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 [[161]]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 [[162]]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 [[163]]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: