Grotesque as these beliefs now seem to us, it was not unnatural that ancient Eastern fancy should associate insects with ghosts and devils. In our visible world there are no other creatures so wonderful and so mysterious; and the true history of certain insects actually realizes the dreams of mythology. To the minds of primitive men, the mere facts of insect-metamorphosis must have seemed uncanny; and what but goblinry or magic could account for the monstrous existence of beings so similar to dead leaves, or to flowers, or to joints of grass, that the keenest human sight could detect their presence only when they began to walk or to fly? Even for the entomologist of to-day, insects remain the most incomprehensible of creatures. We have learned from him that they must be acknowledged "the most successful of organized beings" in the battle for existence;—that the delicacy and the complexity of their structures surpass anything ever imagined of marvellous before the age of the microscope;—that their senses so far exceed our own in refinement as to prove us deaf and blind by comparison. Nevertheless the insect world remains a world of hopeless enigmas. Who can explain for us the mystery of the eyes of a myriad facets, or the secret of the ocular brains connected with them? Do those astounding eyes perceive the ultimate structure of matter? does their vision pierce opacity, after the manner of the Röntgen rays? (Or how interpret the deadly aim of that ichneumon-fly which plunges its ovipositor through solid wood to reach the grub embedded in the grain?) What, again, of those marvellous ears in breasts and thighs and knees and feet,—ears that hear sounds beyond the limit of human audition? and what of the musical structures evolved to produce such fairy melody? What of the ghostly feet that walk upon flowing water? What of the chemistry that kindles the firefly's lamp,—making the cold and beautiful light that all our electric science cannot imitate? And those newly discovered, incomparably delicate organs for which we have yet no name, because our wisest cannot decide the nature of them—do they really, as some would suggest, keep the insect-mind informed of things unknown to human sense,—visibilities of magnetism, odours of light, tastes of sound?... Even the little that we have been able to learn about insects fills us with the wonder that is akin to fear. The lips that are hands, and the horns that are eyes, and the tongues that are drills; the multiple devilish mouths that move in four ways at once; the living scissors and saws and boring-pumps and brace-bits; the exquisite elfish weapons which no human skill can copy, even in the finest watch-spring steel—what superstition of old ever dreamed of sights like these? Indeed, all that nightmare ever conceived of faceless horror, and all that ecstasy ever imagined of phantasmal pulchritude, can appear but vapid and void by comparison with the stupefying facts of entomology. But there is something spectral, something alarming, in the very beauty of insects....
IV
Whether gaki do or do not exist, there is at least some shadowing of truth in the Eastern belief that the dead become insects. Undoubtedly our human dust must help, over and over again for millions of ages, to build up numberless weird shapes of life. But as to that question of my revery under the pine trees,—whether present acts and thoughts can have anything to do with the future distribution and requickening of that dust,—whether human conduct can of itself predetermine the shapes into which human atoms will be recast,—no reply is possible. I doubt—but I do not know. Neither does anybody else.
*
Supposing, however, that the order of the universe were really as Buddhists believe, and that I knew myself foredoomed, by reason of stupidities in this existence, to live hereafter the life of an insect, I am not sure that the prospect would frighten me. There are insects of which it is difficult to think with equanimity; but the state of an independent, highly organized, respectable insect could not be so very bad. I should even look forward, with some pleasurable curiosity, to any chance of viewing the world through the marvellous compound eyes of a beetle, an ephemera, or a dragon-fly. As an ephemera, indeed, I might enjoy the possession of three different kinds of eyes, and the power to see colours now totally unimaginable. Estimated in degrees of human time, my life would be short,—a single summer day would include the best part of it; but to ephemeral consciousness a few minutes would appear a season; and my one day of winged existence—barring possible mishaps—would be one unwearied joy of dancing in golden air. And I could feel in my winged state neither hunger nor thirst,—having no real mouth or stomach: I should be, in very truth, a Wind-eater. ... Nor should I fear to enter upon the much less ethereal condition of a dragon-fly. I should then have to bear carnivorous hunger, and to hunt a great deal; but even dragon-flies, after the fierce joy of the chase, can indulge themselves in solitary meditation. Besides, what wings would then be mine!—and what eyes!... I could pleasurably anticipate even the certainty of becoming an Amembō,[4] and so being able to run and to slide upon water—though children might catch me, and bite off my long fine legs. But I think that I should better enjoy the existence of a sémi,—a large and lazy cicada, basking on wind-rocked trees, sipping only dew, and singing from dawn till dusk.
Of course there would be perils to encounter,—danger from hawks and crows and sparrows,—danger from insects of prey—danger from bamboos tipped with birdlime by naughty little boys. But in every condition of life there must be risks; and in spite of the risks, I imagine that Anacreon uttered little more than the truth, in his praise of the cicada: "O thou earth-horn,—song-loving,—free from pain>—having flesh without blood,—thou art nearly equal to the Gods!"... In fact I have not been able to convince myself that it is really an inestimable privilege to be reborn a human being. And if the thinking of this thought, and the act of writing it down, must inevitably affect my next rebirth, then let me hope that the state to which I am destined will not be worse than that of a cicada or of a dragon-fly;—climbing the cryptomerias to clash my tiny cymbals in the sun,—or haunting, with soundless flicker of amethyst and gold, some holy silence of lotos-pools.
[4] A water-insect, much resembling what we call a "skater." In some parts of the country it is said that the boy who wants to become a good swimmer must eat the legs of an Amembō.