CHAPTER II.

THE MICROSCOPE:--HAS THE INSECT A PHYSIOGNOMY?

Armed with that sixth sense which man has achieved for himself, I can move forward, at pleasure, in any direction. It is in my power to track out, to reach, to compute the spheres, and gravitate with them in their vast orbits. But I feel much more strongly attracted towards the other abyss--that of the infinitely little. In its atoms I discover an intensity of energy which charms and astounds me. And I myself, what am I but an atom? Neither Jupiter nor Sirius, those enormous globes at so great a distance from, and possessing so little sympathy with me, will teach me the secret of terrestrial life. But these, on the contrary, surround and press upon me, injure me or lend me their assistance. If they are not of my own kind, they are at all events associated with me.

Ay, fatally associated.

And yet I cannot fly from them: swarms haunt the very air which I breathe,--what do I say? float in the fluids of my body. It is my interest to know them. But my sovereign interest is to escape from my deplorable and wretched ignorance, and not to quit this world until I have peered into the infinite.

Full of such ideas, I addressed myself to one of the philosophers of the present day who have made the greatest and most successful use of the microscope,--the celebrated Dr. Robin. Under his direction, I purchased from the skilful optician Nachet an excellent instrument, and planted myself before my window on a very beautiful day.

I have said it,--the microscope is much more than a mere magnifying glass. It is an aid, a servant who has hands to supplement your own--eyes, and movable eyes, which by their changes enable you to see an object at a suitable magnitude, and either in detail or as a whole. One perfectly understands the all-absorbing attraction which it exercises; however great the fatigue it causes, one cannot separate one's-self from it. Its _début_, as we have seen, was signalized by its slaying its creator, Swammerdam. How many workmen has it not since deprived, if not of life, at least of sight? The first of the two Hubers became blind at a comparatively early age. The illustrious author of the great work on the cockchafer, M. Strauss, is nearly so. Our pallid but enthusiastic Robin is already on the same descent, but pursues his studies without pause. The seduction is too potent. Who can renounce the truth, after once beholding it? Who can willingly return into the world of errors wherein men exist? Better not to see at all, than always to see things falsely.

Behold me, then, face to face with my little man of copper. I lost not an instant in interrogating the oracle. And its first and somewhat rough reply respecting the two objects I presented was:--

One was the human hand, white and delicate,--the left hand, the idler, and that of a person who did no work.

The other, a spider's foot.

To the naked eye the former object seemed agreeable enough; the other, a tiny, obscure blade, of a dirty brown, and somewhat repulsive.

In the microscope the effect was precisely the opposite. In the spider's foot, easily cleansed of a few downy spots, appeared a magnificent comb of the most beautiful shell, which, far from being dirty, by its extreme polish was rendered incapable of being soiled; everything glided off it. This object would seem to serve two ends: that of a very delicate hand, through which the spinner, in rising or descending, suffers its thread to glide; and that of a comb, with which the attentive labourer holds its stuff, while at work, in the required position, until the woven threads--more like a cloud--grow firm and strong, are dried by the air, and no longer fall back floating and wavy, but useless.

As for the human hand, the part exposed under the microscope seemed, even with the smallest lens, a vague and immense substance, incomprehensible through its very coarseness.

Even with a medium lens, of only twelve or fifteen times magnifying power, it seemed to be a yellowish, reddish tissue, coarse and dry, ill-woven,--a kind of wiry taffeta, in which each mesh was irregularly puffed up.

Nothing could be more humiliating!

This pitiless judge, pitiless even in its treatment of the flowers, behaves with terrible severity towards the human flower. The freshest and most charming will act wisely in not attempting the experiment. She would shudder at herself. Her dimples would deepen into abysses! The light down of the peach which crowns her beautiful skin with the bloom of delicacy would show like rough thickets, or rather like savage forests.

After my first experiment, I felt that the too truthful oracle not only altered our ideas of proportion, but of appearances, colours, forms--transfiguring everything, in fact, from the false to the true.

Let us be resigned. Whatever the organ of truth may tell us, I thank it, and I will welcome it though it declare me to be a monster. But such is not the case. If it change with some severity our notions of the surface, on the other hand it reveals to us worlds of truly unbounded beauty beneath it. A hundred things in anatomy which seem horrible to the unassisted sight, acquire a touching and impressive delicacy, and a poetical charm which approaches the sublime. This is not the place for discussing such a subject. But a mere drop of blood, of a brickdust-red by no means agreeable to the naked eye, heavy, thick, and opaque, if you look at it when dry, under the magnifying glass, presents to you a delicious rose-bloom arborescence, with delicate ramifications as fine and subtle as those of the coral are coarse and dull.

But let us keep to our insects. Let us select the most miserable--the wonderfully little butterfly of the clothes-moth, that dirty white butterfly which seems the lowest of created beings. Take only his wing. Nay, far less, only a little dust, the light powder which covers his wing. You are astounded at seeing that Nature, exhausting the most ingenious industry in order that this offcast of creation may fly at his ease, and without fatigue, has scattered over his wing, not dust, but a multitude of tiny balloons. Or, if you prefer it, so many parachutes, most convenient instruments for flight, which, when opened, sustain the little aeronaut without fatigue and for an indefinite period; which, as they are more or less expanded, enable it to rise or sink; and when folded up, permit of its remaining quiet. The least of the butterflies, thus supported, has a faculty of flight as unlimited as the noblest bird of heaven.

One grows keenly interested in these curious apparatus, which have anticipated our human inventions. One observes their strange and surprising modes of action, as one would observe the inhabitants of another planet, if he were miraculously transported thither. But what one most yearns to see, what one burns to detect, is some reflection from _within_, some gleam of the torch which is concealed in their inner existence, some appearance of thought. Have they a physiognomy? Can I seize in their strange visage any trace of an intelligence which, judging by their works, so closely resembles our own? Of the expression which touches me in the eye of the dog, and of other animals related to me, shall I detect nothing in the bee, the ant, in those ingenious beings, those creators, which accomplish so many things the dog cannot accomplish?

A clever man once said to me: "As a boy I was very partial to insects; I searched about for caterpillars, and made a collection of them. I was especially curious to look in their faces, but never succeeded. All that I could distinguish was confused, dull, melancholy. This discouraged me. I left off making collections."

I was but a child in this new study; that is, I was fresh to it, and curious. My special anxiety was to interrogate the countenance of the dumb little world, and to surprise there, in default of voice, the silent thought. Thought? At least, the dream, the obscure and floating instinct.

I addressed myself to the ant; an humble being in form and colour, but endowed with a prodigious amount of social instinct and of the educational capacity; not to speak of its quickness of resource, of the promptitude with which it confronts perils, and chances, and embarrassments.

I take then an ant of the commonest species--a neutral ant--one of the workers who are relieved from the wants of love, and in whom therefore the sex, diminished to a minimum for the advantage of labour, develops so much more powerfully its extraordinary instinct; who alone perform all the diverse trades of the little community, and are purveyors, nurses, architects, and inventors.

I selected a very fine, serene, and luminous day--not luminous with the glare of summer, but the calm radiance of autumn (1st September 1856). I was alone, in a state of perfect silence and repose, and in that complete forgetfulness of the world which is so rarely obtained. After the manifold agitations of the past and present, my heart for a moment was at peace.

Never was I more ready to hear the mute voices which do not address themselves to the ear, to penetrate in a calm and benevolent spirit the mystery of the little world which on every side surrounds us, and yet has hitherto remained out of our reach and apart from our communications.

Alone with my ant, armed with a tolerably good lens, with a magnifying power of twelve, I placed it delicately on a large sheet of fine white paper which covered nearly the whole table.

With the microscope I could have seen but a part and not the whole. A very considerable enlargement would also have exaggerated the merely secondary details--such as the scanty hairs with which the ant is provided. Finally, its mobility would not have suffered me to keep it in the focus of the microscope; but the lens, as easily shifted as itself, followed it in all its motions.

Not, however, without some difficulty. It was lively, alert, disquieted, and impatient to quit the table. I was looking at it in the middle of the sheet, when it was already nearly at the edge. I was obliged to _etherize_ it a little, so as to stupefy it, and render it less uneasy.

It appeared very clean, and highly varnished. Though a neuter, and not a female, its belly was rather large, and was joined to the chest by two small swellings. From the chest the head, which was strong and nearly round, detached itself cleanly and distinctly.

This head, seen as it were _en masse_, resembled a bird's. But instead of a beak it had a circular prolongation, in which, on attentive examination, I detected the reunion of two tiny crescents joined at the point. These were its teeth, or mandibles, which do not operate like ours, from above to below, but horizontally and sideways. The insect employs its mandibles for the most widely different purposes; they are not only its weapons and instruments of mastication, but the tools it uses for every art, supplying the place of hands in masonry, plastering, carving, and in lifting and transplanting burdens which are frequently of enormous weight.

It was well for it that its body was wrapped in a complete coat of mail. The ether affected it but slightly, and only stupefied it. After a moment's immobility it partly recovered, and made a few movements like those of an intoxicated person, or as if it were affected with a fit of vertigo. It seemed to say, "Where am I?" and endeavoured to make out the ground where it was walking, the great sheet of white paper. It attempted a few tottering steps, tumbling first on one side and then on the other. It carried before it a couple of instruments which at first I took to be feet, but which I found, on more careful inspection, were wholly different.

They sprang from a point near either eye, and, like the eyes, were evidently instruments of observation. These antennæ, as they are called, long, delicate, yet robust, and vibrating at the slightest touch, are fleshy, articulated in twenty pieces, and disposed one in another. They form an instrument admirably adapted for feeling and groping. But it is useful in many other ways: by means of it the ants transmit in a second very complicated advices, as, for instance, when they change their course and retire, or suddenly take a wholly different road; evidently they have a language like that of the telegraph. This supposed marvellous organ of touch is more probably a species of hearing apparatus, and so mobile that it quivers at the slightest vibrations of the air, and feels every wave of sound.

* * * * *

The perfect accord of every movement of the delicate and subtle tactile and telegraphic apparatus, the strong head, in fine, which seemingly _thinks_, completed the illusion. Its attitudes, its gropings, its efforts to obtain a knowledge of the situation, showed precisely what we should have been under similar circumstances. Shakespeare's Queen Mab, in her nut-shell chariot, occurred to my mind. And more, the chronicles of the Hubers; those impressive and almost terrifying narratives which would lead us to believe that the ants are far advanced in a knowledge of good and evil.

* * * * *

It turned its back upon me obstinately, as if it dreaded to see its persecutor. It looked upon me as a horrible giant, and, despite its semi-intoxicated condition, made constant and energetic efforts to escape me, and place itself in security.

I brought it back very softly and cautiously. But I could not make it show me its face. Its antipathy and its terror, undoubtedly, were too powerful. I therefore decided to take hold of it with a small pair of pincers, and to keep it on its back, using as little pressure as possible. The pressure, though light, acting on the small lateral orifices (or stigmata) through which it breathes, was infinitely painful, to judge from the resistance it offered. With its minute claws and mandibles it held the pincers so firmly that I could hear the air vibrate with every motion. I hastily profited by the painful position in which I had placed my ant; I looked it in the face.

That which is most disconcerting, and gives it a peculiar appearance, are the teeth or mandibles placed outside the mouth, and springing, one on the right side, the other on the left, in a horizontal direction, so as to meet together: ours are vertical. These projecting teeth seem to offer battle, though, as I have said, they are also used for pacific purposes, and _serve as hands_.

Behind the teeth may be seen several little threads or palpi at the entrance of the mouth; which are, in reality, the _little hands of the mouth_,--feeling, and handling, and turning over whatever is brought there.

In front emerge the antennæ, the _other_ hands; but these are set externally, are mobile and susceptible to an excess,--in a word, _electric hands_.

Behind the head, at the chest, commence the paws or feet, two in front of great dexterity, and rightly named by Kirby the arms.

An apparatus of such complexity, placed in the fore part of the body, cannot fail to obscure and overcloud its physiognomy. What would be the case with our own, if from our eyes and mouth six hands started, to say nothing of those which proceed from the shoulders, and of four others placed lower down?

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.