What then is parasitism, if one must look for it among animals of different races? Life in general is but a vast brigandage. Nature devours herself; matter is kept alive by passing from one stomach into another. At the banquet of life, each is in turn the guest and the dish; the eater of to-day becomes the eaten of tomorrow; hodie tibi, cras mihi. Everything lives on that which lives or has lived; everything is parasitism. Man is the great parasite, the unbridled thief of all that is fit to eat. He steals the milk from the Lamb, he steals the honey from the children of the Bee, even as the Melecta pilfers the pottage of the Anthophora's sons. The two cases are similar. Is it the vice of indolence? No, it is the fierce law which for the life of the one exacts the death of the other.
In this implacable struggle of devourers and devoured, of pillagers and pillaged, of robbers and robbed, the Melecta deserves no more than we the title of ignoble; in ruining the Anthophora, she is but imitating man in one detail, man who is the infinite source of destruction. Her parasitism is no blacker than ours: she has to feed her offspring; and, possessing no harvesting-tools, ignorant besides of the art of harvesting, she uses the provisions of others who are better endowed with implements and talents. In the fierce riot of empty bellies, she does what she can with the gifts at her disposal.
CHAPTER 9. THE THEORY OF PARASITISM.
The Melecta does what she can with the gifts at her disposal. I should leave it at that, if I had not to take into consideration a grave charge brought against her. She is accused of having lost, for want of use and through laziness, the workman's tools with which, so we are told, she was originally endowed. Finding it to her advantage to do nothing, bringing up her family free of expense, to the detriment of others, she is alleged to have gradually inspired her race with an abhorrence for work. The harvesting-tools, less and less often employed, dwindled and perished as organs having no function; the species changed into a different one; and finally idleness turned the honest worker of the outset into a parasite. This brings us to a very simple and seductive theory of parasitism, worthy to be discussed with all respect. Let us set it forth.
Some mother, nearing the end of her labours and in a hurry to lay her eggs, found, let us suppose, some convenient cells provisioned by her fellows. There was no time for nest-building and foraging; if she would save her family, she must perforce appropriate the fruit of another's toil. Thus relieved of the tedium and fatigue of work, freed of every care but that of laying eggs, she left a progeny which duly inherited the maternal slothfulness and handed this down in its turn, in a more and more accentuated form, as generation followed on generation; for the struggle for life made this expeditious way of establishing yourself one of the most favourable conditions for the success of the offspring. At the same time, the organs of work, left unemployed, became atrophied and disappeared, while certain details of shape and colouring were modified more or less, so as to adapt themselves to the new circumstances. Thus the parasitic race was definitely established.
This race, however, was not too greatly transformed for us to be able, in certain cases, to trace its origin. The parasite has retained more than one feature of those industrious ancestors. So, for instance, the Psithyrus is extremely like the Bumble-bee, whose parasite and descendant she is. The Stelis preserves the ancestral characteristics of the Anthidium; the Coelioxys-bee recalls the Leaf-cutter.
Thus speak the evolutionists, with a wealth of evidence derived not only from correspondence in general appearance, but also from similarity in the most minute particulars. Nothing is small: I am as much convinced of that as any man; and I admire the extraordinary precision of the details furnished as a basis for the theory. But am I convinced? Rightly or wrongly, my turn of mind does not hold minutiae of structure in great favour: a joint of the palpi leaves me rather cold; a tuft of bristles does not appear to me an unanswerable argument. I prefer to question the creature direct and to let it describe its passions, its mode of life, its aptitudes. Having heard its evidence, we shall see what becomes of the theory of parasitism.
Before calling upon it to speak, why should I not say what I have on my mind? And mark me, first of all, I do not like that laziness which is said to favour the animal's prosperity. I have also believed and I still persist in believing that activity alone strengthens the present and ensures the future both of animals and men. To act is to live; to work is to go forward. The energy of a race is measured by the aggregate of its action.
No, I do not like it at all, this idleness so much commended of science. We have quite enough of these zoological brutalities: man, the son of the Ape; duty, a foolish prejudice; conscience, a lure for the simple; genius, neurosis; patriotism, jingo heroics; the soul, a product of protoplasmic energies; God, a puerile myth. Let us raise the war-whoop and go out for scalps; we are here only to devour one another; the summum bonum is the Chicago packer's dollar-chest! Enough, quite enough of that, without having transformism next to break down the sacred law of work. I will not hold it responsible for our moral ruin; it has not a sturdy enough shoulder to effect such a breach; but still it has done its worst.