第26章 THE PROBLEM OF THE SCOLIAE(2)

Among its descendants were innovators who developed a taste for tunnelling in sand and vegetable mould. There they encountered the larvae of the Cetonia, the Oryctes, the Anoxia, succulent morsels on which to rear their families. By degrees the indeterminate Wasp adopted the sturdy proportions demanded by underground labour. By degrees she learnt to stab her plump neighbours in scientific fashion; by degrees she acquired the difficult art of consuming her prey without killing it; at length, by degrees, aided by the richness of her diet, she became the powerful Scolia with whom we are familiar. Having reached this point, the species assumes a permanent form, as does its instinct.

Here we have a multiplicity of stages, all of the slowest, all of the most incredible nature, whereas the Wasp cannot found a race except on the express condition of complete success from the first attempt. We will not insist further upon the insurmountable objection; we will admit that, amid so many unfavourable chances, a few favoured individuals survive, becoming more and more numerous from one generation to the next, in proportion as the dangerous art of rearing the young is perfected. Slight variations in one and the same direction form a definite whole; and at long last the ancient precursor has become the Scolia of our own times.

By the aid of a vague phraseology which juggles with the secret of the centuries and the unknown things of life, it is easy to build up a theory in which our mental sloth delights, after being discouraged by difficult researches whose final result is doubt rather than positive statement. But if, so far from being satisfied with hazy generalities and adopting as current coin the terms consecrated by fashion, we have the perseverance to explore the truth as far as lies in our power, the aspect of things will undergo a great change and we shall discover that they are far less simple than our overprecipitate views declared them to be. Generalization is certainly a most valuable instrument: science indeed exists only by virtue of it. Let us none the less beware of generalizations which are not based upon very firm and manifold foundations.

When these foundations are lacking, the child is the great generalizer. For him, the feathered world consists merely of birds; the race of reptiles merely of snakes, the only difference being that some are big and some are little. Knowing nothing, he generalizes in the highest degree; he simplifies, in his inability to perceive the complex. Later he will learn that the Sparrow is not the Bullfinch, that the Linnet is not the Greenfinch; he will particularize and to a greater degree each day, as his faculty of observation becomes more fully trained. In the beginning he saw nothing but resemblances; he now sees differences, but still not plainly enough to avoid incongruous comparisons.

In his adult years he will almost to a certainty commit zoological blunders similar to those which my gardener retails to me. Favier, an old soldier, has never opened a book, for the best of reasons. He barely knows how to cipher: arithmetic rather than reading is forced upon us by the brutalities of life. Having followed the flag over three-quarters of the globe, he has an open mind and a memory crammed with reminiscences, which does not prevent him, when we chat about animals, from making the most crazy assertions. For him the Bat is a Rat that has grown wings; the Cuckoo is a Sparrow-hawk retired from business; the Slug is a Snail who has lost his shell with the advance of years; the Nightjar (Known also as the Goatsucker, because of the mistaken belief that the bird sucks the milk of Goats, and, in America, as the Whippoorwill.--Translator's Note.), the Chaoucho-grapaou, as he calls her, is an elderly Toad, who, becoming enamoured of milk-food, has grown feathers, so that she may enter the byres and milk the Goats. It is impossible to drive these fantastic ideas out of his head. Favier himself, as will be seen, is an evolutionist after his own fashion, an evolutionist of a very daring type. In accounting for the origin of animals nothing gives him pause. He has a reply to everything:

"this" comes from "that." If you ask him why, he answers:

"Look at the resemblance!"

Shall we reproach him with these insanities, when we hear another, misled by the Monkey's build, acclaim the Pithecanthropus as man's precursor?

Shall we reject the metamorphosis of the Chaoucho-grapaou, when people tell us in all seriousness that, in the present stage of scientific knowledge, it is absolutely proved that man is descended from some rough-hewn Ape? Of the two transformations, Favier's strikes me as the more credible. Apainter of my acquaintance, a brother of the great composer Felicien David (Felicien Cesar David (1810-1876). His chief work was the choral symphony "Le Desert":--Translator's Note.), favoured me one day with his reflections on the human structure:

"Ve, moun bel ami," he said. "Ve, l'home a lou dintre d'un por et lou defero d'uno mounino." "See, my dear friend, see: man has the inside of a pig and the outside of a monkey."I recommend the painter's aphorism to those who might like to discover man's origin in the Hog when the Ape has gone out of fashion. According to David, descent is proved by internal resemblances:

"L'home a lou dintre d'un por."