A half-developed being like man, hanging midway between primitive
barbarism and ultimate perfection, should study the insect tribes
which appear to have realized the possibilities of development in
their line.
The study of the ant and the bee, the spider and the scorpion
should fill us with hope. We should say to ourselves:
"If these tiny fragments of life can develop so highly, what may
not WE hope for in the way of ultimate possibilities? Our
beginning is so much more full of promise than the beginnings of
our tiny insect brothers." ----
This writer, taking his own advice, which is most unusual, has
been trying to get acquainted with some insects in the hope of
cheering himself and getting new ideas.
From the female scorpion we acquire fresh veneration for the
possibilities of maternal devotion.
The mother of the Gracchi has been well advertised because she
preferred her sons to jewelry. The Russian mother who feeds
herself to the wolves, instead of throwing her boy over the back
of the sleigh in the usual way, is also highly praised. But
their devotion shrinks to nothing when compared with that of any
poor mother scorpion of Mexico's sandy tracts.
As soon as her young scorpions arrive, they climb to her back,
half a hundred of them or more. She moves about with them,
protecting them, avoiding danger, giving them the sunlight.
Meanwhile they are feeding on her body. Her movements get
gradually slower and slower; finally they cease. The young
scorpions depart leaving the mother scorpion simply an empty
shell. We should dislike to see any such exhibition of
tenderness among human beings, but we can't help admiring the
scorpion.
Mr. Scorpion, placed as was Captain Dreyfus, would sting himself
to death. They are a determined race. ----
Spiders who construct tiny balloons with little cars all complete
are wonderful creatures. They cross chasms in their balloons,
throwing out bits of trailing web which seem to act as rudders.
In their little way and in a perfectly adequate fashion they have
solved aerial navigation, which still puzzles us. We admire
spiders and kill only those with yellow stomachs, which are
"poison." ----
But up to the present we have found the ant the most
interestingly suggestive creature. He has developed and
understands stirpiculture--the improvement of the race by careful
breeding--which with us is as yet mere theory, and as we look
down at the ant, we look up to him because the strangely active
creature manages to do without sleep.
We human beings drowse through thirty years of our threescore and
ten, but the ant is awake and working all the time.
If the ant has managed to live without sleep, if he has acquired
the faculty of lifelong wakefulness, why should we not do as much
in time? We take it for granted that sleep is essential, as we
take everything else for granted. We used to take it for granted
that the earth was flat, but we have stopped that. Sleep was at
one time forced upon man and other animals.
The earth in its rollings turned away from the sun once in every
twenty-four hours. In the darkness of the beginning man said to
himself: "If I go walking around, I shall fall into a hole, so I
shall lie down and wait until the sun comes again."
He did as all the animals did before him for millions of years.
Since that time, man has conquered darkness. Why should he not
ultimately conquer sleep?
We know that thin men, nervous, highly organized, do with far
less sleep than others. We know that old age requires less sleep
than youth.
Can we not cultivate and develop the characteristics which make
sleep less necessary? Higher races of apes have abolished tails.