He who proposes to go to that length should at least repeat to himself what Confucius, the great philosopher of the yellow race, said five-and-twenty centuries ago. Having surprised a stranger in the woods fixing to the branch of a tree a rope wherewith to hang himself, the Chinese sage addressed him in words the gist of which was as follows:
"However great your misfortunes, the greatest of all would be to yield to despair. All the rest can be repaired; this one is irreparable. Do not believe that all is lost for you and try to convince yourself of a truth which has been proved indisputable by the experience of the centuries. And that truth is this: so long as a man has life, there is no need for him to despair. He may pass from the greatest misery to the greatest joy, from the greatest misfortune to the highest felicity. Take courage and, as though you were this very day beginning to recognize the value of life, strive at every moment to make the most of it."
This humdrum Chinese philosophy is not without merit. It suggests the moralizing of the fabulist:
"... Qu'on me rende impotent,
Cul-de-jatte, goutteux, manchot, pourvu qu'en somme
Je vive, c'est assez: je suis plus que content."2
2 "... So powerless let me lie,
Gout-ridden, legless, armless; if only, after all,
I live, it is enough: more than content am I."
Yes, yes, La Fontaine and Kung the philosopher are right: life is a serious matter, which it will not do to throw away into the first bush by the roadside like a useless garment. We must look upon it not as a pleasure, nor yet as a punishment, but as a duty of which we have to acquit ourselves as well as we can until we are given leave to depart.
To anticipate this leave is cowardly and foolish. The power to disappear at will through death's trap-door does not justify us in deserting our post; but it opens to us certain vistas which are absolutely unknown to the animal.
We alone know how life's pageant closes, we alone can foresee our end, we alone profess devotion to the dead. Of these high matters none other has any suspicion. When would-be scientists proclaim aloud, when they declare that a wretched insect knows the trick of simulating death, we will ask them to look more closely and not to confound the hypnosis due to terror with the pretence of a condition unknown to the animal world.
Ours alone is the clear vision of an end, ours alone the glorious instinct of the beyond. Here, filling its modest part, speaks the voice of entomology, saying:
"Have confidence; never did an instinct fail to keep its promises."