CHAPTER III.
THE INSECT AS THE AGENT OF NATURE IN THE ACCELERATION OF DEATH AND LIFE.
The insect has not my languages. He neither speaks by voice nor physiognomy. In what manner, then, does he express himself?
He speaks by his energies.
1st. By the immense destructive influence he exercises on the superabundance of Nature, on a swarm of lingering or morbid lives which he hastens to sweep away.
2nd. He speaks also by his visible energies, especially in the moment of love, his colours, his fires, his poisons (many of which are among our therapeutic agents).
3rd. He speaks by his arts, which might fecundate our human inventions.
This is the subject of our second book.
Let us first attack the point where he wounds us most, and seems the auxiliary of death: his immense, ardent, and indefatigable work of destruction. Let us contemplate him in history, and begin at the remotest epoch.
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In answer to our littlenesses, our disgusts, our terrors, to the narrow and egotistical judgments which we bring to bear upon such subjects, we must recall the great and necessary reactions of Nature.
It has not advanced with the order of a continuous flood, but with refluxes and recoils back upon itself, which have enabled it to compass a perfect harmony. Our short-sighted survey, frequently arrested by these apparently retrograde movements, grows alarmed, takes fright, and misconceives the character of the whole.
It is peculiar to the Infinite Love, which is continuously creating, to raise every created thing to the Infinite. But in this very infinity, it stimulates a creation of antagonisms which shall reduce the extent of the preceding. If we see it produce monstrous destroyers, be sure that they are destined, as a remedy and a repression, to check some monsters of fecundity.
The herbivorous insects have had the task of keeping under the alarming vegetable accumulations of the primeval world.
But these herbivora exceeding all law and all reason, the insectivorous insects were created to confine them within limits.
The latter, robust and terrible, the tyrants of creation by their weapons and their wings, would have been the conquerors of the conquerors, and have driven to extremities the feebler species, if, above all the insect world and its weak powers of flight, had not risen on mighty wing a superior tyrant--the Bird. The haughty libellula was carried off by the swallow.
By these successive agencies of destruction, however, production has not been suppressed, but restrained, and the species balanced in such wise that all endure and live. The more a species is pruned, the more fertile it becomes. Does it exceed? Immediately the superabundance is equilibrized by the new fecundity which is given to its destroyers.
Ye men of this lingering epoch,--sons of the lean and sober West--brought up in the little, close, carefully tended, pared, and picked gardens, which you call "wide cultivation,"--enlarge, I pray you, your conceptions; extend them, and endeavour to imagine something greater than these petty corners, if you would comprehend anything of the earth's primitive forces; of the abundance and superabundance which she displayed when, soaked with warm mists, her bosom heaved with the glow of her first youth.
The hotter countries of our present globe still show something of this profusion, though in a pale decay. Africa, which over the greater portion of its area has lost its waters, preserves as a souvenir in its happier zones that enormous and swollen herb, or herbaceous tree, the baobab. The inextricable forests of Guiana and Brazil, in their labyrinthine chaotic confusion of wild plants which, without rule or measure, envelop and choke the colossal trees, corrupt them, and bury them in their _débris_, are but imperfect images of the great ancient Chaos. The only beings impure enough to endure its impurity and breathe its deadly exhalations, are great-bellied reptiles, unwieldy frogs, green caymans, and serpents swollen with filth and venom. And such would have been the inhabitants of earth. Unable to draw breath in the horrible suffocation, she could never have given forth that pure air in which man alone can live.
Accordingly, from on high pounced down the bird, and, plunging into the gulf, carried back to the sky on the tops of the lofty forests some one of these monsters. But its incessant struggle would have been vain against their abominable fecundity, if, from below, myriads of nibblers had not lightened the accumulation, cleansed the frightful lairs, and thrown open to the arrows of the sun the filth under which earth was panting. The humblest insects accomplished the gigantic work which made earth inhabitable: they devoured chaos.
"Small means," you say, "and great results! How could these little beings come to the aid of an infinity?" You would not cherish the doubt, if you had been ever a witness of the awakening of the silkworms, when, one morning, they are hatched with that vast hunger no abundance of leaves can satisfy. Their proprietor has supposed himself in a position to content them with a rich and beautiful plantation of mulberry-trees; but it counts for nothing. You supply them with forests, and they still ask for more. At a distance of twenty or thirty yards you hear a strange uninterrupted buzzing; a murmur like that of brooks incessantly flowing, and incessantly grinding and wearing out the pebbles. Nor are you mistaken: it is a brook, a torrent, a boundless river of living matter, which, under the grand mechanism of so many minute instruments, sounds, and resounds, and murmurs, passing from the vegetable life to that of insects, and softly but invincibly bases itself on animality.
To return to the primeval age. The most terrible destroyers, the most implacable assailants, which penetrated the lowermost rottenness of the great chaos, which at a higher level delivered the tree from the pressure of its parasites, and finally mounted to its branches, and brightened up the livid shadows,--these were the benefactors of species yet to come. Their uninterrupted work of unconquerable destruction reduced within reasonable limits the excess in which Nature was almost lost. They opened up splendid, free, and unencumbered spaces; and the monsters, banished from the gulf where they swarmed, grew more and more barren, and by that great revelation of the forest were exposed to the child of Light,--the Bird.
A profound agreement and genial fellowship were established between the latter and his protagonist, the child of Night, the Insect, which had thrown open the abyss, and delivered into his power the enemy. Consider, moreover, that in proportion as an exuberant nourishment fortified and exalted the insect, when its blood was intoxicated by so many burning plants, a ferocity previously unknown prevailed, and the fiercer and bolder species no longer limited themselves to undermining the _retreats_ of the monsters, but attacked the _monsters_ also. Stings, augers, cupping-glasses, trenchant teeth, sharpened pincers, an arsenal of unknown and as yet unnamed arms, came into existence, were elongated and whetted for assault upon the living matter. They were needed. They proved to be the lancet which cut the putrescent sore of the rising world. This latter had nourished and multiplied the feebly animalized myriads of torpid worms and pale-blooded larvæ, a ghastly and also the lowest life, which gained by passing through that burning crucible of keen existence, the superior insect-race.
I know nothing upon earth which seems stronger, firmer, more durable, and more formidable than those miniature rhinoceros-like cuirassiers, which traverse earth as quickly as the great mammal traverses it heavily and slowly. The carabi, the galeritas, the stag-beetles, which carry with so much ease armour far more formidable than that of the Middle Ages, reassure us only by their size. Here strength is relatively formidable. Were a man proportionally strong, he might take in his arms the obelisk of Luxor.
Vast energies of absorption, concentrating in these insects enormous foci of forces, translated themselves into the light by the energies of colour. To these, in species where life was more elevated, succeeded the moral energies. The superbly barbarous heroes, the _scarabæi_, were exterminated by the modest citizen-species, the ants and bees, in which the secret of beauty was harmony.
Such is the whole history of insects. But to whatever height our inquiries may conduct us, let us not mistake the point of departure, --the useful nibblers and miners, which have elaborated and prepared the globe.
Is their work terminated? By no means. Immense zones remain in what may still be called an ancient condition, condemned to a terrible and unwholesome fecundity. In the centre of America the richest forests of the world seem ever to repel the approach of man, who enters them only to die. His arms, enfeebled by fever, have not even strength enough to collect their treasures. If a tree fall across his path, it becomes an insurmountable obstacle to the indifferent adventurer. He turns aside, and you may trace his circuit through the tall herbage. Fortunately the termites do not recoil so easily. If they find themselves confronted by a tree, they do not avoid it, do not turn its flank. They attack it bravely in the front, set to work as many labourers as are necessary--millions, perhaps: in two or three days the tree is devoured, and the road open.
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The great law of nature, and in these countries the law of safety, is the rapid destruction of everything decaying, languishing, stagnant, and therefore injurious; its ardent purification in the crucible of life. And that crucible is, before all things, the insect. We must not blame its fury of absorption. Who thinks of accusing the flame? The flame is worthy of reproach only when it does not burn. And, in like manner, that living fire, the insect, is created to devour. Necessity demands that it should be eager, cruel, blind, and of an implacable appetite. It can have no sobriety, no moderation, no pity. All the virtues of man and of superior beings would be nonsense which one cannot even imagine. Can you conceive of an insect with the sensibility and tenderness of the dog? which should weep like the beaver? which should nourish the aspirations and poetry of the nightingale? or, finally, the compassionateness of man? Such an insect would be incapable; thoroughly unfit for its profession as the anatomist, dissector, and destroyer--we may say, more justly, the universal medium of nature, which, precipitating death by suppressing long periods of decay, in this way accelerates the brilliant return of life. Thus disembarrassed and free, it says, with a savage pleasure, "No maladies, no old age! Shame upon all decay! Hail to eternal youth! Let every creature die which lives beyond a day!"
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Observe that the furious eagerness of the winged insects, which seem to be the agents of death, is frequently a cause of life. By an incessant persecution of the sick flocks, enfeebled by hot damp airs, they ensure their safety. Otherwise they would remain stupidly resigned, and hour after hour grow less capable of motion, gloomier and more morbid in the bonds of fever, until they could rise no more. The inexorable spur knows, however, the secret of putting them on their legs; though with trembling limbs, they take to flight; the insect never quits them, presses them, urges them, and conducts them, bleeding, to the wholesome regions of the dry lands and the living waters, where, growing discontented, their furious guide abandons them, and returns to the pestilent vapours, to its realm of death.
In the Soudan, in Africa, a little insect, the Nâm fly, directs with a sovereign authority the migrations of the flocks. In the dry season it rages against the camel; it audaciously ventures into the ear of the elephant. The giant is resistlessly driven forward by its winged shepherds, to escape the fires of the south, and to seek the fresh winds of the north. On the other hand, the oxen, through its management, remain with their Arab master peacefully in the genial southern pastures.
The most terrible of insects--the great Guiana ants--are valued precisely for their devouring power. Without them, no effectual means would exist of thoroughly cleansing the homes of man of all the obscure broods which infest the shadows, and swarm in the timbers and framework, in the most imperceptible crevices. One morning the black army appears at the door of the house: an army of sanitary inspectors. Man retires, gives place to them, and evacuates his dwelling. "Enter, ladies; come and go at your pleasure; make yourselves quite at home." It would not be safe for the owner to remain, since it is a law with these scrupulous visitors to leave no living thing in the track of their march. In the first place, every insect,--the largest as well as the minutest,--and their eggs, however well-concealed, perish. Then the smaller animals--frogs, adders, field-mice;--none escape. The place is thoroughly cleansed, for the smallest remains are conscientiously devoured.
The great spiders of the Antilles, without piquing themselves on accomplishing a work of purification so terrible and so complete, labour nevertheless very industriously to secure the cleanliness of human habitations. They will not suffer any disgusting insect to exist. They are excellent servants--much cleaner than the slaves. Therefore men value them, and purchase them as indispensable domestics. Markets exist where spiders are regularly bought and sold.
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In Siberia, the spider enjoys the consideration to which it can everywhere put forward so many claims. That region of the farthest North, whose very brief summer is not the less infested with gnats and flies, finds a benefactor in the useful insect which industriously hunts the swarms for man's advantage. Its consummate prudence, its superior ability, its prescience of atmospheric variations and climatic phases, have so exalted the idea which the Siberians have formed of it, that many of their tribes refer the creation of the world to a gigantic spider.