The Secret Life

Most curious of all is that these ants also keep pets – several varieties of tiny insects which they feed and protect, and which apparently serve no purpose save to give pleasure by their playful gambols. In every well established city of the parasol ants there resides a small green snake in a chamber built about him by the ants themselves, who feed and guard him, and when by any accident the little reptile is removed they abandon all their affairs until another is found to replace him. Unless this snake serves them as a fetish or deity there is no means of accounting for their desire for his presence, for as far as can be discovered he fills no purpose of utility. Mark Twain declares that the ants "vote, keep drilled armies, hold slaves and dispute about religion," and for all we know this little snake may be the centre of a complex system of theology.

Consider too Maeterlinck's "Life of the Bee," that remarkable study of a civilization so unlike our own. It is common to dismiss the bee's geometrical abilities with the futile word instinct, but honest students of the work of these astonishing insects have shown that, given a new situation to deal with, they first hold active counsel together concerning it, and then adapt their means to new conditions with all the skill and flexibility that suggest powers of trained reasoning. Here is a race that works for an ideal. The general good of the hive inspires in them as inflexible a severity, as ardent an abandonment of the desires of the individual as did the Roman patriotism of the elder Brutus, or of the young Scaevola. No more remarkable story is to be found in literature than Maeterlinck's description of the nuptial flight of the Queen Bee. Choosing a warm and perfect day in the very prime of the season's glow, distilling as she goes some intoxicating aroma – impalpable to our grosser senses – a perfume of love that drives every drone of the hives in passionate ardour to that deadly encounter, to which only he may obtain who can follow her arrowy course into the blue, where, out of sight of our feeble eyes, that one lethal embrace occurs after which the lover comes hurtling from the skies, dead and eviscerated. To provide this lover, whose potent tenderness shall ensure a myriad generation – this lover with greater wing flight than any of his fellows – with countless facetted eyes, with greater body and stronger limbs, this creature of such passion as to sacrifice his life for one moment of joy – the unflagging life work of not less than five of the sexless workers must be given, and hundreds of drones are raised each year that among them one may prove strong enough to attain to that dizzy aerial love.

Beside the stern, homogeneous, self-sacrificing civilization of the bees that of even the Japanese shows but clumsy, disordered and inadequate.

Many of the doings of these small brothers of ours seem incomprehensible and unreasonable to us, but imagine that three thousand foot giant looking down upon the mites in France and Germany in 1870 without an inkling as to the Spanish succession; upon the recent incredible scufflings and passagings back and forth over the veldts of South Africa without being instructed as to the term of residence required to obtain the franchise. To his ignorant eye how purposeless, how amazingly futile the whole affair would have seemed. And it is thus we move, stupid and contemptuous, amid great races and events, heavily indifferent to their meaning, to their significance to ourselves. We walk surrounded by powers whose forces we ignore, who work out their ends independent of us, yet against whom we are sometimes forced to battle mightily for existence. To the unreflecting man in the street the cinch bug seems a matter of small interest. No one interviews the coddling moth to inquire his intentions. War correspondents pass by the locust and ignore the cotton worm; the fly weevil and the ox bot seem to such an one but a feeble folk, yet every year in the United States alone these small races cost us more than three hundred and fifty millions of dollars, destroy one tenth of our agricultural wealth, and are more expensive to us than was the yearly cost of the Boer war to England.

We are the victims of pigmy captains of pernicious industries, beside whose gigantic operations such magnates as Carnegie or Mr. Morgan look – in the language of the streets – like thirty cents.

Darwin discovered that human and plant life would perish from the face of the earth were it not for the labours of that humble annelid, commonly known as the angle worm, through whose body the entire superficial soil of the globe passes periodically, and by whose digestive processes it is made amenable for agriculture. The termites subserve the angle worm's efforts by turning over and aerating the soil to an extent very nearly incredible to those who have given no attention to their industry. Our very existence is made possible by the myriad beings for whom our bodies serve as homes and battlefields, and whose dimensions are so minute as to be invisible save under the most powerful microscopes. Ferocious struggles take place within our own tissues between the germs of disease and the white corpuscles of the blood, those brave and sleepless warriors who patrol our veins, and who die by thousands with unreflecting courage in combats with malignant bacteria. When their ranks are thinned, their columns crushed, we succumb helplessly to our invisible foes.

How many of the great and good have fallen victims to those Brinvilliers of the swamps – the anopheles mosquitoes? And a greater number of the young flower of the armies of America and England were slaughtered by the enteric germs carried by flies than fell victims to Boer or Spanish bullets.

How little have we regarded the fly, and yet the facts about this little brother stagger the imagination! It is said to be certain that he came to this country in the Mayflower; but compare his conquests and fertility with that of the Pilgrims. Linnæus said that three flies and the generations that could spring from them could eat a dead horse more rapidly than could a lion, but later knowledge shows that, barring mortality, the number of flies resulting from one female in a summer would be something like seven hundred sextillions, and would in mere bulk outweigh every man, woman, and child on earth. Happily the fly has enemies.

In speaking of these smaller races an idea of their relations to us can only be conveyed by figures; with the larger forms of life the individual may be studied as a type of the race.

We, secure in a conviction of a unique value through the immortality we claim, broadly stigmatize our living fellows as of "the lower orders of life." They are different, it is true, but in what respect lower? Their development is as commensurate with their needs as is ours. The shibboleth of the Socialists – "To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities," has plainly been the rule with nature. Whatever we boast of achieving has been accomplished as well or better by these lower orders when their necessities have demanded it. Even the Japanese create inferior paper to that made by the wasps, who number among the species the most skilled of carpenters and masons. Who can spin or weave as can the arachnæ and their cognate families? The beautiful manufactures of the mollusks – even of the diatoms, invisible save with the microscope – leave us beggared of admiration and envy.

If it be a question of physical qualities let us compare the eye of the eagle, or of a fly, with our own – pit our dull sense of smell with the subtle olfactories of a dog or a wolf – or let one of us test our sense of hearing against that of a mouse or a robin. The albatross loafs in indolent circles about the swiftest of our turbine ships; the porpoise can pass from point to point in his dense element with greater speed than that of our swiftest express engine. The wild goose can do his eighty miles an hour for ten hours without rest. Scare up little Molly Cottontail from your path, and as she flies through the autumn grasses like a light leaf blown before the wind, her delicate and harmonious play of muscular powers leaves our most skilled athletes but clumsy cripples by comparison.

In sight, smell, hearing, speed, strength, grace, and endurance we are immeasurably the inferiors of our dumb brothers. And turning from the material to the spiritual and the ideal, we find that in industry, courage, patriotism, loyalty, fidelity, friendship, chivalry, maternal love, and racial solidity the lower orders have nothing to learn from us. Indeed some races we find advanced in moral progress in certain directions far beyond our most hopeful endeavours.

The needs and laws of their being have developed their morals in differing degree, and the virtues of individuals vary as greatly as among ourselves. Of the characters and ideals of wild creatures we can snatch but brief and tantalizing glimpses; from the larger domestic animals our daily life is too removed to make intimacy possible, but dogs and cats, the free birds, and our caged pets – if considered with a seeing eye – open a door through which we can learn much, though our indolence and stupidity still shut us off from the free community of speech.

Carlyle says: "No nobler feeling than that of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. It is at this hour, and at all hours the unifying influence in man's life. Religion, I find, stands upon it … what, therefore, is loyalty proper, the life breath of all society, but an effluence of hero worship; submissive admiration for the truly great! Society is founded upon hero worship."

Lockhart in his Life of Scot tells of a little pig who conceived a passion of admiration and affection for Scott which much embarrassed the great story teller. This susceptible little porker would lurk about, waiting for Scott's appearance, squealing with joy when he came, and trotting patiently all day at his heels through miles of wandering, proud and contented at merely being allowed to attend on Scott. What was this but Carlyle's hero worship. It is not by the way recorded that any pig ever made a hero of Carlyle. I once had the pleasure of knowing a goose who abandoned his kind for just such a human friendship, and the same love of the admirable is mutual among the animals themselves. A small green paroquet, who lived in the freedom of a bird fancier's room with a canary, was possessed of a passionate admiration for his more gifted companion. His every waking moment was spent in the most touching efforts to imitate the thrilling songs and graceful airiness of his more gifted friend, in no way discouraged by the contumely with which the yellow tenor treated his lumberingly pathetic failures. But there is no more confirmed hero worshipper than your dog. Stevenson says of a dog whom he knew and loved: "It was no sinecure to be Coolin's idol. He was exacting like a rigid parent; and at every sign of levity in the man whom he respected he announced loudly the death of virtue and the proximate fall of the pillars of the earth." And, he adds, "for every station the dog has an ideal to which the master – under pain of derogation – will do wisely to conform. How often has not a cold glance informed me that my dog was disappointed, and how much more gladly would he not have taken a beating than to be thus wounded in the seat of piety."

"Because of all animals the dog is our nearest intimate we know more of his ideals and of his moral traits than of those of the other races. We know that he is vainer than man, singularly greedy of notice, singularly intolerant of ridicule, suspicious like the deaf, jealous to the degree of frenzy."

To quote Stevenson again: "To the dog of gentlemanly feeling theft and falsehood are disgraceful vices. The canine like the human gentleman, demands in his misdemeanours Montaigne's 'je ne sais quoi de genereux!' He is never more than half ashamed of having barked or bitten, and for those faults into which he has been led by a desire to shine before a lady of his race, he retains, even under physical correction, a share of pride. But to be caught lying, if he understands it, instantly uncurls his fleece." "Among dull observers the dog has been credited with modesty. It is amazing how the use of language blunts the faculties of man. That because vain glory finds no vent in words, creatures supplied with eyes have been unable to detect a fault so gross and obvious is amazing. If a small spoiled dog were to be endowed with speech he would prate interminably and still about himself. In a year's time he would have gone far to weary out our love. Hans Christian Andersen, as we behold him in his startling memoirs – thrilling from top to toe with excruciating vanity – scouting the streets for cause of offence – here was your talking dog."

While an egregious, incurable snob the dog is yet the very flower of chivalry. The beggar maid of his kind is sure of as distinguished a consideration from him as is the queen of his race. Indeed he carries his gallantry to so exquisite a point of quixotism that even a female wolf is safe from his teeth. Gratitude is the keynote of his character; to its claims he will subdue even his innate snobbishness, and his devotion to the mysterious laws of his canine etiquette amount to slavishness. "In the elaborate and conscious manners of the dog, moral opinions and the love of the ideal stand confessed. To follow for ten minutes in the street some swaggering canine cavalier is to receive a lesson in dramatic art and the cultured conduct of the body; and in every act and gesture you see him true to a refined conception. For to be a high-mannered and high-minded gentleman, careless, affable, and gay, is the inborn pretension of the dog."

Of all persons now living I personally should most prefer to be enabled to converse freely with that high-bred, subtle-natured lady who follows me in my walks, who shares my meals and lies beside my fire. She has learned with ease to understand my speech, but I, in my gross sluggishness, have neglected to acquire her tongue, and yet how different a place this dull world would appear could I learn all she might tell me. What sights, sounds, and odours, what significances escaping my dull senses, might become open to me! A thousand times I have been aware of her pitying impatience of my slow-wittedness in matters so obvious to her keener intelligence. A whole world lies outside of my apprehension with which she is familiar, and all my life I shall suffer unappeased curiosity as to how she becomes aware of approaching changes in the weather; why a certain part of the wood is taboo. What is it that warns her of a death in my family? Why does a certain good and gentle woman fill her with loathing distrust, and what was the peculiar refinement of insult she received in her puppyhood from the family butcher, which has made it possible for her daily for six years to detect the sound of the butcher's wheels among many others while he is still not in sight, and daily produces in her a rage of resentment that no punishment, no offer of tidbits, has ever been able to allay?

All these things I shall never know. She shares my life, but I, regretfully, protestingly, must stand almost wholly outside of hers.

When we at last seriously take up the great task of articulate communication with the animals, a new world will swim into our ken beside which the discovery of America will seem but an unimportant event. Half of the unexplained puzzles of science will be solved with ease, and whole departments of knowledge as yet undreamed of will be opened to our astonished understandings.

Perhaps by our little dumb brothers we are still compassionately reckoned as the deaf and blind giant.

August 5.

Fever Dreams

A thousand times the great clock's heart has beat —A thousand, thousand times,And ever at the hours the sudden, sweet,Low, unexpected ringing of the chimesTells how the night doth slowly pass away.The hissing snow fell through the air all day,But with the dark did cease —I hear the shivers of the frozen trees.The night-lamp's gleam – though weak the flame and small —Casts shadows giant tallThat to the ceiling crawl —The cap-frill of the sleeping nurse doth fallAnd nod this way and that against the wall.Quiet the great dark house, and deeply sleep they all —They held me fast, they could not hear the callThat I heard always – chill the winds did blow —The skies were dark – the ways were white with snow —He did not call – I wandered to think so.But now they sleep, I will arise and go.They think him dead, but his sweet voice I know.I stretch my hands, my heart beats hard – his voice is sweet and low,But muffled by the weight of earth, and hath a note of woe —He calls to me: I cannot stay; I must arise and go —I step out on the floor —(How loud that nurse doth snore)But I softly close the door.I quickly pass from the outer door.It is very, very cold! —But he will me closely foldWith a tender clasping arm,And still my deep alarm —In his heart I shall be warm!The snow is smooth as glass.I scarcely leave a foot-print as I pass —It is very cold, and the way is long, alas!And they have buried him deep, so deep under the frozen grass.It was cruel to bury him so deep;He was not dead, he was only asleep —He was not dead; it makes me weepTo think he is in this frozen ground —Why does the moon whirl round and round!My head is dizzy; I'm faint and ill —Will no one make the moon stand still?The foolish moon whirls round and round —What is it that the pine trees know,That they rustle and whisper together so?Someone was buried under the snowMore than a thousand years ago! —My long black shadow runs by my side.Was it I, or my love that diedAnd was buried deeply under the snowSo many hundred years ago?Oh! how can I reach him under the ground?I am burning with fire, my head turns round.He does not call me, I hear no sound —Ah! – will no one come to me? I'm all alone,The nurse does not hear, she's as deaf as a stone,The walls of the grave together have grown,The dead man lies still and makes no moan,They have left me here with this corpse alone – !His golden hair is tarnished with rust;His eyes have withered and fallen to dust —His subtle, secret, amber eyes;The worms might have spared those amber eyes —His lips are grey with dust and sunken;His heart is cold, and his cheeks are shrunken —He must be dead, so still he lies!I lay in my bed and he called to me,They held me, but it might not beThat we should rest so far apart,And we have lain here, heart to heart,Since I came out across the snowMore than a thousand years ago.

September 7.

A Misunderstood Moralist

Mary R – was telling us to-day the details of Zola's accidental death – if it was an accident. There are a few, she tells me, who whisper privately that the enemies he made by "Lourdes" and "Rome" are of the sort who wait long and patiently, and strike hard, and strike at the back when the time of vengeance comes. That sounds rather sensational, and certainly the general public have heard no such suggestion.

The story of the death-chamber is like a chapter from one of his own books, and one can't but feel how gruesome and vivid he would have made the account of the tragedy could he have recorded it.

It's rather odd how the multitude still judge Zola at the rating of twenty years since, before he had developed the meaning of his methods and proved himself one of the greatest of the moral teachers.

It was certainly as long ago as that when a battered, grimy copy of "Nana" drifted by some swirl of chance into my youthful hands. I was quite old enough to realize that my pastors and masters would be convulsed with horror did they at all suspect what I was at, but being in those days as omnivorous as Lamb – "Shaftesbury was not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low" – everything on which a hand could be laid passed into my greedy mental maw, from Locke "On the Human Understanding" to the novels of the Duchess, and I had intelligence enough not to chatter about every book I opened.

I remember with perfect vividness the moral revelation given me by the chapter descriptive of the drunken orgie in Nana's rooms, where they wound up the gaieties of the evening by the spirited jest of pouring the champagne into the piano. In a flash was made clear to me what I had never previously suspected, that vice was tedious and unamusing!

Until that moment I had accepted in perfect good faith the insistence of the moralists upon the delicious, exciting, irresistible nature of vice, which, though deplorable in its eventual effects, was too agreeable to be refrained from unless fortified by either religion or the choicest collection of moral maxims.

We were the contented owners, at that same period, of a large engraving of a popular painting entitled "The Prodigal Son"; one of those pictures supposed to have a "good moral" and help silently, in season and out of season, to point towards virtue like a sign at the crossroads. The engraving was divided into three parts, like a triptych; the central, and by far the largest portion, showed the famous ne'er-do-weel prodigalling with all his might in a sort of lordly pleasure dome, all columns and sweeping curtains and steps, open to the sunshine on every side, and decorated with the most expensive cut flowers. A meal, which plainly deserved to be called by no meaner name than a banquet, was toward, and the naughty young gentleman, bedecked in velvet and soothed by the music of viols, was feasting amid a medley of young ladies of the most dazzling physical charms, all attired in those sketchy toilets which have no visible means of support, and which allow the artist to prove his inexhaustible talent for drawing arms and busts. So vivacious and sumptuous was this scene that at first one hardly noticed the narrow panels to right and left, in one of which the profuse prodigal was on a subsequent occasion dining en famille with the swine, and later journeying toward forgiveness and veal.

The moralists, from Isaiah down, have so dearly loved to show their talent for drawing arms and busts. The delineation of vice always usurps all the foreground of the canvas. According to them, the broad road is unfailing in its crops of flowers, the wine is always red in the cup, "with beaded bubbles winking at the brim." The frisky enchantresses are without exception young and charming. The reverse of the picture is depressingly bleak – by way of proper dramatic contrast, perhaps, though to any one less austere than a moralist it would seem unintelligent to point out that in one direction all was gay, brilliant, and agreeable, yet one must follow the gloomy, tedious, and unpleasant road in order to find some intangible spiritual satisfaction, which to youthful and ardent minds seems drearily remote, and unsatisfying when reached. Besides it really isn't true. Life as a matter of fact is certainly more agreeable when one behaves one's self decently. Nothing was ever more blatantly untrue than the cynical proverb which declares that everything pleasant is either indigestible, expensive, or immoral. But the mind of youth is almost touchingly credulous. It rarely questions the accuracy of the descriptions of the moralists, who claim to be experts, though instinctively it develops a necessity for experimenting a little with those forbidden sweets of which it has heard so much praise.

Until I read "Nana" it never occurred to me to question that vice was in itself agreeable, since I had never heard aught to the contrary; but that champagne poured into the piano washed away the conviction forever. It seemed so squalid, so unimaginative, so dull; and all the vice I have observed since has shared its lack of charm. I found that the broad road had no patent on flowers and sunshine, that dishonesty nine times out of ten failed of returns at all commensurate with the energy devoted to it; that loose behaviour was nearly always noisome and fatiguing; that the prodigal, instead of being a beautiful young person in velvet, generally had a red nose and a waist, and borrowed from his acquaintances, and that the enchantresses had not nearly as good figures as the painters credited them with, and as a rule had no real feeling for soap and water. The truth is that all forms of vice are for the most part not only repulsive but intolerably unamusing, and Zola was the first of the moralists who had the courage to be original and speak disrespectfully of it.

September 10.