But far from invalidating the conclusion drawn from the obvious stupidity of the insect even in the actions which are its specialty, the science and wisdom of instinct afford it a striking confirmation. The very “slightest glimmer of intelligence” would suffice to make the insect do what it does not and leave undone what it does even within the circumference of its attributions. If it is plainly devoid of this glimmer, how much more plainly is it devoid of that “splendour of intelligence” which the “miracles” of instinct would require![17] To sum up, the insect sins too greatly by excess and by defect in its instinctive actions to justify our attributing to it an understanding of these actions; we are [[348]]indeed compelled absolutely to deny it any such understanding. It does at once too much and too little; too much for an insect’s intelligence and too little for any intelligence whatever. Everything is against it; its knowledge as much as its ignorance; its logic as much as its inconsequences.
So long as its circumstances are normal, the insect’s actions are calculated most rationally in view of the object to be attained. What could be more logical, for instance, than the devices employed by the Hunting Wasp when paralysing her prey so that it may keep fresh for her larva, while in no wise imperilling that larva’s safety? It is pre-eminently rational; we ourselves could think of nothing better; and yet the Wasp’s action is not prompted by reason. If she thought out her surgery, she would be our superior. It will never occur to anybody that the creature is able, in the smallest degree, to account for its skilful vivisections. Therefore, so long as it does not depart from the path mapped out for it, the insect can perform the most sagacious actions without entitling us in the least to attribute these to the dictates of reason.[18]
These acts of instinct, so scientifically devised and so rationally performed by works [[349]]devoid of either judgment or reason, must be explained by referring them to a proportionate cause, whence proceed the logic and the science which evidently do not proceed from the insect itself.
I consign to the meditations of philosophy these five makers of spherical conserves—[he is speaking of the Scarabæi]—and their numerous rivals. I consign to them these inventors of the spherical box, of greater volume and smaller surface, for provisions liable to dry up, and I ask them how such logical inspirations, such rational provisions, could unfold themselves in the murky intellect of the insect.… The work of the pill-makers propounds a grave problem to him who is capable of reflection. It confronts us with this alternative: either we must attribute to the flat cranium of the Dung-beetle the notable honour of having solved for itself the geometrical problem of its conserve, or we must refer it to a harmony ruling all things beneath the eye of an Intelligence that, knowing all, has foreseen all.… If the Rhynchites and its emulators in defensive means against the perils of asphyxia have taught themselves their trade; if they are really the children of their works, do not let us hesitate … let us recognise them as engineers capable of winning our diplomas and degrees; let us proclaim the microcephalic Weevil a powerful thinker, a wonderful inventor. You dare not go to these lengths; you prefer to have recourse to the chances [[350]]of hazard. Ah, but what a wretched resource is hazard, when such rational contrivances are in question! One might as well throw into the air the characters of the alphabet and expect to see them, on falling, form certain lines selected from a poem! Instead of loading our minds with such tortuous ideas, how much simpler and more truthful to say: “A sovereign Order rules over matter.” This is what the Sloe Weevil tells us in its humility![19]
We heard the same language, uttered perhaps even more persuasively, from the Hairy Ammophila, among many others, one day when, as a beginner in entomology, he considered her performing her delicate and expert operations, bending over a bank on the table-land of Les Angles, in company with a friend:
The Wasp acts with a precision of which science would be jealous; she knows what man hardly ever knows; she understands the complex nervous system of her victim.… I say, she knows and understands; I ought to say, she acts as though she knew and understood. Her act is all inspiration. The insect, without having any conception of what it is doing, obeys the instinct that impels it. But [[351]]whence comes this sublime inspiration?… For me and my friend, this was and has remained one of the most eloquent revelations of the ineffable logic that rules the world and guides the unconscious by the laws of its inspiration. Moved to the depths by this flash of truth, we felt, forming upon our eyelids, tears of indefinable emotion.[20]
The more he sees, the more he reflects, the more radiantly clear does the meaning of these facts appear to him:
Can the insect have acquired its skill gradually, from generation to generation, by a long series of casual experiments, of blind gropings? Can such order be born of chaos; such foresight of hazard; such wisdom of stupidity? Is the world subject to the fatalities of evolution, from the first albuminous atom which coagulated into a cell, or is it ruled by an Intelligence? The more I see and the more I observe, the more does this Intelligence shine behind the mystery of things. I know that I shall not fail to be treated as an abominable “final causer.” Little do I care! A sure sign of being right in the future is to be out of fashion in the present.
A long time ago [says a contemporary apologist], I was discussing matters with an astronomer who [[352]]was possessed of knowledge, a certain penetration and a certain courage. He pushed this penetration and this courage to the length of declaring, before the Academy of Sciences, that the laws of nature form a harmony and reveal a plan.
I had an opportunity of congratulating him, and he was good enough to express his satisfaction. I profited by this to suggest that he was doubtless ready to develop his conclusions yet further, and that since he recognised the existence of a plan he admitted, at the origin of things, a Mind: in short, an intelligent Being.
Suddenly my astronomer turned up his nose, without offering me any argument capable of any sort of analysis.
In vain did I explain that to deduce the existence of an intelligent Being because one has discovered the existence of a plan is, after all, to continue the train of reasoning which deduces the existence of a plan after observing that there is a system of laws. In vain I pointed out that I was merely making use of his own argument. My astronomer refused to go any further along the path upon which he had entered. There he would have met God, and that was what he was unwilling to do.[21]
J. H. Fabre does not stop half-way to the truth for fear of meeting God. He is logical, loyal, and courageous to the end. He argues from the facts to laws and from laws to [[353]]causes, and from them to the “Cause of causes,” the “Reason of reasons,”[22] concerning which, says M. Perrier, he has not “the pedantic feebleness of grudging it the name of God.”[23]
If Fabre so briskly attacks the theory of evolution, it is not so much because of the biological results which it attributes to the animal far niente as because it offers such a convenient pretext for that sort of intellectual laziness that willingly relies upon an explanation provided beforehand and readily exonerates itself from the difficult task of searching more deeply into the domain of facts as well as that of causes.[24] If the explanation were not notoriously insufficient one might overlook the abuses which it covers, innocently enough, but, to speak only of the insect, all its analyses, were they admissible, leave the problem of instinct untouched: “How did the insect acquire so discerning an art? An eternal problem if we do not rise above the dust to dust”[25] of evolution. At all events, as it is presented it is merely, we [[354]]repeat, “a convenient pillow for the man who has not the courage to investigate more deeply.”[26] For him, he has this courage and this power of ascension, and he readily spreads his wings to rise above matter and the night of this world and soar to those radiant heights where Divinity reveals itself, together with the supreme explanation of the light which lightens this darkness and the life that inspires this matter.[27] [[355]]