Chapter 5

Insects, as every one knows, are the worst foes of man. Fabre not only studied these implacable beings but loved them. There was something unnatural about it; something disloyal to the whole human race. It is probable that Fabre was not really human at all. He may have been found in some human cradle, but he was a changeling. You can see he has insect blood in him, if you look at his photograph. He is leathery, agile, dried up. And his grandmother was waspish. He himself always felt strangely close to wasps, and so did wasps to him. I dare say that in addition to Fabre's "Life of the Wasp," there exists, if we could only get at it, a wasp's Life of Fabre.

If the wasp wrote as Fabre does, he would describe Fabre's birth, death, and matings, but tell us hardly anything else about Fabre's real life. He would dwell chiefly on Fabre's small daily habits and his reactions to the wasp's interference.

"Desirous of ascertaining what the old Fabre would do if stung," writes the wasp, "I repeatedly stuck my sting in his leg--but without any effect. I afterward discovered however I had been stinging his boots. This was one of my difficulties, to tell boots and Fabre apart, each having a tough wizened quality and a powdery taste.

"The old Fabre went into his wooden nest or house after this, and presently sat down to eat one of his so-called meals. I couldn't see an atom of dung on the table however, and though there were some fairly edible flowers he never once sucked them. He had only an immense brown root called a potato, and a 'chop' of some cow. Seizing a prong in his claws, the old Fabre quickly harpooned this 'chop' and proceeded to rend it, working his curious mandibles with sounds of delight, and making a sort of low barking talk to his mate. Their marriage, to me, seemed unnatural. Although I watched closely for a week this mate laid no eggs for him: and instead of saving food for their larvæ they ate it all up themselves. How strange that these humans should differ so much from us wasps!"

Another life of Fabre that we ought to have is one by his family. _They_ were not devoted to insects; they probably loathed them; and yet they had to get up every morning and spend the whole day nursing bugs. I picture them, yawning and snarling over the tedious experiments, and listening desperately to Fabre's coleopterous chatter. The members of every famous man's family ought to give us their side of it. I want more about Tolstoy by Mrs. Tolstoy. And a Life of Milton by his daughters. That picture of those unfortunate daughters, looking so sweet and devoted, taking the blind poet's dictation, is--must be--deceptive. They were probably wanting to go off upstairs, all the time, and try new ways of doing their hair; or go out and talk their heads off with other girls, or look in shop windows: anything but take down old Mr. Milton's poetry all day. They didn't know their papa was a classic: they just thought that he was the longest-winded papa in their street. I have no warrant for saying this, I may add. Except that it's human nature....

Fabre has his good points. He is imaginative and dramatic, and yet has a passion for truth. He is a philosopher, an artist. And above all he is not sentimental. He is fond of his insects, but he never is foolishly fond. And sometimes the good old soul is as callous as can be toward caterpillars. He shows no more bowels towards caterpillars than do his own wasps. Take, for instance, that experiment when he kept some on the march for eight days, watching them interestedly as they died of exhaustion. Or his delight at the way caterpillars are eaten by the Eumenes wasp.

This wasp shuts its egg up in a large, prison-like cell, with a pile of live caterpillars beside it, to serve as its food, first half-paralyzing these victims so they will keep still. Alive but unable to move, the caterpillars lie there till the grub hatches out. (Dead caterpillars wouldn't do because this little grub loves fresh meat.)

The grub, hanging by a thread from the ceiling, now begins having dinner. "Head downward it is digging into the limp belly of one of the caterpillars," says Fabre. "The caterpillars grow restless," he adds. (There's a fine brutal touch!) The grub thereupon, to Fabre's delight, climbs back up its thread. It is only a baby; it's tender; and when those wretched caterpillars get to thrashing around, they might hurt the sweet infant. Not till "peace" is restored, Fabre adds, does Baby dare to come down again. Hideous infantile epicure! It takes another good juicy bite.

And if its dinner moans again, or wriggles, it again climbs back up.

Imagine some caterpillar reader shuddering at this horror--this lethal chamber where prominent caterpillars are slowly eaten alive. Yet scenes like this occur all through Fabre, and are described with great relish. If he wrote of them in a dry professional way, it would sound scientific, and I could read it in a cool, detached spirit with never a flutter. But he does it so humanly that you get to be friends with these creatures, and then he springs some grisly little scene on you that gives you the creeps, and explains to you that the said little scene is going on all the time; and it makes you feel as though there were nothing but red fangs in the world.

Fabre at one time was offered the post of tutor to Napoleon III's son, but he preferred to live in poverty in the country, where he could keep up his studies. No money, no honors could tempt him away from his work. Perhaps this was noble. But it seems to me he made a mistake. In fact, this was the greatest and most fatal mistake of his life.

If he had gone to Napoleon, he might have moped awhile at first, and felt guilty. But he would have gone right on loving insects and wanting to study them. Hence he would have soon begun looking around the palace for specimens. And this might have led to his discovering riches indoors.

Suppose he had written about that bug that takes its name from our beds, and helped us to understand its persistent devotion to man. According to Ealand, the scientist, they are not wholly bad. They were once supposed to be good for hysteria if taken internally. The Ancients gave seven to adults and four to children, he says, "to cure lethargy." But the best Ealand can do is to give us bits of information like this, whereas Fabre, if he had lived in his bedroom, could have been their interpreter.

That's his failure--his books are over-weighted with bugs of the fields. I have plowed through long chapters without getting away for a minute from beetles. In bugs of the field I take a due interest (which, I may add, isn't much), but the need of humanity is to know about bugs of the home.

In His Baby Blue Ship

There are some people who can't enjoy fairy-stories, and don't like imagining. They are a bit too hard-headed. I don't blame such people; they are all right enough in their way. Only they ought not to go around saying fairy-stories are silly. They ought simply to let them alone and live nice hard-headed lives.

It is the same way with soft-headed people who cannot enjoy the real world. Not having much taste for it, and not getting on too well in it, they are apt to call it pretty bad names and to wish it were different. I think them too hasty. Before they abuse or advise it they should first understand it. If they can't, they should let it alone more, and live in their dreams.

Or in those of such dreamers as Maeterlinck, Dunsany, or Poe.

The Maeterlinck books constitute quite a beautiful country. They have long been a favorite home for our soft-headed friends. And those of us who are of a compound between hard and soft enjoy visiting the Maeterlinck coast as we might a resort. It is pleasantly unreal; it is varied. Gentle breezes of sweetness; blue seas, massive rocks; and storms too. Here and there a crag, or dark castle of terrible grandeur. Is it not picturesque? Don't poke at the castles with your umbrella; you might go through the tin; but take it all in the right spirit as you would Coney Island.

Human nature being what it is, there is certainly a need for this place.

There is one little difficulty about the situation however. Monsieur Maeterlinck, the proprietor, although he makes his home in this region, likes sometimes to visit the real world, if but for a change. Well, this would be nothing to object to, though for him injudicious, but he is such a stranger there that he does not at all know his place. He takes himself seriously at his home; it is natural, I'm sure; but it leads him to speak in the real world with a voice of authority. He is not in the least offensive about it, no one could be more gentle, but he doesn't at all realize that his rank here permits no such tone. On the Maeterlinck coast, in the realms of romance, he is king. In the real world his judgments are not above those of a child.

It would give me more pleasure (or at any rate it ought to, I know) to dwell on his many abilities than on this one fault. But this excellent man has the misfortune to resemble wood-alcohol. Wood-alcohol is a respectable liquid; it is useful in varnish; when poured in a lamp it heats tea; yes, it has its good side. Yet how little we dwell on its uses, how much on its defect; its one small defect that it's fatal when taken internally.

Maeterlinck has for years made a business of beautiful thoughts. With some of them he built romantic tales that are or were a refreshment. But others he embodied in sermons addressed to reality. He told us none needed to go to his coast for romance, or for purity and beauty and goodness, for we really were full of them. We were made in fact of just these ingredients, at least in our hearts; and it followed, he said, that our actions should be chosen accordingly. Without ever having learned anything much of mankind, he described just the way that he felt all mankind should behave. He put on the robes of a sage, and he sweetened his looks, and his voice became tender and thrilling and rather impressive; and he wrote about the Treasure of the Humble, and Wisdom and Destiny.

The real world is not easy to live in. It is rough; it is slippery. Without the most clear-eyed adjustments we fall and get crushed. A man must stay sober: not always, but most of the time. Those of us who drink from the flasks of the sages of dreamland become so intoxicated with guff we are a peril to everyone.

We trust in Hague tribunals for instance, on the eve of great wars.

The flask that Wood-Alcohol Maurice, if I may so call him, held so long to our lips in the years before 1914, produced the usual effects of joy first, and then blindness and coma. I speak from experience. I took some myself and was poisoned, and I knew other cases. But it poisoned poor Maeterlinck more--I may say, most of all--for he had taken his own medicine honorably as fast as he mixed it. Owing to this imprudence, he found himself, in 1914, in such a deep coma it almost killed him to come out of it. His anger at having to wake up and face things was loud. He found himself compelled to live for a while in the midst of hard facts, and his comments upon them were scathing; as all dreamers' are.

Since then he has gone part-way back to the land of romance, and if he will stay there I shall not prefer charges against him. He is one of the masters of fancy. He can mine fairy gold. But any time he comes to this world we're now learning to live in, or offers us any more mail-order lessons in sweetness, I think we should urge him to go and stay where he belongs.

There is a poem by Joaquin Miller about Columbus that describes his long voyage. It consists, as I remember, entirely of groans by the sailors, who keep asking Columbus whether he will please let them turn back. But Columbus never has but one answer, and that is "Sail on." He says "Sail on, sail on," over and over again, at the end of each stanza. I grant you it must have been monotonous enough to the crew, who after the first week or two probably knew it by heart; but never mind, it sounds well to us. It's especially good when declaimed. I don't suppose Columbus himself climbed the poop and declaimed it; he merely stopped shaving, stuck his head out of the chart-room and screeched it,--suitably mixed with whatever profanities his day could command. But Time, which softens all homely history, has beautified this. All the boy Columbuses _I_ ever heard recite it, when I was at school, had as noble a way as one could ask of telling their crews to sail on.

I did not mean to make so long a digression. To get back to Maeterlinck. We ought to provide him with a beautiful baby-blue ship. Odd, charming allegorical figures should sit on the decks, and fenders should hang from the sides to ward off bumps of truth. Astern he might tow a small wife-boat, as a mariner should, with its passenger capacity carefully stamped on the bottom. And instead of Columbus, a honey-fed spirit of dream should stand in his prow and adjure him to sail on, to dreamland. "Dream on, dream on, dream on," she should patter, each time he grew restless. I could not take a turn in the prow myself, it would be too much honor; but I should be glad to take my stand in the gentleman's rear, and do all I could to accelerate his progress from thence.

Problems

The Man Who Knew Gods

His case illustrated the risks explorers run. Not the physical risks, which are overestimated, but the psychological dangers. For years he had lived among savages, observing their ways, and owing to this he had fallen into a completely detached mental habit. When he returned to civilization, he had become a confirmed looker-on. He couldn't get back into touch with us. He remained an outsider.

I met him but once myself. I was in the publishing business at the time, and, hearing that this man was in New York, I thought I might as well see him about his next book. Telephoning him, therefore, at his hotel, I asked him to dine with me on the following Friday.

"Fri-day?" he replied. "What is 'Friday'?" (He spoke English perfectly.)

"It is the twenty-sixth," I answered.

He said: "The twenty-sixth what? Oh, I know," he continued; "Friday is a day of the week. Thank you very much, but I do not keep track of my dinners so carefully as that."

This rather odd answer I passed over, at the moment, thinking I had misunderstood him; and we arranged that he would come some day to my office instead, after lunch.

The next that I heard, he had called there at a quarter to five, the hour at which I always leave. My secretary explained to him that I had gone.

He looked at my desk, on which lay some unfinished business, and said to my secretary, "Why?"

The man courteously responded, "Because it is a quarter to five."

The explorer thereat laughed weirdly and went off.

I now perceived I had to deal with a most eccentric character; but that being a necessary evil in the publishing business, I went to his hotel at nine o'clock that evening. I found him down in the restaurant eating oatmeal and succotash, and we then and there had the following extravagant interview,--which I give without comment.

"The book _I_ mean to write," he said, staring at me, "is a study of actual religions. Other writers have told the world what men of all countries suppose their religions to be. I shall tell what they really are."

I said that our house would prefer an account of his travels; but he paid no attention.

"Men's real religions," he announced, "are unknown to themselves. You may have heard of the Waam Islanders," he leisurely continued. "They, for instance, would tell you that their deity was an idol called Bashwa, a large crumbling stone thing which stands in a copperwood forest. They worship this idol most faithfully, on the first of each lunar month. No Waam Islander would ever acknowledge he had any other God but Bashwa.

"But a stranger soon notices that in every hut and cave in that country, hanging beside the water-jar, is a long sleeping mat, and on that mat a rough pattern is drawn, like a face. 'What is that?' I asked them. That? oh, that's G'il,' they answered in an off-hand careless way, without any of the reverence they would have used if they had thought G'il a god. But nevertheless I noted that everywhere, throughout that whole island, submissive remarks about G'il, were far more numerous than those about Bashwa. That made me begin collecting those references; and presently I found that most things of which that tribe approved were spoken of as being g'il, or very g'il, and things they didn't like were damned as na-g'il.

"It was a little difficult to understand their exact conception of G'il, but apparently it typified the hut, or the hut point of view. Marriage was g'il, and good manners and building materials, because they all made for hut-life. Inhospitality was na-g'il, and the infidelity of women, and earthquakes, and leaks.

"They sometimes personified G'il and talked of him as he. 'G'il loves not Wheesha' (the wind); 'G'il comforts the weary'; 'G'il says, "Get more children."' But all this was only in their fanciful moments. At other times G'il was merely the mat that they slept on. When I said to them, 'G'il is your real God,' they laughed at my stupidity--good humoredly, as though there were something, perhaps, in my idea, yet with a complacent assurance that I was preposterous. I did not argue with them. One couldn't, you know. I simply continued my observations, corroborating my theory at every turn. To give you an instance: Bashwa is supposed to think highly of hunters and sailors, and the Waam-folk always profess to think highly of them too. That attitude, however, is only official, not real. Very few of them actually become sailors. The life is na-g'il."

He came to a pause.

"I wonder whether we, too, have a G'il," I said, to humor him. "We shall have to ask some of your Waam-folk to come here and tell us."

The explorer looked me over as though he were "continuing his observations" of _my_ manners and customs. "Yes," he said, "there's a white man's G'il."

I regretted having mentioned it.

"Can't you guess what he is?" he inquired. "I say 'he' because, like the Waam G'il, he is sometimes personified. Come now! Apply the test. He doesn't typify the Waam Islander point of view: he isn't a mat. But examine your huts and your conversation, and you'll easily spot him. No, I'm not talking of money, or power, or success: you may bow down to these,--but not blindly. You at least know what you are doing. The worship of a G'il is unconscious, and hence more insidious. Even when an explorer points it out, you won't see its importance. It will seem insignificant to you. And yet, while the Bashwa to whom you build temples is only occasionally deferred to, this G'il of yours sways you in all things. He is the first whom you think of when you rise, and the last when you go to bed. You speak of your G'il hourly or oftener, all day long. Those of you who heed him too little are disapproved of by everybody, while the American who succeeds in life is the man who is most careful of G'il.

"I have habits," he morosely continued, "of doing certain things,--eating my meals for instance,--at quite different hours from those that are prevalent here. I find that every one who hears of this is surprised at my ways. Their attitude, while not openly intolerant, is distinctly disapproving. When I ask them why, I get no answer--no rational answer. They say simply, 'It's the wrong time.' Following up this clue I have noticed that not only is the time for performing an act supposed to be sometimes 'wrong' and sometimes 'right,' but that the idea of time governs all of you, like an absolute tyrant. Even your so-called free-thinkers, who lead a life without God, never dream of daring to live without a clock and a calendar. And just as the Waam-folk are unconsciously obsessed by their hut-thought, and see everything from that angle, so you have drifted into an exaggerated pre-occupation with time. No matter what you may want to do, you first look at the clock, to see if it is the right time for doing it: if it isn't, you wait. You feel that you 'ought' to.... And each caste among you has its own hours. A difference of thirty minutes in the hour at which a family has dinner, marks a difference in their social scale. 'There isn't time,' you sigh, submissively, when you give up something you'd like to do. 'Time is money,' is one of your phrases. 'Give me time,' is your prayer. Your big books of maxims are full of the respect you feel toward him. 'The greatest crime is loss of time.' 'Time flies.' 'Time waits for no man.' These are only small instances, but their total effect is not small, for it is life itself that you sacrifice to this fetish. Your G'il actually won't let you take good full draughts of existence--he keeps you so busy dividing it into months, days, and minutes. You imagine that it is because you lead crowded lives that you do it. But it is because you're always thinking of time that you lead crowded lives.

"You are smiling at me good humoredly, my friend. I see that, like the Waam Islanders, you think I am preposterous. It is the old story. You cannot view yourself from without. You will admit that considerations of time enter into all your acts, and yet--this seems trivial? And it is inconceivable to you that you are its slaves?"

"My dear sir," I interposed, "a strict observance of the laws of time enables a man to live a much fuller life."

"It is what all devotees say of all gods," he murmured.

"We are not its slaves," I continued. "That's absurd. We have only a sensible regard for it, as every one must."

"Ah! ah!" he cried. "But you do not say 'one must' when your Bashwa speaks.

"Your Bashwa thinks highly of those who do good works without ceasing. You profess to think highly of them too; that is your official attitude. In reality, how very few of you lead that life. It happens to be na-g'il, you see. You haven't the time.

"Look about you if you would convince yourself. The concrete evidence alone is enough. On the breasts or the wrists of your women, and in every man's pocket you see a G'il amulet, a watch, to remind them of time every hour. What other god was ever so faithfully worshipped? In every hut in the land you will find his altar, and in your large huts you will find one in every principal room. No matter how free and unconventional their owners may be, no matter how those rooms may vary in their arrangement or furnishings, there stands always in the most prominent place the thing called the mantel; on it, ceremonially flanked by two candlesticks, or vases, sits G'il, the timepiece; and his is the face of all others you most frequently consult. Blind and idolatrous tribesman! time is your deity!"

Well, that's all there was to our interview, for at this point he came to a pause and I rose to leave, explaining to him, soothingly (though I must confess it had a strangely opposite effect) that I had to go because it was getting so late.

Annual Report of the League for Improving the Lives of the Rich

To begin with, there is one objection that is constantly made to the work of this League. Our critics do not understand why we do so much for the rich. They grant that many rich people are unhappy and lead miserable lives; but they argue that if they suffer from riches, it must be their own fault. Nobody would have to stay rich, they say, if he would just make an effort: and if he has too much money and yet won't give it away, he must be a bad lot.