Yet one more of the fine arguments in support of the animal’s reasoning powers that takes to flight in the light of experiment.… I admire your candid faith, my masters, you who take seriously the statements of chance observers richer in imagination than in veracity. I admire your credulous enthusiasm, when, without criticism, you support your theories on such stupidities.[13]
Fabre has no greater faith in the virtue of animals than in their reason, since one cannot exist without the other. It is true that the Copris, the most richly endowed of insects in respect of the maternal instinct, does not differentiate between the care which she lavishes on strangers and that which she gives to the children of her household; but the pitiless observer shows that this is because she cannot distinguish between them. [[345]]
It is not the function of impartial history to maintain a given thesis; it follows where the facts lead it.[14]
The historian of the insects simply confronts the facts of the entomological world which he has explored under all its aspects:
To speak with certainty, we must not depart from what we really know. I am beginning to know the insect passably well after forty years of intercourse with it. Let us question the insect: not the first comer, but the best endowed, the Hymenopteron. I am generous to my opponents. Where will you find a creature richer in talents?… Well, does this refined and privileged member of the animal kingdom reason?
And, first of all, what is reason? Philosophy will give us learned definitions. Let us be modest; let us stick to the simplest; we are only dealing with animals. Reason is the faculty which refers the effect to the cause, the means to the end, and directs the action by making it conform to the requirements of the accidental. Within these limits is the animal able to reason? Does it understand how to associate a because with a why, and behave in accordance? Can it, confronted with an accident, alter its line of conduct?[15]
[[346]]
To all these questions the facts already cited have replied. It is evident that the Hymenopteron which provisions or closes the nest found empty under the conditions which we have seen imposed upon the Sphex or the Pelopæus, is ignorant of the why of her work and does not in any case connect it with its natural aim, which is the rearing of the larvæ.
These expert surgeons, these marvellous anatomists know nothing whatever, not even what their victims are intended for. Their talent, which confounds our reason, is devoid of a shadow of consciousness of the work accomplished, a shadow of foresight concerning the egg.[16]
Fabre, then, has vainly sought for “proofs” of the intervention of reason in the actions of the insect. He has not found them. He has even found the very contrary; the insect, interrogated as to its powers of reason and “the logic attributed to it,” has plainly replied that it is entirely lacking in reason and that logic is not its strong point. [[347]]
Yet he is far from wishing to “belittle the merits” or “diminish the reputation” of his beloved insects. No one can be less suspected of prejudice against them, since none has “glorified” them more abundantly; no one has spoken of them with greater admiration and sympathy; no one has more fully described their high achievements, and no one has revealed such unknown and incredible marvels on their behalf. It is enough to recall the “miracles” of the science and wisdom of the paralysers.