Fabre, Poet of Science

ts, its aptitudes, and its industries the integration of the infinitely

hat Fabre presents the

he world, it is certain that all living creatures are closely related; and the magnificent and fertile hypothesis of evolution, which seeks to explain how extant for

ny instincts, and these so complex and perfect, co

f wandering in the region of probabilities, he prefers to confine himsel

eometry and the exact sciences, which has never been able to content itself with

of accumulating facts "upon the thorny path of observation and experiment" to indulge in generalization. He feels that life has secrets which our minds

was a dissenter, almost a traitor, especially at a moment when the theories of evolution,

he word of the masters interested, but in opposing the theory of transformation, far from being reactiona

nal, often revealed the contrary of what was asserted

able example. "Is it," he would ask them, "to repulse their enemies that certain caterpillars smear themselves with a corrosive product? But the larva of the Calosoma sycophanta, whi

. Such would be the case with the Volucella, a large fly whose costume, striped with brown and yellow bands, gives it a rude resemblance to the wasp. Obliged, if not for its own sake at least for that of its family, to force itself into the wasp's dwellin

nd go openly upon the combs, although every stranger is immediately massacred and thrown out." Moreover, "they watch the hygiene of the city by clearing the nest of its dead and ridding the larvae of the wasps of their excretory products." Plunging successively into each chamber of th

hat a disconcerting and unexpecte

t network of relations by which all creatures are connected; but what proves the solidity of his imperishable work

not even so yielded somewhat to the suggestions of the prevailing school of thought, and have not his verdicts against e

marck so strongly insisted; but the work of these factors is, in his eyes, only accessory and wholly secondary in the economy of nature; and in any case it is

i, is merely a wretched venomous tubercle, and those of the cabbage, which on the rocky face of oceanic precipices is nothing but a weed, "with a tall stem and scanty disordered leaves of a crude green, an acrid savour, and a rank smell"; he speaks of wheat, formerly a poor unknown g

to which size may be modified; may dwindle to dwarfness when a niggardly s

which these experimenters had attained in the case of small mammiferous animals, and which prove that dwarfness has often

nsidered that the knowledge to be obtained from books is but so much vapour compared with the realities; he borrowed only from himself, and resorted directly to

seem to constitute an exception, at all events in our Europe, to the general rules. It is not only to the curiosity and for the amusemen

hy does it remain maimed all its life; that is to sa

odification in the conditions of life, the theory of evolution should endeavour to account for this mutilation, for

ius, "perfectly developed in the adult, are at

ight upon these strange infirmities, here temporary and there permanent, which may perhaps be explain

the species are those multiple and fabulous metamorphoses of the Sitares and the Me

ems to border on divination, of this problem of hyper-metamorphosis. The larvae of those coleoptera which we have seen introduced, wit

its new mode of existence, "as perfectly as when it becomes adult"; and we see the insect, which was clear-sighted, become blind; it loses its feet, to recover them later; its slender body becomes ventripot

ce, these successive appearances of organs, which become entire

over these visible changes, these successive envelopments of

these diverse extraordinary phases of life, indicating possibly f

spirit of cunning and deception is transmitted"? He sees in the persecutions of the Dytiscus, the "pirate of the ponds," the origin of the faculty which the Phryganea has of refashioning its shield when deman

undamentally very real? These mysterious and unknown senses which he has so greatly contributed to elucidate in the case of t

indefinable memory which permits the red ant, the Bembex, the Cerceris, the Pompilus, the Chalicodoma and so many others to "find themselves," to orientate themselves with infallible certainty and inc

eive throughout his work, in the elementary operations of the Eumenes and the Odynerus, cousins of the Cerceris, which sting their prey in places as yet ill determined, not indeed so many isolated attempts, bu

s upon its feet, turns round and round, and tries to walk. But, inquires Fabre, do you say that having profited by a fortuitous act, which has turned out to be favourable to them, they have perfected them

e so! How much more comprehensible an

re its masters! Its predecessors have long ago disapp

ewness, as Lucretius has so superbly said, as yet knew neither bitter cold nor excessive heat (9/8.); an eternal springtide bathed the earth, and the insects, not dying,

of wire-gauze, and note what becomes, at the approa

been imparted to them ages ago is exhausted. With no apparent cause, we see death busy among them. "Suddenly the wasps begin to fall as though struck by lightning; for a few moments the abdomen quivers and the legs gesticulate, then finally remain inert,

narrow circle. "No apprentices, no masters." In this world each obeys "the inner voice" on its own account; each sets itself to accomplish its task, not only without troubling as to what its neighbour is doing, but without thinking a

he habits of the Cerceris and the fabulous history of the Meloidae. Finally he saw the first volume of the "Souvenirs" appea

curiosity and to make him wonder whether all his

of species and the whole concatenation of animal forms, would it not be as though he halted

until the former had been nearly two years at Sérignan, and which showed how passionately i

wn studies, of which Darwin's letters were full. He conceived a veritable affection for Darwin, and commenced to learn English, the better to understand him and to reply more precisely; and a d

xpired in 1882 the hermit of Sérignan saluted his great shade with real emoti

ate and incisive argument, in which, with a remarkable power of dialectic, and at times in a tone of lively banter, he endeavoured to remove "this comfortable pillow from those who have not the courage to inquire into its fundamental nature." He attacked these "adventurous synt

ent to the daily press; he avoided criticism and controversy, and never replied to the attacks which were made upon him; he rat

iend Devillario, shortl

ds or hisses. To seek the truth is my only preoccupation. If some are dissatisfied with the result of my observations--if their pet theories are damaged thereby--let them do

me," he wrote to his brother seventeen years later; "it is enoug

to thank those who praised or congratulated him, and above all shrinking fr

so-and-so who sends me, in print or manuscript, his meed of praise; if I

f his letters, Henri, even in the years spent at Carpentras and Ajaccio, could plead only the same reasons; his stupendous labours, h

to "read from the facts" concerning the genesis of new species in process of evolution; a

of horns and spurs which the organism has produced in a momen

decks itself in "a temporary horn

t is possible that these horn-like processes, which always degenerate before they reach completion, may be not a reminiscence but a promise, a gradual elaboration o

; one of those innumerable attempts which nature is always making, for the moment a me

t in the substance of that microcosm which is the initial cell; and

result of successive adaptations, and that there is no jumping-off place in nature. On the contrary, life often passes suddenly from one form to another, by abrup

, with its individual properties and peculiarities, its indelible and innate faculties and tendencies, like "so many me

ieves in a better and more merciful future, a more comple

uture might be, in his beautiful observations on the young of the Lycosa (9/17.), which can liv

oil and the air, and the sunlight is only an intermediary which enables the plant to fix its carbon. The animal species in turn borrow the e

up one of her legs, and once back in place they have to preserve the equilibrium of the mass. In reality they know no such thing as comple

other source t

There, on the maternal back, the young ones stretch themselves out, saturate themselves in the sunshine, charging themselves with motor rese

ectly, in the form of movement, "the effluvia emanating from the sun or from ot

omewhere, gravitating round a fixed star, a planet invisib

l no longer attack sensible life, nor even the pulp of fruits"; "when creatures will devour one another no longer, will no longer feed upon the dea

the body of the lowest insect becomes suddenly a transcendent secret, lig

ists, it ends with the same moral conclusion, namely, that all creation mo