
Fabre had not yet left Orange when Darwin engaged in a curious
correspondence which lasted until the former had been nearly two years at
Sérignan, and which showed how passionately interested the great theorist
of evolution was in all the Frenchman's surprising observations.
It seems that on his side Fabre took a singular interest in the discussion
on account of the absolute sincerity, the obvious desire to arrive at the
truth, and also the ardent interest in his own studies, of which Darwin's
letters were full. He conceived a veritable affection for Darwin, and
commenced to learn English, the better to understand him and to reply more
precisely; and a discussion on such a subject between these two great
minds, who were, apparently, adversaries, but who had conceived an infinite
respect for one another, promised to be prodigiously interesting.
Unhappily death was soon to put an end to it, and when the solitary of Down
expired in 1882 the hermit of Sérignan saluted his great shade with real
emotion. How many times have I heard him render homage to this illustrious
memory!
But the furrow was traced; thenceforth Fabre never ceased to multiply his
pin-pricks in "the vast and luminous balloon of transformism (evolution),
in order to empty it and expose it in all its inanity." (9/12.) By no means
the least original feature of his work is this passionate and incisive
argument, in which, with a remarkable power of dialectic, and at times in a
tone of lively banter, he endeavoured to remove "this comfortable pillow
from those who have not the courage to inquire into its fundamental
nature." He attacked these "adventurous syntheses, these superb and
supposedly philosophic deductions," all the more eagerly because he himself
had an unshakable faith in the absolute certainty of his own discoveries,
and because he asserted the reality of things only after he had observed
and re-observed them to satiety.
This is why he cared so little to engage in argument relating to his own
works; he did not care for discussion; he was indifferent to the daily
press; he avoided criticism and controversy, and never replied to the
attacks which were made upon him; he rather took pains to surround himself
with silence until the day when he felt that his researches were ripe and
ready for publicity.
He wrote to his dear friend Devillario, shortly after Darwin's death:
"I have made a rule of never replying to the remarks, whether favourable or
the reverse, which my writings may evoke. I go my own gait, indifferent
whether the gallery applauds or hisses. To seek the truth is my only
preoccupation. If some are dissatisfied with the result of my observations-
-if their pet theories are damaged thereby--let them do the work
themselves, to see whether the facts tell another story. My problem cannot
be solved by polemics; patient study alone can throw a little light on the
subject. (9/13.)
"I am profoundly indifferent to what the newspapers may say about me," he
wrote to his brother seventeen years later; "it is enough for me if I am
pretty well satisfied with my own work." (9/14.)
He read all the letters he received only in a superficial manner,
neglecting to thank those who praised or congratulated him, and above all
shrinking from all that idle correspondence in which life is wasted without
aim or profit.
"I fume and swear when I have to cut into my morning in order to reply to
so-and-so who sends me, in print or manuscript, his meed of praise; if I
were not careful I should have no time left for far more important work."
His beloved Frédéric, "the best of his friends," was himself often treated
no better, and to excuse his silence and the infrequency of his letters,
Henri, even in the years spent at Carpentras and Ajaccio, could plead only
the same reasons; his stupendous labours, his exhausting task, "which
overwhelmed him, and was often too great, not for his courage, but for his
time and his strength." (9/15.)
Nevertheless, while evading the question of origins, his far-sighted
intellect was bound to "read from the facts" concerning the genesis of new
species in process of evolution; and his observations throw a singular
light on the quite recent theory of sudden mutations.
The nymph of the Onthophagus presents "a strange paraphernalia of horns and
spurs which the organism has produced in a moment of ardour--a luxurious
panoply which vanishes in the adult."
The nymph of the Oniticella also decks itself in "a temporary horn, which
departs when it emerges."
And "as the dung-beetle is recent in the general chronology of creatures,
as it takes rank among the last comers, as the geological strata are mute
concerning it, it is possible that these horn-like processes, which always
degenerate before they reach completion, may be not a reminiscence but a
promise, a gradual elaboration of new organs, timid attempts which the
centuries will harden to a complete armour, AND IF THIS WERE SO THE PRESENT
WOULD TEACH US WHAT THE FUTURE IS TO BE." (9/16.)
Here is a specific transformation, a veritable creation; fortuitous, blind,
and silent; one of those innumerable attempts which nature is always
making, for the moment a mere matter of hazard, until some propitious
circumstance fixes it in future incarnations.
Thus millions of indeterminate creatures are incessantly roughed out in the
substance of that microcosm which is the initial cell; and it is here that
Fabre sees the real secret of the law of evolution.
He refutes the great principle of Leibnitz, which was so brilliantly
adopted by Darwin, that changes occur by degrees, by "fine shades," by slow
variations, as the result of successive adaptations, and that there is no
jumping-off place in nature. On the contrary, life often passes suddenly
from one form to another, by abrupt and capricious leaps, by irregular and
disorderly steps, and it is in the egg that Fabre sees the first lineaments
of these mysterious and spontaneous variations.
Species are therefore born as a whole, each at the same time, AT THE SAME
MOMENT, "bringing into being its new organism, with its individual
properties and peculiarities, its indelible and innate faculties and
tendencies, like "so many medals, each struck with a different die, which
the gnawing tooth of time attacks only sooner or later to annihilate it."
However, Fabre affirms the continuity of progress; he believes in a better
and more merciful future, a more complete humanity, ruled by more
harmonious or less brutal laws.
With what profound intelligence and what generous enthusiasm he seeks to
conjecture what this future might be, in his beautiful observations on the
young of the Lycosa (9/17.), which can live for weeks and months in
absolute abstinence, although we can perceive no reserve of nutriment!
We know no other sources of animal activity save the energy derived from
food. Vegetables draw the materials of their nourishment from the soil and
the air, and the sunlight is only an intermediary which enables the plant
to fix its carbon. The animal species in turn borrow the elements
indispensable to their existence from the vegetable world, or restore their
flesh and blood with the flesh and blood of other animals.
Now the young Lycosae "are not inert on their mother's back; if they fall
from the maternal chine they quickly pick themselves up and climb up one of
her legs, and once back in place they have to preserve the equilibrium of
the mass. In reality they know no such thing as complete repose. What then
is the energetic aliment which enables the little Lycosae to struggle?
Whence is the heat expended in action derived?"
Fabre sees no other source than "the sun."
"Every day, if the sky is clear, the Lycosa, loaded with her little ones,
crawls to the edge of her well, and for long hours lies in the sun. There,
on the maternal back, the young ones stretch themselves out, saturate
themselves in the sunshine, charging themselves with motor reserves,
steeping themselves in energy, directly converting into movement the
calorific radiations coming from the sun, the centre of all life."
The Scorpion also is able to live for months without nourishment, restoring
directly, in the form of movement, "the effluvia emanating from the sun or
from other ambient energies--heat, electricity, light--which are the soul
of the world."
Perhaps, among the innumerable worlds of space, there is somewhere,
gravitating round a fixed star, a planet invisible to us where "the
sunlight sates the hunger of the blind."
The gentle philosophy of the ingenious dreamer soothes itself with the
vision, entertained by great and noble minds, of a humanity "whose teeth
will no longer attack sensible life, nor even the pulp of fruits"; "when
creatures will devour one another no longer, will no longer feed upon the
dead; when they will be nourished by the sunlight, without conflict,
without war, without labour; freed from all care, and assured against all
needs!"
Thus, in the humblest creatures, he sees the most marvellous perspectives;
the body of the lowest insect becomes suddenly a transcendent secret,
lighting up the abyss of the human soul, or giving it a glimpse of the
stars.
And although his work is in contradiction to the theories of the
evolutionists, it ends with the same moral conclusion, namely, that all
creation moves slowly and without intermission on its gradual ascent
towards progress.