As it is without, so it is within. As the house, so too the inhabitant. We men are not yet sufficiently acquainted with the influence exercised upon our moral dispositions by our habitations. This duplication of walls, this potent envelopment of a people so completely shut up under its strong twofold enclosure, largely contributes to the unity of the commonwealth.
Observe another singularity: shall we call it a trivial one? No; to the serious observer it is of importance. The city has two gates; its people enter by the one, and pass out by the other, so that no confusion can take place, and no collision between the ingressing and egressing crowds. This plan is adopted by all people who economize time, and wish to transact their business expeditiously. In London, the rule is the same as with the wasps: on the one side those who are coming, on the other those who are going; each person keeps to the right; these take one footpath, those another. No such impediment is met with in the Strand as the idlers of our Rue Vivienne, who incessantly convert themselves into a serious obstacle, and swim laboriously in the confusion they create.
But to return to our subject.
What is the object of these constructions? Is this robust being, endowed with such an intensity of vital force, more afraid of the air than numbers of delicate insects,—than the nervous spider, which has only a house of thread, or even lives under a leaf? Therein lies the lofty mystery of life for the higher insect. It is this which stimulates the universal genius of the ant either above ground or under ground. It is this which inspires the activity, the persevering toil and economy of the bee. What, then, is it? The love of the future,—the yearning to perpetuate and eternize that which one loves. All their love centres in their offspring.
To love the child and the future; to toil in view of time and of that which as yet is not; to exhaust their vitality and die of work, that posterity may have less cause to labour,—a noble ideal, assuredly, of society, wherever it may be. One can well understand it in those who have time before them, and a life to make use of, like men and bees. But that this insect which has no time, which perishes in the evening, should love the time that will never be its own, should immolate its little life for the sake of the life that is to come, should devote to the child of to-morrow its solitary day, is a sacrifice peculiar to the wasp: it is original and sublime!
There is not a minute to lose; and the mother incessantly increases the burden. Besides the female workers, she produces some few males who do not work, whose little and very brief function scarcely prevails as an excuse for their inactivity. Among those tragical and serious insect-races, Nature, as if to divert herself a moment by a comical distraction, has made the poor little males ordinarily squat and obese, innocent little Falstaffs, who are guarded like a seraglio of unimportant servants. The caricature is complete in the case of the male bee, which, alleging that it neither knows how to glean abroad nor to build at home, passes the time in humming before its bee-hive (like our young cigar-smoking idlers).
Among the wasps life is so tense, burning, and keen, that the very males, slothful as they may be, dare not abandon themselves to complete indolence. Yonder ladies, who do not jest, and who have stings of which the males are deprived, might look upon their idleness sourly, and stir them up with dagger-thrusts. So they have conceived the idea of working without work; they have the air of doing something,—a small part of the domestic labour, cleaning, and sweeping. If any one dies, the ceremony of interment provides them with a pretence; with the effort of carrying a slight weight they sweat and groan, and several put their shoulders together. In a word, they are very ridiculous. And I am confident that their terrible companions laugh at them.
Theirs truly is an onerous undertaking. Twenty or thirty thousand mouths to feed, is a very extensive household. If they were only gifted with the prudent activity of bees, their community would perish of famine. What they need is a violent, furious, murderous rapidity,—all the appearances of an immense gluttony,—all the love and devotion which Sparta had for the art of thieving. But the secret of their power, which is plainly discernible in them if we observe them but a moment, is their magnificent insolence, their superb contempt for all other beings, and their firm conviction that the whole world is their inheritance. If we consider, it is true, their wonderful energy, compared with which lions and tigers are mere races of sheep,—and their prodigious yearly effort of improvisation,—and, finally, their absolute devotion to the public welfare,—we shall not find in all nature creatures relatively of greater power, nor which possess a clearer right to value themselves highly.