Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things
mosquitoes of any locality by covering with a film of kerosene all
stagnant water surfaces therein. The larvae die on rising to breathe;
and the adult females perish when they approach the water to launch
their rafts of eggs. And I read, in Dr. Howard’s book, that the actual
cost of freeing from mosquitoes one American town of fifty thousand
inhabitants, does not exceed three hundred dollars!...
I wonder what would be said if the city-government of Tōkyō—which is
aggressively scientific and progressive—were suddenly to command that
all water-surfaces in the Buddhist cemeteries should be covered, at
regular intervals, with a film of kerosene oil! How could the religion
which prohibits the taking of any life—even of invisible life—yield to
such a mandate? Would filial piety even dream of consenting to obey
such an order? And then to think of the cost, in labor and time, of
putting kerosene oil, every seven days, into the millions of
_mizutamé_, and the tens of millions of bamboo flower-cups, in the
Tōkyō graveyards!... Impossible! To free the city from mosquitoes it
would be necessary to demolish the ancient graveyards;—and that would
signify the ruin of the Buddhist temples attached to them;—and that
would mean the disparition of so many charming gardens, with their
lotus-ponds and Sanscrit-lettered monuments and humpy bridges and holy
groves and weirdly-smiling Buddhas! So the extermination of the _Culex
fasciatus_ would involve the destruction of the poetry of the ancestral
cult,—surely too great a price to pay!...
Besides, I should like, when my time comes, to be laid away in some
Buddhist graveyard of the ancient kind,—so that my ghostly company
should be ancient, caring nothing for the fashions and the changes and
the disintegrations of Meiji (1). That old cemetery behind my garden
would be a suitable place. Everything there is beautiful with a beauty
of exceeding and startling queerness; each tree and stone has been
shaped by some old, old ideal which no longer exists in any living
brain; even the shadows are not of this time and sun, but of a world
forgotten, that never knew steam or electricity or magnetism
or—kerosene oil! Also in the boom of the big bell there is a quaintness
of tone which wakens feelings, so strangely far-away from all the
nineteenth-century part of me, that the faint blind stirrings of them
make me afraid,—deliciously afraid. Never do I hear that billowing peal
but I become aware of a striving and a fluttering in the abyssal part
of my ghost,—a sensation as of memories struggling to reach the light
beyond the obscurations of a million million deaths and births. I hope
to remain within hearing of that bell... And, considering the
possibility of being doomed to the state of a _Jiki-ketsu-gaki_, I want
to have my chance of being reborn in some bamboo flower-cup, or
_mizutamé_, whence I might issue softly, singing my thin and pungent
song, to bite some people that I know.
ANTS
I
This morning sky, after the night’s tempest, is a pure and dazzling
blue. The air—the delicious air!—is full of sweet resinous odors, shed
from the countless pine-boughs broken and strewn by the gale. In the
neighboring bamboo-grove I hear the flute-call of the bird that praises
the Sûtra of the Lotos; and the land is very still by reason of the
south wind. Now the summer, long delayed, is truly with us: butterflies
of queer Japanese colors are flickering about; semi (1) are wheezing;
wasps are humming; gnats are dancing in the sun; and the ants are busy
repairing their damaged habitations... I bethink me of a Japanese
poem:—
Yuku é naki:
Ari no sumai ya!
Go-getsu amé.
[_Now the poor creature has nowhere to go!... Alas for the dwellings of
the ants in this rain of the fifth month!_]
But those big black ants in my garden do not seem to need any sympathy.
They have weathered the storm in some unimaginable way, while great
trees were being uprooted, and houses blown to fragments, and roads
washed out of existence. Yet, before the typhoon, they took no other
visible precaution than to block up the gates of their subterranean
town. And the spectacle of their triumphant toil to-day impels me to
attempt an essay on Ants.
I should have liked to preface my disquisitions with something from the
old Japanese literature,—something emotional or metaphysical. But all
that my Japanese friends were able to find for me on the
subject,—excepting some verses of little worth,—was Chinese. This
Chinese material consisted chiefly of strange stories; and one of them
seems to me worth quoting,—_faute de mieux_.
In the province of Taishū, in China, there was a pious man who, every
day, during many years, fervently worshiped a certain goddess. One
morning, while he was engaged in his devotions, a beautiful woman,
wearing a yellow robe, came into his chamber and stood before him. He,
greatly surprised, asked her what she wanted, and why she had entered
unannounced. She answered: “I am not a woman: I am the goddess whom you
have so long and so faithfully worshiped; and I have now come to prove
to you that your devotion has not been in vain... Are you acquainted
with the language of Ants?” The worshiper replied: “I am only a
low-born and ignorant person,—not a scholar; and even of the language
of superior men I know nothing.” At these words the goddess smiled, and
drew from her bosom a little box, shaped like an incense box. She
opened the box, dipped a finger into it, and took therefrom some kind
of ointment with which she anointed the ears of the man. “Now,” she
said to him, “try to find some Ants, and when you find any, stoop down,
and listen carefully to their talk. You will be able to understand it;
and you will hear of something to your advantage... Only remember that
you must not frighten or vex the Ants.” Then the goddess vanished away.
The man immediately went out to look for some Ants. He had scarcely
crossed the threshold of his door when he perceived two Ants upon a
stone supporting one of the house-pillars. He stooped over them, and
listened; and he was astonished to find that he could hear them
talking, and could understand what they said. “Let us try to find a
warmer place,” proposed one of the Ants. “Why a warmer place?” asked
the other;—“what is the matter with this place?” “It is too damp and
cold below,” said the first Ant; “there is a big treasure buried here;
and the sunshine cannot warm the ground about it.” Then the two Ants
went away together, and the listener ran for a spade.
By digging in the neighborhood of the pillar, he soon found a number of
large jars full of gold coin. The discovery of this treasure made him a
very rich man.
Afterwards he often tried to listen to the conversation of Ants. But he
was never again able to hear them speak. The ointment of the goddess
had opened his ears to their mysterious language for only a single day.
Now I, like that Chinese devotee, must confess myself a very ignorant
person, and naturally unable to hear the conversation of Ants. But the
Fairy of Science sometimes touches my ears and eyes with her wand; and
then, for a little time, I am able to hear things inaudible, and to
perceive things imperceptible.
II
For the same reason that it is considered wicked, in sundry circles, to
speak of a non-Christian people having produced a civilization
ethically superior to our own, certain persons will not be pleased by
what I am going to say about ants. But there are men, incomparably
wiser than I can ever hope to be, who think about insects and
civilizations independently of the blessings of Christianity; and I
find encouragement in the new _Cambridge Natural History_, which
contains the following remarks by Professor David Sharp, concerning
ants:—
“Observation has revealed the most remarkable phenomena in the lives of
these insects. Indeed we can scarcely avoid the conclusion that they
have acquired, in many respects, the art of living together in
societies more perfectly than our own species has; and that they have
anticipated us in the acquisition of some of the industries and arts
that greatly facilitate social life.”
I suppose that a few well-informed persons will dispute this plain
statement by a trained specialist. The contemporary man of science is
not apt to become sentimental about ants or bees; but he will not
hesitate to acknowledge that, in regard to social evolution, these
insects appear to have advanced “beyond man.” Mr. Herbert Spencer, whom
nobody will charge with romantic tendencies, goes considerably further
than Professor Sharp; showing us that ants are, in a very real sense,
_ethically_ as well as economically in advance of humanity,—their lives
being entirely devoted to altruistic ends. Indeed, Professor Sharp
somewhat needlessly qualifies his praise of the ant with this cautious
observation:—
“The competence of the ant is not like that of man. It is devoted to
the welfare of the species rather than to that of the individual, which
is, as it were, sacrificed or specialized for the benefit of the
community.”
—The obvious implication,—that any social state, in which the
improvement of the individual is sacrificed to the common welfare,
leaves much to be desired,—is probably correct, from the actual human
standpoint. For man is yet imperfectly evolved; and human society has
much to gain from his further individualization. But in regard to
social insects the implied criticism is open to question. “The
improvement of the individual,” says Herbert Spencer, “consists in the
better fitting of him for social cooperation; and this, being conducive
to social prosperity, is conducive to the maintenance of the race.” In
other words, the value of the individual can be _only_ in relation to
the society; and this granted, whether the sacrifice of the individual
for the sake of that society be good or evil must depend upon what the
society might gain or lose through a further individualization of its
members... But as we shall presently see, the conditions of ant-society
that most deserve our attention are the ethical conditions; and these
are beyond human criticism, since they realize that ideal of moral
evolution described by Mr. Spencer as “a state in which egoism and
altruism are so conciliated that the one merges into the other.” That
is to say, a state in which the only possible pleasure is the pleasure
of unselfish action. Or, again to quote Mr. Spencer, the activities of
the insect-society are “activities which postpone individual well-being
so completely to the well-being of the community that individual life
appears to be attended to only just so far as is necessary to make
possible due attention to social life,... the individual taking only
just such food and just such rest as are needful to maintain its
vigor.”
III
I hope my reader is aware that ants practise horticulture and
agriculture; that they are skillful in the cultivation of mushrooms;
that they have domesticated (according to present knowledge) five
hundred and eighty-four different kinds of animals; that they make
tunnels through solid rock; that they know how to provide against
atmospheric changes which might endanger the health of their children;
and that, for insects, their longevity is exceptional,—members of the
more highly evolved species living for a considerable number of years.
But it is not especially of these matters that I wish to speak. What I
want to talk about is the awful propriety, the terrible morality, of
the ant[1]. Our most appalling ideals of conduct fall short of the
ethics of the ant,—as progress is reckoned in time,—by nothing less
than millions of years!... When I say “the ant,” I mean the highest
type of ant,—not, of course, the entire ant-family. About two thousand