The whole is intended for action and defence. The face which the insect shows is its resisting skull, its bony case, which cannot move. This frames, encloses, and fixes the eyes, which are also immovable; but, being exterior and multiple, motion is not necessary: those of the ant are divided into fifty facets, which reveal everything to it either in front or rear. Thus, then, its sight is admirable, but it cannot look. No external muscle sets the mask in motion. And, therefore, it has no physiognomy.
But, in compensation, its pantomime was extremely expressive,—I may even say, very pathetic. On discovering that it was so feeble and incapable of walking, it did exactly what prudent and sagacious man would have done, and attempted to recover its energies by the very means which we should have employed. It commenced a methodical friction of its entire body, from above to below. Seated like a little monkey, it skilfully made use of its arms or anterior feet in such a manner as to rub its back and side. Occasionally it returned to its head, took it between its two hands, as if it would fain have shaken it clear of the fatal intoxication which rendered it so little able to provide for its own safety. One would have said it was questioning itself, collecting its thoughts, and saying, as we do after a bad dream, "Is it true, or is it false?—Poor head!—Alas! what ails thee, then?"
At that moment I felt that we were living in two worlds, and that there were no means of understanding each other. How could I reassure it? My language, that of the voice; its, that of the antennæ. Not one of my words could obtain access to the electric telegraph which served as its organ of hearing.
The continuous bony case which envelops its body isolates the insect from us, and conceals us from the insect. It has a heart which beats like ours; but we cannot see its pulsations beneath its thick coat of mail. It does not even command that wordless language which touches us in so many dumb beings. It is wholly wrapped up in mystery and silence.
It breathes, or rather imbibes air, through the sides, not through the face or head. No palpitation or respiratory movement can be detected in it. Therefore, how should it speak, how complain? Of all our languages it has not one; it makes a sound, but does not possess a voice.
Is the fixed and immovable mask, thus condemned to perpetual silence, that of a monster or a spectre? No. After watching its movements, its numerous actions indicative of reflection, its arts so much more advanced than those of the larger animals, we are not unwilling to believe that in this head exists a personality. And from the highest to the lowest in the scale of life, we recognize the identity of the soul.
