I was saying just now that this foremost of dung-kneaders behaved with a logic that rivals our own. By this time, my statement has been completely established. Here is something better still. Let us submit the following problem to our leading scientific lights: a germ is accompanied by a mass of victuals liable soon to be rendered useless by desiccation. How should the alimentary mass be shaped? Where should the egg be laid so as to be easily influenced by air and heat?
The first question of the problem has already been answered. Knowing that evaporation varies in proportion to the extent of the evaporating surface, science declares that the victuals shall be arranged in the form of a ball, because the spherical shape is that which encloses the greatest amount of material within the smallest surface. As for the egg, since it requires a protecting sheath to keep it from any harmful contact, it shall be contained within a thin, cylindrical case; and this case shall be fixed upon the sphere.
Thus the requisite conditions are fulfilled: the provisions, packed into a ball, keep fresh; the egg, protected by its slender, cylindrical sheath, receives the influence of warmth and air without impediment. The strictly needful has been obtained; but it is very ugly. Utility has paid no attention to beauty.
An artist corrects the crude work of reason. He replaces the cylinder by a semi-ellipsoid, so much prettier in form; he joins this ellipsoid to the sphere by means of a graceful curved surface; and the whole becomes the [[71]]pear, the necked gourd. It is now a work of art, a thing of beauty.
The Sacred Beetle does exactly what æsthetic considerations dictate to ourselves. Can she, too, have a sense of beauty? Is she able to appreciate the elegance of her pear? True, she does not see it: she manipulates it in profound darkness. But she touches it. A poor touch hers, roughly clad in horn, yet not insensible, after all, to delicate contours.
It occurred to me to put children’s intelligence to the test with this problem in æsthetics suggested by the Sacred Beetle’s work. I wanted very immature minds, hardly opened, still slumbering in the misty clouds of early childhood, in short, approximating as nearly as possible to the vague intellect of the insect, if any such approximation is permissible. At the same time I wanted them to be clear-headed enough to understand me. I selected some untutored youngsters, of whom the oldest was six.
I submitted to this tribunal the work of the Sacred Beetle and a geometrical production of my own fingers, representing in the same dimensions the sphere surmounted by a short cylinder. Taking each of them aside, as though for confession, lest the opinion of one should influence the opinion of another, I sprang my two toys upon them and asked them which they thought the prettier. There were five of them; and they all voted for the Sacred Beetle’s pear.
I was struck by this unanimity. The rough little peasant-lad, who has scarcely yet learnt how to blow his nose, has already a certain sense of elegance of form. He can distinguish between the beautiful and the ugly. Can this be also true of the Sacred Beetle? No one who knew what he was talking about would venture to say yes; [[72]]no one either would venture to say no. It is a question that cannot be answered, since we cannot consult the one and only judge in this case. After all, the solution might very well be exceedingly simple. What does the flower know of its glorious corolla? What does the snowflake know of its exquisite hexagonal stars? Like the flower and the snowflake, the Sacred Beetle might well be ignorant of the beautiful, though it be her work.
There is beauty everywhere, on the express condition that there be an eye capable of recognizing it. Is this eye of the mind, this eye which appraises correctness of form, to some extent an attribute of the dumb creation? If the Toad’s ideal of beauty is unquestionably the She-toad, outside the irresistible attraction of the sexes is there really such a thing as beauty to an animal? Considered generally, what is beauty, actually? Beauty is order. What is order? Harmony in the whole design. What is harmony? Harmony is.… But enough. Answers would follow upon questions without ever touching the real principle of it all, the immovable foundation. What a lot of philosophizing over a lump of dung! It is high time to change the subject. [[73]]