But the true romance of the firefly is to be found neither in the
strange fields of Japanese folk-lore nor in the quaint gardens of
Japanese poetry, but in the vast profound of science. About science
I know little or nothing. And that is why I am not afraid to rush in
where angels fear to tread. If I knew what Professor Watasé knows
about fireflies, I should feel myself less free to cross the boundaries
of relative experience. As it is, I can venture theories.
*
The tremendous hypotheses of physical and psychical evolution no
longer seem to me hypotheses: I should never dream of doubting them.
I have ceased to wonder at the growth of Life out of that which has
been called not-living,--the development of organic out of inorganic
existence. The one amazing fact of organic evolution, to which my
imagination cannot become accustomed, is the fact that the substance
of life should possess the latent capacity or tendency to build itself
into complexities incomprehensible of _systematic_ structure. The power
of that substance to evolve radiance or electricity is not really more
extraordinary than its power to evolve colour; and that a noctiluca,
or a luminous centipede, or a firefly, should produce light, ought not
to seem more wonderful than that a plant should produce blue or purple
flowers. But the biological interpretation of the phenomenon leaves me
wondering, just as much as before, at the particular miracle of the
machinery by which the light is made. To find embedded in the body of
the insect a microscopic working-model of everything comprised under
the technical designation of an "electric plant," would not be nearly
so wonderful a discovery as the discovery of what actually exists.
Here is a firefly, able, with its infinitesimal dynamo, to produce a
pure cold light "at one four-hundredth part of the cost of the energy
expended in a candle flame"!... Now why should there have been evolved
in the tail of this tiny creature a luminiferous mechanism at once
so elaborate and so effective that our greatest physiologists and
chemists are still unable to understand the operation of it, and our
best electricians impotent to conceive the possibility of imitating
it? Why should the living tissues crystallize or build themselves
into structures of such stupefying intricacy and beauty as the visual
organs of an ephemera, the electrical organs of a gymnotus, or the
luminiferous organs of a firefly?... The very wonder of the thing
forbids me to imagine gods at work: no mere god could ever contrive
such a prodigy as the eye of a May-fly or the tail of a firefly.
Biology would answer thus:--"Though it is inconceivable that a
structure like this should have been produced by accumulated effects
of function on structure, yet it is conceivable that successive
selections of favourable variations might have produced it." And no
follower of Herbert Spencer is really justified in wandering further.
But I cannot rid myself of the notion that Matter, in some blind
infallible way, _remembers_; and that in every unit of living substance
there slumber infinite potentialities, simply because to every ultimate
atom belongs the infinite and indestructible experience of billions of
vanished universes.
[Footnote 1: Professor Watasé is a graduate of Johns Hopkins. Since
this essay was written, his popular Japanese lectures upon the
firefly have been reissued in a single pretty volume. The coloured
frontispiece,--showing fireflies at night upon a willow-branch,--is
alone worth the price of the book.]
[Footnote 2: By the old calendar. According to the new calendar, the
date of the Firefly Battle would be considerably later: last year
(1901) it fell upon the tenth day of the sixth month.]
[Footnote 3: The term _kagar-bi_, often translated by "bonfire,"
here especially refers to the little wood-fires which are kindled,
on certain festival occasions, in front of every threshold in the
principal street of a country town, or village. During the festival of
the Bon such little fires are lighted in many parts of the country to
welcome the returning ghosts.]
[Footnote 4: That is to say, "Do I see only fireflies drifting with the
current? or is the Night itself drifting, with its swarming of stars?"]
[Footnote 5: More literally: "The water-grasses having appeared to
grow dark, the fireflies begin to fly." The phrase _kururu to miété_
reminds one of the second stanza in that most remarkable of modern
fairy-ballads, Mr. Yeats' "Folk of the Air":--
"And he saw how the weeds grew dark
At the coming of night-tide;
And he dreamed of the long dim hair
Of Bridget his bride."
]
[Footnote 6: _Oku-no-ma_ really means the back room. But the best
rooms in a Japanese house are always in the rear, and so arranged as
to overlook the garden. The composer of the verse is supposed to be
a guest at some banquet, during which fireflies are set free in the
garden that the visitors may enjoy the spectacle.]
[Footnote 7: That is to say, makes the fingers appear diaphanous,
as if held before a bright candle-flame. This suggestion of rosy
semi-transparency implies a female speaker.]
[Footnote 8: The word _sabishi_ usually signifies lonesome or
melancholy; but the sense of it here is "weird." This verse suggests
the popular fancy that the soul of a person, living or dead, may assume
the form of a firefly.]
[Footnote 9: The speaker is supposed to be a woman. Somebody has been
making love to her in the dark; and she half doubts the sincerity of
the professed affection.]
[Footnote 10: From the _Fugetsu-Sh'u_. The speaker is a woman: by the
simile of the silent-glowing firefly she suggests her own secret love.]
[Footnote 11: From the Kokon Wakashū Enkyō. The speaker is supposed to
be a woman.]
[Footnote 12: Or, "he stoops low." The word _bikui_ really means low of
stature.]
[Footnote 13: A kind of arrowroot.]
[Footnote 14: Not literal; and I doubt whether this poem could be
satisfactorily translated into English. There is a delicate humour in
the use of the word _fuzei_, used in speaking humbly of one's self, or
of one's endeavours to please a superior.]