The Processionary: the Community 



when the weather is favourable, they all spin 

 with equal industry and drain to the last drop 

 their reservoirs of silk, which have become 

 distended during the day. In their tribe there 

 is no question of skilled or unskilled, of strong 

 or weak, of abstemious or gluttonous; there 

 are neither hard-workers nor idlers, neither 

 savers nor spendthrifts. What one does the 

 others do, with a like zeal, no more and no 

 less well. It is a splendid world of equality 

 truly, but, alas, a world of caterpillars ! 



If it suited us to go to school to the Pine 

 Processionary, we should soon see the inanity 

 of our levelling and communistic theories. 

 Equality is a magnificent political catchword, 

 but little more. Where is it, this equality of 

 ours? In our social groups, could we find 

 as many as two persons exactly equal in 

 strength, health, intelligence, capacity for 

 work, foresight and all the other gifts which 

 are the great factors of prosperity? Where 

 should we find anything analogous to the exact 

 parity prevailing among caterpillars? No- 

 where. Inequality is our law. And a good 

 thing, too. 



A sound which is invariably the same, how- 

 ever often multiplied, does not constitute a 



55 



