I The Living Infinite
We have followed the Bird in all its liberties of flight, and space, and light; but the Earth which we quitted would not quit us. The sweet melodies of the winged world could not prevent us from hearing the murmur of an infinite world of shadow and silence, which, wanting the speech of man, expresses itself, nevertheless, with eloquent force, by means of a myriad mute tongues.
A universal appeal made to us simultaneously by all Nature, from the depths of Earth and Sea, from the bosom of every plant, from the very air which we breathe.
The eloquent appeal of the ingenious arts of the Insect, of its powers of love so vividly manifested through its wings and colours, in the brilliant scintillation with which it enkindles our nights.
An appeal which becomes frightful from the number of those who make it. What is the little tribe of Birds, or that of Quadrupeds, compared with them? All the animal species, all the various forms of life, brought face to face with this one family, disappear, and are as nothing. Put the world on one side, and on the other the Insect World; the latter has the advantage.
Our collections contain about one hundred thousand species. But taking into consideration that every plant at the least nourishes three, we obtain the result, according to the number of known plants, of three hundred and sixty thousand species of insects! And each, be it remembered, of prodigious fecundity.
Now call to mind that every creature nourishes other creatures on its surface, in the thickness of its solids, in its fluids, and in its blood; that each insect is a little world inhabited by insects; and that these again have parasites of their own.
Is this all? No; in the masses men have supposed to be mineral or inorganic, animals are now revealed to us of which it would take a thousand millions to form one inch in thickness,—the which do not the less present us with a rough sketch or outline of the Insect, and have a right to be spoken of as insects commenced. And what are the numbers of these? A single species accumulates the Apennines out of its débris, and with its atoms has raised up that enormous backbone of America, the Cordilleras.
Having arrived at this point, we think our review is ended. Patience! The molluscs, which in the Southern Seas have created so many islands,—which literally pave, as recent soundings have shown, the twelve hundred leagues of Ocean separating us from America,—these molluscs are qualified by many naturalists with the name of embryo insects; so that their fertile tribes form, as it were, a dependency of the higher race,—candidates, one might say, for the rank of Insect.
This is sublime. The reason that, nevertheless, makes me regret the little world of Birds,—those charming companions which bore me aloft on their wings not long ago,—is not their harmonious concerts, is not even the spectacle of their airy and sublime life—but because they understood me!
We comprehended and we loved one another; we interchanged our languages. I spoke for the Bird, and the Bird sang for me.
Having fallen from heaven at the threshold of the sombre kingdom, and in the presence of the mute and mysterious sons of night, what language am I to invent, and what signs of intelligence? How am I to exercise my wits to discover a mode of communicating with them? My voice and gestures do but drive them away. There is no glance of recognition in their eyes; no emotion visible on their inscrutable mask. Under its warrior-cuirass the Insect remains impenetrable. Does its heart—for it has one—beat after the fashion of mine? Its senses are infinitely subtle, but do they resemble my senses? It seems as if they still remained apart, unknown, ay, and without a name.
It escapes us; Nature has created for it, with respect to man, a perpetual alibi. If she reveals it to us for a moment in a single gleam of love, she hides it for years in the depths of the shadowy earth or in the discreet bosom of the oaks. And even when discovered, captured, opened, dissected, and examined by a microscope in every detail, it still remains to us an enigma.
And an enigma of by no means reassuring character,—whose singularity almost scandalizes, while it so confuses our ideas. What shall we say of a being which breathes through its side and flanks? of a paradoxical walker, which, contrary to all other organisms, presents its back to the earth and its belly to the sky? In many respects, we may look upon the insect as a creature of contradictions.
Add, moreover, that its littleness contributes to the misunderstanding. Every organ appears to us fantastic and threatening, because our weak eyes do not see it with sufficient clearness to be able to explain its structure and utility. What is imperfectly seen always perplexes; and therefore provisionally, we kill it! And it is so little, too, that we do not trouble ourselves to be just towards it.
We are in no want of systems. We could willingly accept the definitive decree of a German dreamer, who sums up the whole matter in a word: “The good God made the world; but the devil made the insect!”
The Insect, nevertheless, does not look upon itself as vanquished. To the systems of the philosopher and the terror of the child (which are, perhaps, both the same thing), this is its answer:—
In the first place, that Justice is universal, that size has nothing to do with Right; that if one could suppose the Right to be unequal in its application, and the Universal Love to incline the balance, it would be on the side of the little.
It says that it would be absurd to judge by the figure, to condemn organs of whose uses we are ignorant, which are principally the tools of special professions, the instruments of a hundred trades; that it, the insect, is the great destroyer and fabricator, the most industrious of artisans, the energetic workman of life.
And, finally, it says (this pretension will perhaps appear most arrogant), that if we judge by visible signs, by works and results, it is It, among all beings, which loves most truly. Love endows it with wings, with a marvellous iris of colours, and even with visible flames. Love is for it the instantaneous or approaching death, with an astonishing second sight of maternity which continues over the orphan an ingenious superintendence. And lastly, the maternal genius extends so far, that, surpassing and eclipsing the rare associations of birds and quadrupeds, it has enabled the Insect to create republics and establish cities!
I admit that this weighty plea has made an impression on me.
If thou toilest and lovest, O Insect, whatever may be thy aspect, I cannot separate myself from thee. We are truly somewhat akin. For what am I myself, but a worker? What has been my greatest happiness in this world?
Our communion of action and destiny will open my heart, and give me a new sense with which to understand thy silence. Love—the divine force which circulates in all things, like an universal soul—is the interpreter through whose agency our insects discourse and understand each other without speech.