own; and many a species will thus have a kind of mysterious and
inactive double, exactly similar to the victim it has selected, save
only that its immemorial idleness has caused it to lose one by one
its implements of labour, and that it exists solely at the expense
of the working type of its race.*
*The humble-bees, for instance, have the Psithyri as
parasites, while the Stelites live on the Anthidia. "As
regards the frequent identity of the parasite with its
victim," M. J. Perez very justly remarks in his book "The
Bees," "one must necessarily admit that the two genera are
only different forms of the same type, and are united to
each other by the closest affinity. And to naturalists who
believe in the theory of evolution this relationship is not
purely ideal, but real. The parasitic genus must be regarded
as merely a branch of the foraging genus, having lost its
foraging organs because of its adaptation to parasitic
life."
Among the bees, however, which are somewhat too arbitrarily termed
the "solitary Apidae," the social instinct already is smouldering,
like a flame crushed beneath the overwhelming weight of matter that
stifles all primitive life. And here and there, in unexpected
directions, as though reconnoitring, with timid and sometimes
fantastic outbursts, it will succeed in piercing the mass that
oppresses it, the pyre that some day shall feed its triumph.
If in this world all things be matter, this is surely its most
immaterial movement. Transition is called for from a precarious,
egotistic and incomplete life to a life that shall be fraternal, a
little more certain, a little more happy. The spirit must ideally
unite that which in the body is actually separate; the individual
must sacrifice himself for the race, and substitute for visible
things the things that cannot be seen. Need we wonder that the bees
do not at the first glance realise what we have not yet
disentangled, we who find ourselves at the privileged spot whence
instinct radiates from all sides into our consciousness? And it is
curious too, almost touching, to see how the new idea gropes its
way, at first, in the darkness that enfolds all things that come to
life on this earth. It emerges from matter, it is still quite
material. It is cold, hunger, fear, transformed into something that
as yet has no shape. It crawls vaguely around great dangers, around
the long nights, the approach of winter, of an equivocal sleep which
almost is death....
{106}
The Xylocopae are powerful bees which worm their nest in dry wood.
Their life is solitary always. Towards the end of summer, however,
some individuals of a particular species, the Xylocopa Cyanescens,
may be found huddled together in a shivering group, on a stalk of
asphodel, to spend the winter in common. Among the Xylocopae this
tardy fraternity is exceptional, but among the Ceratinae, which are
of their nearest kindred, it has become a constant habit. The idea
is germinating. It halts immediately; and hitherto has not
succeeded, among the Xylocopae, in passing beyond this first obscure
line of love.
Among other Apiens, this groping idea assumes other forms. The
Chalicodomae of the out-houses, which are building-bees, the
Dasypodae and Halicti, which dig holes in the earth, unite in large
colonies to construct their nests. But it is an illusory crowd
composed of solitary units, that possess no mutual understanding,
and do not act in common. Each one is profoundly isolated in the
midst of the multitude, and builds a dwelling for itself alone,
heedless of its neighbour. "They are," M. Perez remarks, "a mere
congregation of individuals, brought together by similar tastes and
habits, but observing scrupulously the maxim of each one for itself;
in fact, a mere mob of workers, resembling the swarm of a hive only
as regards their number and zeal. Such assemblies merely result from
a great number of individuals inhabiting the same locality."
But when we come to the Panurgi, which are cousins of the Dasypodae,
a little ray of light suddenly reveals the birth of a new sentiment
in this fortuitous crowd. They collect in the same way as the
others, and each one digs its own subterranean chambers; but the
entrance is common to all, as also the gallery which leads from the
surface of the ground to the different cells. "And thus," M. Perez
adds, "as far as the work of the cells is concerned, each bee acts
as though she were alone; but all make equal use of the gallery that
conducts to the cells, so that the multitude profit by the labours
of an individual, and are spared the time and trouble required for
the construction of separate galleries. It would be interesting to
discover whether this preliminary work be not executed in common, by
relays of females, relieving each other in turn."
However this may be, the fraternal idea has pierced the wall that
divided two worlds. It is no longer wild and unrecognisable, wrested
from instinct by cold and hunger, or by the fear of death; it is
prompted by active life. But it halts once more; and in this
instance arrives no further. No matter, it does not lose courage; it
will seek other channels. It enters the humble-bee, and, maturing
there, becomes embodied in a different atmosphere, and works its
first decisive miracles.
The humble-bees, the great hairy, noisy creatures that all of us
know so well, so harmless for all their apparent fierceness, lead a
solitary life at first. At the beginning of March the impregnated
female who has survived the winter starts to construct her nest,
either underground or in a bush, according to the species to which
she belongs. She is alone in the world, in the midst of awakening
spring. She chooses a spot, clears it, digs it and carpets it. Then
she erects her somewhat shapeless waxen cells, stores these with
honey and pollen, lays and hatches the eggs, tends and nourishes the
larvae that spring to life, and soon is surrounded by a troop of
daughters who aid her in all her labours, within the nest and
without, while some of them soon begin to lay in their turn. The
construction of the cells improves; the colony grows, the comfort
increases. The foundress is still its soul, its principal mother,
and finds herself now at the head of a kingdom which might be the
model of that of our honeybee. But the model is still in the rough.
The prosperity of the humble-bees never exceeds a certain limit,
their laws are ill-defined and ill-obeyed, primitive cannibalism and
infanticide reappear at intervals, the architecture is shapeless and
entails much waste of material; but the cardinal difference between
the two cities is that the one is permanent, and the other
ephemeral. For, indeed, that of the humble-bee will perish in the
autumn; its three or four hundred inhabitants will die, leaving no
trace of their passage or their endeavours; and but a single female
will survive, who, the next spring, in the same solitude and poverty
as her mother before her, will recommence the same useless work. The
idea, however, has now grown aware of its strength. Among the
humble-bees it goes no further than we have stated, but, faithful to
its habits and pursuing its usual routine, it will immediately
undergo a sort of unwearying metempsychosis, and re-incarnate
itself, trembling with its last triumph, rendered all-powerful now
and nearly perfect, in another group, the last but one of the race,
that which immediately precedes our domestic bee wherein it attains
its crown; the group of the Meliponitae, which comprises the
tropical Meliponae and Trigonae.
{108}
Here the organisation is as complete as in our hives. There is an
unique mother, there are sterile workers and males. Certain details
even seem better devised. The males, for instance, are not wholly
idle; they secrete wax. The entrance to the hive is more carefully
guarded; it has a door that can be closed when nights are cold, and
when these are warm a kind of curtain will admit the air.
But the republic is less strong, general life less assured,
prosperity more limited, than with our bees; and wherever these are
introduced, the Meliponitae tend to disappear before them. In both
races the fraternal idea has undergone equal and magnificent
development, save in one point alone, wherein it achieves no further
advance among the Meliponitae than among the limited offspring of
the humble-bees. In the mechanical organisation of distributed
labour, in the precise economy of effort; briefly, in the
architecture of the city, they display manifest inferiority. As to
this I need only refer to what I said in section 42 of this book,
while adding that, whereas in the hives of our Apitae all the cells
are equally available for the rearing of the brood and the storage
of provisions, and endure as long as the city itself, they serve
only one of these purposes among the Meliponitae, and the cells
employed as cradles for the nymphs are destroyed after these have
been hatched.*
*It is not certain that the principle of unique royalty, or
maternity, is strictly observed among the Meliponitae.
Blanchard remarks very justly, that as they possess no sting
and are consequently less readily able than the mothers of
our own bees to kill each other, several queens will
probably live together in the same hive. But certainty on
this point has hitherto been unattainable owing to the great
resemblance that exists between queens and workers, as also
to the impossibility of rearing the Meliponitae in our
climate.
It is in our domestic bees, therefore, that the idea, of whose
movements we have given a cursory and incomplete picture, attains
its most perfect form. Are these movements definitely, and for all
time, arrested in each one of these species, and does the
connecting-line exist in our imagination alone? Let us not be too
eager to establish a system in this ill-explored region. Let our
conclusions be only provisional, and preferentially such as convey
the utmost hope, for, were a choice forced upon us, occasional
gleams would appear to declare that the inferences we are most
desirous to draw will prove to be truest. Besides, let us not forget
that our ignorance still is profound. We are only learning to open
our eyes. A thousand experiments that could be made have as yet not
even been tried. If the Prosopes, for instance, were imprisoned, and
forced to cohabit with their kind, would they, in course of time,
overstep the iron barrier of total solitude, and be satisfied to
live the common life of the Dasypodae, or to put forth the fraternal
effort of the Panurgi? And if we imposed abnormal conditions upon
the Panurgi, would these, in their turn, progress from a general
corridor to general cells? If the mothers of the humble-bees were
compelled to hibernate together, would they arrive at a mutual
understanding, a mutual division of labour? Have combs of
foundation-wax been offered to the Meliponitae? Would they accept
them, would they make use of them, would they conform their habits
to this unwonted architecture? Questions, these, that we put to Very
tiny creatures; and yet they contain the great word of our greatest
secrets. We cannot answer them, for our experience dates but from
yesterday. Starting with Reaumur, about a hundred and fifty years
have elapsed since the habits of wild bees first received attention.
Reaumur was acquainted with only a few of them; we have since then
observed a few more; but hundreds, thousands perhaps, have hitherto
been noticed only by hasty and ignorant travellers. The habits of
those that are known to us have undergone no change since the author
of the "Memoirs" published his valuable work; and the humble-bees,
all powdered with gold, and vibrant as the sun's delectable murmur,
that in the year 1730 gorged themselves with honey in the gardens of
Charenton, were absolutely identical with those that to-morrow, when
April returns, will be humming in the woods of Vincennes, but a few
yards away. From Reaumur's day to our own, however, is but as the
twinkling of an eye; and many lives of men, placed end to end, form
but a second in the history of Nature's thought.
{109}
Although the idea that our eyes have followed attains its supreme
expression in our domestic bees, it must not be inferred therefrom
that the hive reveals no faults. There is one masterpiece, the
hexagonal cell, that touches absolute perfection,--a perfection that
all the geniuses in the world, were they to meet in conclave, could
in no way enhance. No living creature, not even man, has achieved,
in the centre of his sphere, what the bee has achieved in her own;
and were some one from another world to descend and ask of the earth
the most perfect creation of the logic of life, we should needs have
to offer the humble comb of honey.
But the level of this perfection is not maintained throughout. We
have already dealt with a few faults and shortcomings, evident
sometimes and sometimes mysterious, such as the ruinous
superabundance and idleness of the males, parthenogenesis, the
perils of the nuptial flight, excessive swarming, the absence of
pity, and the almost monstrous sacrifice of the individual to
society. To these must be added a strange inclination to store
enormous masses of pollen, far in excess of their needs; for the
pollen, soon turning rancid, and hardening, encumbers the surface of
the comb; and further, the long sterile interregnum between the date
of the first swarm and the impregnation of the second queen, etc.,
etc.
Of these faults the gravest, the only one which in our climates is
invariably fatal, is the repeated swarming. But here we must bear in
mind that the natural selection of the domestic bee has for
thousands of years been thwarted by man. From the Egyptian of the
time of Pharaoh to the peasant of our own day, the bee-keeper has
always acted in opposition to the desires and advantages of the
race. The most prosperous hives are those which throw only one swarm
after the beginning of summer. They have fulfilled their maternal
duties, assured the maintenance of the stock and the necessary
renewal of queens; they have guaranteed the future of the swarm,
which, being precocious and ample in numbers, has time to erect
solid and well-stored dwellings before the arrival of autumn. If
left to themselves, it is clear that these hives and their offshoots
would have been the only ones to survive the rigours of winter,
which would almost invariably have destroyed colonies animated by
different instincts; and the law of restricted swarming would
therefore by slow degrees have established itself in our northern
races. But it is precisely these prudent, opulent, acclimatised
hives that man has always destroyed in order to possess himself of
their treasure. He has permitted only--he does so to this day in
ordinary practice--the feeblest colonies to survive; degenerate
stock, secondary or tertiary swarms, which have just barely
sufficient food to subsist through the winter, or whose miserable
store he will supplement perhaps with a few droppings of honey. The
result is, probably, that the race has grown feebler, that the
tendency to excessive swarming has been hereditarily developed, and
that to-day almost all our bees, particularly the black ones, swarm
too often. For some years now the new methods of "movable"
apiculture have gone some way towards correcting this dangerous
habit; and when we reflect how rapidly artificial selection acts on
most of our domestic animals, such as oxen, dogs, pigeons, sheep and
horses, it is permissible to believe that we shall before long have
a race of bees that will entirely renounce natural swarming and
devote all their activity to the collection of honey and pollen.
{110}
But for the other faults: might not an intelligence that possessed a
clearer consciousness of the aim of common life emancipate itself
from them? Much might be said concerning these faults, which emanate
now from what is unknown to us in the hive, now from swarming and
its resultant errors, for which we are partly to blame. But let
every man judge for himself, and, having seen what has gone before,
let him grant or deny intelligence to the bees, as he may think
proper. I am not eager to defend them. It seems to me that in many
circumstances they give proof of understanding, but my curiosity
would not be less were all that they do done blindly. It is
interesting to watch a brain possessed of extraordinary resources
within itself wherewith it may combat cold and hunger, death, time,
space, and solitude, all the enemies of matter that is springing to
life; but should a creature succeed in maintaining its little
profound and complicated existence without overstepping the
boundaries of instinct, without doing anything but what is ordinary,
that would be very interesting too, and very extraordinary. Restore
the ordinary and the marvellous to their veritable place in the
bosom of nature, and their values shift; one equals the other. We
find that their names are usurped; and that it is not they, but the
things we cannot understand or explain that should arrest our
attention, refresh our activity, and give a new and juster form to
our thoughts and feelings and words. There is wisdom in attaching
oneself to nought beside.
{111}
And further, our intellect is not the proper tribunal before which
to summon the bees, and pass their faults in review. Do we not find,
among ourselves, that consciousness and intellect long will dwell in
the midst of errors and faults without perceiving them, longer still
without effecting a remedy? If a being exist whom his destiny calls
upon most specially, almost organically, to live and to organise
common life in accordance with pure reason, that being is man. And
yet see what he makes of it, compare the mistakes of the hive with
those of our own society. How should we marvel, for instance, were
we bees observing men, as we noted the unjust, illogical
distribution of work among a race of creatures that in other
directions appear to manifest eminent reason! We should find the
earth's surface, unique source of all common life, insufficiently,
painfully cultivated by two or three tenths of the whole population;
we should find another tenth absolutely idle, usurping the larger
share of the products of this first labour; and the remaining
seven-tenths condemned to a life of perpetual half-hunger,
ceaselessly exhausting themselves in strange and sterile efforts
whereby they never shall profit, but only shall render more complex
and more inexplicable still the life of the idle. We should conclude
that the reason and moral sense of these beings must belong to a
world entirely different from our own, and that they must obey
principles hopelessly beyond our comprehension. But let us carry
this review of our faults no further. They are always present in our
thoughts, though their presence achieves but little. From century to
century only will one of them for a moment shake off its slumber,
and send forth a bewildered cry; stretch the aching arm that
supported its head, shift its position, and then lie down and fall
asleep once more, until a new pain, born of the dreary fatigue of
repose, awaken it afresh.
{112}
The evolution of the Apiens, or at least of the Apitae, being
admitted, or regarded as more probable than that they should have
remained stationary, let us now consider the general, constant
direction that this evolution takes. It seems to follow the same
roads as with ourselves. It tends palpably to lessen the struggle,
insecurity, and wretchedness of the race, to augment authority and
comfort, and stimulate favourable chances. To this end it will
unhesitatingly sacrifice the individual, bestowing general strength
and happiness in exchange for the illusory and mournful independence
of solitude. It is as though Nature were of the opinion with which
Thucydides credits Pericles: viz., that individuals are happier in
the bosom of a prosperous city, even though they suffer themselves,
than when individually prospering in the midst of a languishing
state. It protects the hardworking slave in the powerful city, while
those who have no duties, whose association is only precarious, are
abandoned to the nameless, formless enemies who dwell in the minutes
of time, in the movements of the universe, and in the recesses of
space. This is not the moment to discuss the scheme of nature, or to
ask ourselves whether it would be well for man to follow it; but it
is certain that wherever the infinite mass allows us to seize the
appearance of an idea, the appearance takes this road whereof we
know not the end. Let it be enough that we note the persistent care
with which nature preserves, and fixes in the evolving race, all
that has been won from the hostile inertia of matter. She records
each happy effort, and contrives we know not what special and
benevolent laws to counteract the inevitable recoil. This progress,
whose existence among the most intelligent species can scarcely be
denied, has perhaps no aim beyond its initial impetus, and knows not
whither it goes. But at least, in a world where nothing save a few
facts of this kind indicates a precise will, it is significant
enough that we should see certain creatures rising thus, slowly and
continuously; and should the bees have revealed to us only this
mysterious spiral of light in the overpowering darkness, that were
enough to induce us not to regret the time we have given to their
little gestures and humble habits, which seem so far away and are
yet so nearly akin to our grand passions and arrogant destinies.
{113}
It may be that these things are all vain; and that our own spiral of
light, no less than that of the bees, has been kindled for no other
purpose save that of amusing the darkness. So, too, is it possible
that some stupendous incident may suddenly surge from without, from
another world, from a new phenomenon, and either inform this effort
with definitive meaning, or definitively destroy it. But we must
proceed on our way as though nothing abnormal could ever befall us.
Did we know that to-morrow some revelation, a message, for instance,
from a more ancient, more luminous planet than ours, were to root up
our nature, to suppress the laws, the passions, and radical truths
of our being, our wisest plan still would be to devote the whole of
to-day to the study of these passions, these laws, and these truths,
which must blend and accord in our mind; and to remain faithful to
the destiny imposed on us, which is to subdue, and to some extent
raise within and around us the obscure forces of life.
None of these, perhaps, will survive the new revelation; but the
soul of those who shall up to the end have fulfilled the mission
that is pre-eminently the mission of man, must inevitably be in the
front rank of all to welcome this revelation; and should they learn
therefrom that indifference, or resignation to the unknown, is the
veritable duty, they will be better equipped than the others for the
comprehension of this final resignation and indifference, better
able to turn these to account.
{114}