The Wonders of Instinct | Page 5

past, save those whom

I have lost; regretting nothing, not even my first youth; hoping nothing
either, I have reached the point at which, worn out by the experience of
things, we ask ourselves if life be worth the living.
Amid the ruins that surround me, one strip of wall remains standing,
immovable upon its solid base: my passion for scientific truth. Is that
enough, O! my busy insects, to enable me to add yet a few seemly
pages to your history? Will my strength not cheat my good intentions?
Why, indeed, did I forsake you so long?
Friends have reproached me for it. Ah, tell them, tell those friends, who
are yours as well as mine, tell them that it was not forgetfulness on my
part, not weariness, nor neglect: I thought of you; I was convinced that
the Cerceris' (A species of Digger-wasp.--Translator's Note.) cave had
more fair secrets to reveal to us, that the chase of the Sphex held fresh
surprises in store. But time failed me; I was alone, deserted, struggling
against misfortune. Before philosophizing, one had to live. Tell them
that, and they will pardon me.
Others have reproached me with my style, which has not the solemnity,
nay, better, the dryness of the schools. They fear lest a page that is read
without fatigue should not always be the expression of the truth. Were I
to take their word for it, we are profound only on condition of being
obscure. Come here, one and all of you--you, the sting-bearers, and you,
the wing-cased armour-clads--take up my defence and bear witness in
my favour. Tell of the intimate terms on which I live with you, of the
patience with which I observe you, of the care with which I record your
actions. Your evidence is unanimous: yes, my pages, though they
bristle not with hollow formulas nor learned smatterings, are the exact
narrative of facts observed, neither more nor less; and whoso cares to
question you in his turn will obtain the same replies.
And then, my dear insects, if you cannot convince those good people,
because you do not carry the weight of tedium, I, in my turn, will say to
them:
"You rip up the animal and I study it alive; you turn it into an object of
horror and pity, whereas I cause it to be loved; you labour in a

torture-chamber and dissecting-room, I make my observations under
the blue sky, to the song of the Cicadae (The Cicada Cigale, an insect
akin to the Grasshopper and found more particularly in the south of
France.--Translator's Note.); you subject cell and protoplasm to
chemical tests, I study instinct in its loftiest manifestations; you pry
into death, I pry into life. And why should I not complete my thought:
the boars have muddied the clear stream; natural history, youth's
glorious study, has, by dint of cellular improvements, become a hateful
and repulsive thing. Well, if I write for men of learning, for
philosophers, who, one day, will try to some extent to unravel the tough
problem of instinct, I write also, I write above all things, for the young,
I want to make them love the natural history which you make them hate;
and that is why, while keeping strictly to the domain of truth, I avoid
your scientific prose, which too often, alas, seems borrowed from some
Iroquois idiom!"
But this is not my business for the moment: I want to speak of the bit of
land long cherished in my plans to form a laboratory of living
entomology, the bit of land which I have at last obtained in the solitude
of a little village. It is a "harmas," the name given, in this district (The
country round Sérignan, in Provence.--Translator's Note.), to an
untilled, pebbly expanse abandoned to the vegetation of the thyme. It is
too poor to repay the work of the plough; but the Sheep passes there in
spring, when it has chanced to rain and a little grass shoots up.
My harmas, however, because of its modicum of red earth swamped by
a huge mass of stones, has received a rough first attempt at cultivation:
I am told that vines once grew here. And, in fact, when we dig the
ground before planting a few trees, we turn up, here and there, remains
of the precious stock, half carbonized by time. The three-pronged fork,
therefore, the only implement of husbandry that can penetrate such a
soil as this, has entered here; and I am sorry, for the primitive
vegetation has disappeared. No more thyme, no more lavender, no
more clumps of kermes-oak, the dwarf oak that forms forests across
which we step by lengthening our stride a little. As these plants,
especially the first two, might be of use