MINOTAURUS TYPHŒUS: MORALITY
This is the moment to recapitulate the Minotaur’s merits. When the
severe cold is over, he sets forth in quest of a mate, buries himself
with her and thenceforth remains faithful to her, despite his frequent
trips out of doors and the meetings to which these are likely to lead.
With indefatigable zeal, he assists the burrower, herself destined
never to leave her home until the emancipation of the family. For a
month and longer, he loads the rubbish of the excavation on his forked
hod; he carries it up outside and remains ever patient, never
disheartened by his arduous feats of climbing. He leaves the easy work
of the excavating rake to the mother and reserves for himself the more
troublesome task, the exhausting transport through a narrow,
perpendicular shaft of great depth.
Next, the navvy becomes a collector of foodstuffs; he goes catering and
gathers the wherewithal for his children to live upon. To ease the work
of his mate, who shreds and compresses the preserved foodstuffs,
packing it away in layers, he once more changes his trade and becomes a
miller. At some distance from the bottom, he bruises and crumbles the
materials found hardened by the sun; he makes them into a meal and
flour which gradually pour down into the maternal bake-house. Lastly,
worn out by his efforts, he leaves the home and goes out to die at a
distance, in the open air. He has gallantly performed his duty as the
head of a family; he has spent himself without stint to secure the
prosperity of his offspring.
The mother, on her side, allows nothing to divert her from her
housekeeping. Throughout her working life, she never goes out: domi
mansit, as the ancients used to say of their model matrons: she stays
at home, kneading her cylindrical loaves, filling them with an egg,
watching them until the exodus arrives. When the time comes for the
autumnal merry-making, she at last returns to the surface, accompanied
by her youngsters, who disperse at will to feast in places frequented
by the Sheep. Thereupon, having nothing left to do, the devoted
creature perishes.
Yes, amid the general indifference of the fathers towards their
offspring, Minotaurus displays a most remarkable zeal where his family
is concerned. Forgetful of himself, refusing to be led away by the
rapturous delights of spring, at a time when it would be so pleasant to
see a little of the country, to feast among his fellows, to tease and
flirt with his fair neighbours, he sticks to his work underground and
wears himself out to leave a fortune to his family. Here is one who,
when his limbs stiffen in death, is well entitled to say:
“I have done my duty; I have worked.”
Now whence did this industrious labourer derive his self-abnegation and
his ardour for the welfare of his young? Men tell us that he acquired
them by a slow progress from middling to good, from good to excellent.
Fortuitous circumstances, hostile one day, favourable the next, have
taught him what he knows. He has learnt, as man does, by experience: he
too develops, progresses and improves himself.
In his little Dung-beetle brain, the lessons of the past leave lasting
impressions which, matured by time, ripen into more considered actions.
Necessity is the supreme inspirer of the instincts. Spurred by
necessity, the animal is its own artisan; by its own energies it has
made itself as we know it, with its implements and its trade. Its
habits, its capacity and dexterity are integrals of infinite minuteness
acquired on the illimitable path of time.
Such is the argument of the theorists, an argument sufficiently
imposing to allure any independent mind, did not the empty resonance of
words usurp the full sonority of reality. Let us question the Minotaur
about all this. To be sure, he will not reveal to us the origin of
instinct; he will leave the problem as obscure as ever; but he will at
least be able to cast a glimmer into some little corner; and any light,
however faint, even the flickering light of a taper, must be welcome in
the dark tavern into which the animal leads us.
The Minotaur works exclusively with Sheep-droppings; for the purposes
of his family, he needs them dry, toughened to the consistency of horn
by long exposure to the sun. This choice seems very strange, when we
remember that other stercoral collectors insist upon fresh products.
The Sacred Beetle, the Copris, the Onthophagus: [43] not one of these,
nor any of the others, cares for this sort of provender. All, whether
large or small, whether modellers of pears or manufacturers of
sausages, absolutely require plastic materials, retaining their full
flavour.
The trident-bearer needs the pastoral olive, the Sheep’s sugar-plum
drained of all its juices. There is room in this world for tastes of
every kind; the wisest thing is not to discuss them. Nevertheless, one
would like to know why, when he is surrounded by such abundance of
tender and succulent victuals, deriving from the Sheep or elsewhere,
the three-pronged Dung-beetle selects what the others scornfully
refuse. If he has not an innate predilection for this diet, how did he
come to throw over the excellent, in which he had the right to share
with the rest, and adopt the inferior, which is not employed elsewhere?
We will not labour the point. It amounts to this, that somehow the dry
pellets have fallen to the Minotaur’s share. This detail admitted, the
rest unfolds itself with insistent logic. Necessity, the instigator of
progress, seems to have gradually trained the male Minotaur in his
functions as a collaborator. The father of yore, an idler, as is the
rule among insects, has become an ardent worker because, what with one
experiment after another, the race has benefited.
What does he do with his harvest? He soberly feeds on it, when the
moisture in the burrow has somewhat softened the thankless morsels; he
cards great quantities of them into a felt in which he buries himself
in the winter to shield himself against the cold. But these are the
lesser uses of his plunder; the main thing is the future of the family.
Now the grub, whose stomach is at first so squeamish, would never bite
into such snacks as these, if they were left untouched. If they are to
be accepted and relished, they must be subjected to a refining which
will give them tenderness and flavour. In what laboratory is the
cooking to be done? Obviously underground, the only place where an
equable moisture prevails, free from the unwholesome excess of
humidity. Thus the quality of the food gives rise to the burrow.
And this burrow has to be deep, very deep, in order that the scorching
heat of summer may never reach them and render them useless by drying
them up. The grub develops slowly; it will not attain the adult form
until September. In its underground home, it has to brave with impunity
the hottest and driest period of the year, without running the risk of
finding its bread too stale. A depth of five feet is not too much to
save the grub and its food from the fiery floods of sunlight in the
dog-days.
The mother has the strength to dig a pit of this kind by herself,
however deep it may be. No one will come to her assistance in her
untiring work of excavation; but at the same time the rubbish has to be
shot outside, so that the shaft may be always clear. This is needed
first for the going and coming during the storage of victuals and later
for the easy emergence of the offspring.
Boring and carrying would be too much for a single worker: the warm
season would be too short for such a task. Thus, thereupon, long
prepared by the events of each successive year, a flash of light
penetrates the Dung-beetle’s brain. The father says to himself:
“Let’s lend a hand. It will make things go faster and better. I have
three horns which I will use as a hod. I propose to offer my services
to the digger and to hoist the loosened soil to the surface.”
Working in double harness is invented; the household is founded. Other
cares, no less urgent, confirm the agreement. The Minotaur’s victuals,
those compact morsels, have first to be broken up, bruised and reduced
to particles which will lend themselves better to the elaboration of
the final cake. After passing through the mill, the material must be
carefully compressed into a cylinder, in which fermentation will
complete the development of the requisite qualities. The whole business
is a slow and meticulous work.
To shorten it, therefore, and to make the most of the fine weather,
they set up in couples. The father collects the raw materials outside.
On the upper floor, he turns his harvest into meal. On the lower floor,
the mother receives the grist, sifts it and packs it into a column,
gently patting down each layer. She kneads the dough for which her mate
furnishes the flour. She works at the kneading-trough, he at the mill.
Thus, by sharing the labour, they hasten the result and make the very
utmost of the brief time at their disposal.
So far, all is well. Had they learnt their trade in the school of the
centuries, through experiments of their own devising which proved
successful from time to time, they would behave no differently. But now
things begin to go awry. There is a reverse to the medal which
proclaims the contrary of what we read on the obverse.
The cake that has just been prepared is the ration of one grub,
absolutely of one alone. The prosperity of the race calls for more.
Well, what happens? This, that the father leaves the house as soon as
the first ration is prepared; the assistant deserts the baker and goes
off to die at a distance. The excavations made in the meadows at the
beginning of April always give me the two sexes: the father at the top
of the house, engaged in shaping the pellets; the mother down at the
bottom, working on the stacked provisions. A little later, the mother,
is always alone: the father has disappeared.
As the laying is not over, the survivor has to continue the work
unaided. True, the deep burrow, which cost so much time and trouble, is
ready; so is the cell of the first-born of the family; but the others
have to be provided for and it would be advantageous to rear as many of
them as possible. The installation of each demands that the female, who
until now has led a sedentary life, should often venture abroad. The
stay-at-home becomes an out-of-doors collector; she gathers the pellets
in the neighbourhood, brings them to the pit, stores them, breaks them
up, kneads them and packs them into cylinders.
And it is at this moment of maternal activity that the father abandons
the home! He excuses himself on the score of his decrepitude. He lacks
not good-will but life itself. Reluctantly he retires, worn out with
years.
We might reply:
“Considering that the successive stages of evolution have made you
invent first housekeeping in common, a sublime discovery, and then the
deep cellar, tending to keep the preserves in good condition during the
summer; the grinding-process which gives plasticity and prevents
dryness; and the packing into sausages, in which the materials ferment
and improve: considering all this, could not that same evolution teach
you to prolong your life for a few weeks? With the aid of a most
carefully conducted selection, the affair does not strike me as
impracticable. In one of my appliances, the male held out until June,
after placing a treasure-house of pellets at his mate’s disposal.”
He in like manner would be entitled to say:
“The Sheep is not always very generous. The crops are lean around the
burrow; and, when I have rolled the few available victuals into the
burrow, I soon pine away, worn out by unemployment. If my colleague
survived till June in a scientific apparatus, it was because he was
surrounded by inexhaustible riches. The power of storing as much as he
pleased made life sweet to him; the certainty of work lengthened his
days. I am not as well-provided for as he and I allow myself to die of
boredom when I have finished gathering the poor harvest in my
neighbourhood.”
“Very well; but you have wings, you are able to fly. Why do you not go
some distance away? You would find enough to satisfy your passion for
hoarding. But you don’t do this. Why? Because time has not taught you
the fruitful device of making excursions a few steps from your home.
How is it that, in order to assist your mate till the end of her
labours, you have not yet learnt to keep up your courage for a few days
longer and glean a little farther all around your home?... If evolution
which, as they say, has instructed you in your difficult trade, has
nevertheless allowed you to remain in ignorance of these highly
important details, which are easy to carry out after a short
apprenticeship, the reason is because it has taught you nothing at all,
whether housekeeping, burrowing or baking. Your evolution is a
permanent affair. You move about within a circle with a fixed radius;
you are and always will be what you were when the first pellet was
lowered into the cellar.”
All this explains nothing. True; but to know how not to know at least
gives a stable equilibrium and repose to our restless curiosity. We are
very near the precipice of the unknowable. That precipice should be
engraved with what Dante inscribes on the gate of his Inferno:
“Lasciate ogni speranza.”
Yes, let all of us who, when we take the atom by assault, imagine that
we are storming the universe: let us abandon all hope here. The
sanctuary of origin will not be opened for us. In vain do we seek to
fathom the riddle of life: we shall never attain the exact truth. The
hook of theory catches nothing but illusions, acclaimed to-day as the
last word of knowledge, rejected as false to-morrow and replaced by
others which are sooner or later seen to be erroneous in their turn.
Where then is this truth? Does it, like the asymptote of the
geometricians, recede into infinity, pursued by our curiosity, which
always draws nearer to it without ever reaching it?
This comparison would be suitable were our knowledge a curve of uniform
development; but it goes forwards and backwards, up and down, twists
and turns, approaches its asymptote and then suddenly runs away from
it. It may chance to cross it, but only unconsciously. The full
knowledge of the truth escapes it.
Be this as it may, the Minotaur couple, in so far as our casual
observations enable us to see, are remarkably zealous where the family
is concerned. We should have to go high indeed in the animal series to
find similar instances. Furred and feathered life will afford us hardly
any equivalents.
If such things occurred, not in the Dung-beetle world but in our own,
we should speak of them as pertaining to a very fine morality. The
expression would be out of place here. Animals have no morality. It is
known to man alone, who formulates it and improves upon it gradually in
the light of his conscience, that sensitive mirror in which is
concentrated all that is best within us.
The advance of this improvement, the loftiest of all, is extremely
slow. Cain, the first murderer, after slaying his brother, reflected a
little, we are told. Was this remorse on his part? Apparently not, but
rather apprehension of a hand stronger than his own. The fear of
punishment to reward the crime was the beginning of wisdom.
And this fear was justified, for Cain’s successors were singularly
skilled in the art of constructing homicidal engines. After the fist
came the stick, the club, the stone thrown by the sling. Progress
brought the flint arrow-head and ax and later the bronze sword, the
iron pike, the steel blade. Chemistry took a hand in the business and
must be awarded the palm for extermination. In our own day, the wolves
of Manchuria could tell us what orgies of human flesh they owe to
improved explosives.
What has the future in store for us? One dares not think of it. Piling
at the roots of our mountains, picrate on dynamite, panclactite on
fulminate and other explosives a thousand times more powerful, which
science, ever in progress, will not fail to invent, shall we end by
blowing up the planet? Thrown into confusion by the shock, will the
ragged splinters of the terrestrial clod whirl away in vortices like
that of the asteroids, the apparent ruins of a vanished world? This
would be the end of all great and noble things, but it would be the end
also of much that is ugly and much that is pitiful.
In our day, with materialism in full sway, we have physics working
precisely at demolishing matter. It pulverizes the atom, subtilizing it
until it disappears, transformed into energy. The tangible and visible
mass is only appearance; in reality all is force. If the knowledge of
the future succeeded in harking back on a large scale to the primordial
origins of matter, a few slabs of rock, suddenly disintegrated into
energy, would dislocate the glove into a chaos of forces. Then
Gilbert’s [44] great word-picture would be realized:
“Et d’ailes et de faux dépouillé désormais,
Sur les mondes detruits le temps dort, immobile.” [45]
But do not rely overmuch on these heroic remedies. Let us take
Candide’s [46] advice and cultivate our garden; let us water our
cabbage-patch and accept things as they are.
Nature, a ruthless wet-nurse, knows nothing of pity. After pampering
her charges, she takes them by the foot, whirls them round her head and
dashes them to pieces against a rock. This is her way of diminishing
the burden of her excessive fertility.
Death, well and good; but of what use is pain? When a mad Dog endangers
the public safety, do we speak of inflicting atrocious sufferings upon
him? We put a bullet into him; we do not torture him: we defend our own
lives. In the old days, however, the law, with a great parade of ermine
and red gowns, used to draw and quarter criminals, to break them on the
wheel, to roast them at the stake, to burn them in a brimstone shirt:
it pretended to expiate the crime by the horror of the torture.
Morality has made great strides since then; in our time, a more
enlightened conscience compels us to treat the wrong-doer with the same
clemency that we show to the mad Dog. We put an end to his existence
without any stupid refinements of cruelty.
It even seems as though a day would come when legal murder will
disappear from our codes: instead of killing the criminal, we shall
strive to cure his infirmity. We shall fight the virus of crime as we
fight that of yellow fever or of the plague. But when may we expect to
see this absolute respect for human life? Will it take hundreds and
thousands of years to come into being? Possibly. Conscience is so slow
in emerging from its slough.
Ever since there have been men on this earth, morality has been far
from saying its last word even on the subject of the family, that
pre-eminently hallowed group. The ancient paterfamilias is a despot in
his own house. He rules over his household as over the herd in his
demesne; he has rights of life and death over his children, disposes of
them at will, barters them in exchange for others, sells them into
slavery, brings them up for his own sake and not for theirs. Primitive
legislation displays a revolting brutality in this respect.
Things have improved considerably since then, though the ancient
barbarism has not been wholly abolished. Is there any lack of people
among ourselves to whom morality is reduced to a fear of the police?
Could we not find many who rear their children, as we breed Rabbits, to
make a profit out of them? It has been necessary to formulate the
promptings of conscience into a strict law in order to save the child,
up to the age of thirteen, from the hell of the factories where the
poor little fellow’s future was destroyed for a few halfpence a day.
Though animals have no morality, which is a thing troublesome to
acquire and always undergoing improvement in the brains of the
philosophers, they have their commandments, laid down in the beginning,
immutable, imperious and as deeply imprinted in their being as the need
to breathe and eat. At the head of the commandments stands maternal
solicitude. Since life’s primary object is the continuation of life, it
is also essential that the fragile beginnings of existence should be
made possible. It is the mother’s duty to see to this.
No mother neglects this duty. The dullest at least lay their germs in
propitious places, where the new-born offspring will of themselves find
the wherewithal to live. The best-endowed suckle, spoon-feed or store
food for their children, build nests, cells or nurseries, often
masterpieces of exquisite delicacy. But as a rule, especially in the
insect class, the fathers become indifferent to their progeny. We, who
have not yet laid aside all our old savagery, do the same to a small
extent.
The decalogue orders us to honour our father and mother. This would be
perfect, if it were not silent as to the duties of the father towards
his sons. It speaks as once the tyrant of the family clan used to
speak, the paterfamilias, referring everything to himself and caring
but little for others. It took a long time to make people understand
that the present owes itself to the future and that the father’s first
duty is to prepare the sons for the harsh struggles of life.
Others, among the humblest, have outstripped it. Prompted by an
unconscious inspiration, they straightway resolved the paternal
problem, which among us is still obscure. The Minotaur father in
particular, if he had a vote in these grave matters, would amend our
decalogue. He would move to add, in simple lines imitated from our
catechism:
“Bring up your children in the way they should do.”