[1] Cf. Fabre’s own youthful experiences, in The Life of the Fly: chap. vii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[2] For the author’s stay at Ajaccio, where he was a schoolmaster in his youth, cf. The Life of the Fly: chap. vi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
Chapter xvii
THE BULL ONTHOPHAGUS: THE CELL
Begun to-day and dropped to-morrow, taken up again later and again abandoned, according to the chances of the day, the study of instinct makes but halting progress. The changing seasons bring unwelcome delays, forcing the observer to wait till the following year or even longer for the answer to his eager questions. Moreover, the problem often crops up unexpectedly, as the result of some casual incident of slight interest in itself, and it comes in a form so vague that it gives little basis for precise investigation. How can one investigate what has not yet been suspected? We have no facts to go upon and are consequently unable to tackle the problem frankly.
To collect these facts by fragments, to subject those fragments to varied tests in order to try their value, to make them into a sheaf of rays lighting up the darkness of the unknown and gradually causing it to emerge: all this demands a long space of time, especially as the favourable periods are brief. Years elapse; and then very often the perfect solution has not appeared. There are always gaps in our sheaf of light; and always behind the mysteries which the rays have penetrated stand others, still shrouded in darkness.
I am perfectly aware that it would be preferable to avoid repetitions and to give a complete story every [[264]]time; but, in the domain of instinct, who can claim a harvest that leaves no grain for other gleaners? Sometimes the handful of corn left on the field is of more importance than the reaper’s sheaves. If we had to wait until we knew every detail of the question studied, no one would venture to write the little that he knows. From time to time, a few truths are revealed, tiny pieces of the vast mosaic of things. Better to divulge the discovery, however humble it be. Others will come who, also gathering a few fragments, will assemble the whole into a picture ever growing larger but ever notched by the unknown.
And then the burden of years forbids me to entertain long hopes. Distrustful of the morrow, I write from day to day, as I make my observations. This method, one of necessity rather than choice, sometimes results in the reopening of old subjects, when new investigations throw light within and enable me to complete or it may be to modify the first text.