Daâh: The First Human

by Edmond Haraucourt

  Even reasoning is done automatically in the depths of the being, like subterranean rivers that flow with no one suspecting their existence but suddenly spurt out of a spring. Their minds are as incapable of dwelling on a thought as their bodies are of staying still. Everything calls to them but nothing retains them: tyrannical but furtive desires perpetually launch them toward everything, unexpectedly, and everything is a limit for them.

  Hunters of everything, rejected everywhere, they retreat into themselves and set off again, with an ever-passionate surge, which carries them away with an irresistible violence toward an unavoidable letdown.

  LI. The Unanimous

  Of all the influences exercised on them, one of the most powerful, and perhaps the most constant, is that of the human example; as soon as a member of the horde receives an impression, it is propagated around them, perhaps magnetically, and passes from neighbor to neighbor; the most sensitive activate the others. To communicate their emotions or their desires, they have no need of speech; the tension of their nerves is sufficient to electrify them one after another, and to make them unanimous. They are subject to the contagion with an acuity so unhealthy that they cannot find any help within them to resist the impulse of panic; their evident interest, or even the concern of their self-preservation is unable to retain them.

  That reciprocity of influences is the first condition of amorphous societies, and very quickly produces a result of capital importance: in the same way that imitation of oneself, frequently repeated, engenders personal habits in the individual, so the continual imitation of neighbor by neighbor institutes common habits in the group, which become in their turn generators of needs and common tastes, and then common ideas. When the progress of those social beings raises them to the point of a community of minds, the group will call itself a people: a community of interests, it will call a clan; a community of emotions is merely a horde.

  At the present moment, it is not a matter of thinking but only of vibrating; mind does not yet divide them, and the beast is close to them. Only a slight diversity is manifest between the children of the two races: the descendants of Hock, the humans with the low brows, are more massive, heavier and stronger; the humans with the high foreheads, born of Ta or her first daughter, seem to bring a little more initiative and spontaneity to life; one might believe that they will be the first to succeed in the labor of intelligence. But the promise is vague and the settlement distant; for the moment, the two varieties are only distinguished by the physical aspect, and the same causes operate in both in identical fashion.

  As for the personal modalities that we would designate much later under the name of “character,” which differentiate individuals, they have not yet appeared, or are only revealed imperceptibly. It is necessary, first, to constitute their elements, and it is precisely that preparation on which the horde is working, by means of its initial unanimity.

  The permanence of the type is elaborated in the horde; every family will multiply in isolation, without emerging from itself, and, by a prolonged selection, will fix the particularities of the group; when that fixity is duly acquired, the clan will be outside the form of humanity that was appropriate to it, and from then on, the vestiges of that initial type will be able to perpetuate through the crossings; alternate and mixed, intermittent but irreducible, perhaps they will return one day in successive generations, under the aspect of distinct characters, which we believe to be individual but which are actually specific: in the qualities or vices of a human being there is a race that evokes the past, with its primordial soul.

  Each of us is an ancestor resuscitated, a clan recalled, a revival, an ancient link reappearing in the uninterrupted chain; and if we sometimes astonish our entourage, by some unexpected and disconcerting propensity, it is because we are bringing back into their midst the heritage of an atavism too distant for them to have any part of it, and which amazes them because it brings them another.

  LII. On the March

  Their lack of individuality protects them from hatred. Denuded as they are of individual character, they have no profound reason to detest one another anymore than to love one another. Preferences are nevertheless manifest, and also antipathies, but they are limited to the pleasure or displeasure of marching side by side, of sleeping in the same tree, of hunting together; they also make one dispute a lump of meat with more or less anger. Generally, sympathies are produced between children of the same race; they never rise as high as affection, much less to amity; egotism is too vivacious, and no heredity has prepared in their hearts the need for tenderness, since the rare humans have lived thus far in a solitary state.

  In any case, intimacies are purely occasional and their effect is scarcely prolonged; two adolescents fighting, crimson, their eyes flamboyant, howling in one another’s faces, suddenly cease to want to kill one another in order to launch themselves together in pursuit of a rat that moved under a bush, or to climb to the conquest of an apple tree whose branches are red with fruit; tranquilly, they share the rodent or the apples, trying to steal the best morsels from one another, and they laugh unless they growl or start quarreling: chance decides.

  Such quarrels are frequent along the route, and the spectacle of fisticuffs invariable provokes another fight in the audience, and then a third; the irascibility of the young males does not permit them to contemplate a battle without them immediately feeling a need to fight.

  To associate is to rationalize egotism. They are not united but juxtaposed; they give one another little help. As soon as it is a matter of fighting a redoubtable beast or one that is good to eat, they cooperate; if it is only a question of individual peril, all are left to get out of it as best they can. A hand is not extended spontaneously to someone stuck in the mud, nor is it refused to anyone who asks for it; indifference needs to be shaken by an appeal, which quickly awakens in the individual the memory of a similar danger, and brings back to mind the need that he had then for aid.

  They do not act out of altruism, or even calculation; it is simply that an image is evoked in the helper; he sees himself in the painful situation in which another is struggling, and he goes, so to speak, to his own aid, toward the person of someone similar. It is important, too, that the eventual rescuer is momentarily unoccupied; if, unfortunately, he is in the process of hunting or eating, there is little chance that he will consent to sacrifice his pleasure to the imagination of an annoyance.

  Obstacles irritate them; the difficulty they encounter inspires them, not with a calm determination to put an end to it, but with anger, and if that resistance persists the irritation turns to fury. While crossing a stream, they unleash cudgel-blows against the water whose current puts pressure on their legs; in a thicket, if a bramble catches them, they pull away, tearing their skin, instead of stepping back in order to extract the vegetal claw.

  Those to whom the instinct of hunting and battle suggests, in confrontation with an animal, ingenious plans for flight, striking and parrying, are stupid in confrontation with things; if they are not facing the threat of an adversary that excites their faculties, they find nothing within them. Inanimate things, to which they nevertheless lend an intention to harm, do not have the power to reawaken them from mental sloth, and that is doubtless one of the most ancient manifestations of pride.

  Obstacles are renewed incessantly. They go on even so; they always go on. In the forest that encloses them they are like escaping prisoners; just as the trees, thirty times their height, grow toward the light, climbing up above one another in order to conquer their life in the light, so they push forward, also toward the light.

  Fortunately, clearings are not rare; in many places, tornadoes have hollowed out circles of devastation, which the violence of storms has progressively enlarged. They are saluted with a clamor and the young males launch themselves forward, running in circles, chasing one another, knocking one another over, rolling in the grass or the mud.

  Often, too, they encounter passages already frayed: thousands of tunnels
run through the undergrowth in all directions; ordinarily, they convey a stream; sometimes they terminate at a lair. It is the daily path of some colossus; the height of the vault, its width, the imprints on the carpet of leaves and in the mud denounce the inhabitant of the abode. Daâh never hesitates; he recognizes immediately the avenues of the Lion, the Bear or the Tiger.

  “Heûh...”

  He growls and turns away. But in the home of the Elephant there is joy. The Elephant is a friend; it does not eat Humans, and hollows out pathways where felines rarely venture. Gaily, they move along the spacious path, following the Chief. It is not without risk, for the pachyderm might be irritated by the invasion. It does not matter; the pleasure of moving freely ahead blossoms in the turbulent and shrill population; its members renounce prudence and forget fear. The temporary release that they grant themselves is perhaps not legitimate, but it is beneficial; they need it badly; the overloaded nerves are no longer adequate for fright; the nervous animal saves itself from epilepsy by mental lightness and inconstancy.

  As evening approaches, so does anguish; the accumulated fever of the day torments the blood in the veins and the penumbra is stifling. It is the unhealthy hour when everything is vague and everything is magnified, the hour of holes and mystery. They have the horror of uncertainty, the suspicion of trouble; something perceived through the layers of the rain or in the enigma of the mist does not appear to them as it is or will be; they deform and amplify it; a silhouette in the twilight is more redoubtable than in broad daylight.

  As soon as dusk falls, a slow lamentation emerges from the women and children.

  “Heûh... Heûh...”

  The eyes search for the quotidian refuge. Finally, Daâh stops at the foot of a tree; he has chosen the shelter.

  “Ta!”

  Egotistically, he climbs up first. In order to climb after him they jostle one another around the trunk. Hock and Ta are the most ardent to follow him, but they do not always succeed in conserving their rank. Ordinarily, the young ones want to inhabit the tree where the Chief will sleep, but the adult males, no longer wanting anyone to protect them, go to shelter elsewhere; a few women follow them, and Daâh sulks; those groups displease him; their dissidence insults him.

  The sick, down below, trail from one tree to another, imploring help. For a long time yet, movement agitates the leaves, for every occupied place seems to be the best; they are disputed and occupants are dislodged. Finally, the young mothers hang the animal-skin sacks in which they have placed the newborns on branches, and from them whimpering emerges. In the penumbra, cries and a few bursts of laughter, appeals and calls to order still leap from branch to branch.

  Then the shadows become denser and the trees, darkening, fall silent, as the concert of nocturnal hunters begins out there in the darkness, yapping, mewling, roaring, in search of food, to the sound of thunder under the rain.

  They go to sleep...

  LIII. The Halt

  But their morbid nervousness continues to torment them, even in sleep; dreaming that they are still marching or that they are fighting, they move their legs, their arms and their fingers; their muscles work beneath their skin, The night is also punctuated by awakenings; the howling of beasts and the crashing of thunder rip through it without respite; at every moment, the nightmare of a woman, the anguish of a child or the plaint of an invalid, tears through the torpor of others, and the disturbance reverberates.

  After such a repose, the dawn is a deliverance; aggravated and tense, their nerves still taut, the skin prickling with the chill, they leap down onto the wet grass, stretching themselves, and feel hungry. The women whimper, the men growl, the children wail.

  “Mâh! Mâh!”

  To recommence life, all of them have found their need to eat; they rummage in the moss; acorns and beech nuts, mushrooms and snails, larvae and insects, everything is good. In quest of more solid nourishment they resume their route, harassed from the outset. In single file or in little groups, they hasten with certainty, as if they know where they are going. They scarcely feel their lassitude, so accustomed are they to it; they move mechanically. The monotony of endlessly going on, aimlessly, gives them an appearance of the serenity of livestock going to the stream to drink, harassed by flies, and fatigue makes them silent.

  Then, souls warm up, in effort, in gaiety, in anger; the trees pass by, and the animals, and the time. The halt is called beside a stream, or around the first kill.

  When the prey is large, they all assemble around it and prance in a circle before eating, to express their delight Daâh makes his selection, as in the time when they were still lying in their mothers’ wombs; they have seen him, and they do likewise. The frequent repetition of the same game has ended up engendering a custom, the exercise of which is almost necessary and will become indispensable. It is already a rule that those movements around the large cadaver parody the actions of the felled beast, and are accompanied by howls that imitate its particular cry.

  That comedy charms them; for those who can only see it and only comprehend it by sight, the evocative power of the spectacle affirms their victory and demonstrates it to every spy hiding in the depths of the undergrowth; it is suggestive of future victories; it sketches a threat to others, a promise to themselves.

  Furthermore, they slake their universal hatred, for, in truth, they detest everything that lives, even the inoffensive animals; the vanquished is always, for them, an enemy against whom they bear a grudge, whether because of its resistance, its flight or the difficulty it costs them. By insulting this one, they scorn the entire race; and by dancing in front of that conquered flesh, they are taking revenge on the entire world that renders their existence so harsh. They rage before devouring it.

  But Daâh extends his hand; he advances, not without dignity. They draw apart to let him through. He bends over the victim; with a thrust of his crooked index finger, he plucks out the eye. They do not know yet that the heart is an essential organ; only later will they tear it out of the breast and watch it palpitate in the hollow of their hand before biting into it. Presently, what they consider to be the seat of life is the eye: the protective eye that watches out for peril; the shining eye that is the little sun of the beast; the eye that declares the thoughts for want to speech, which threatens in battle, which is extinguished after defeat...

  To make himself understood to all those who are preparing to absorb the strength of the vanquished, Daâh shows them in his fingertips the bloody globe that gazes at them one last time, and then he swallows it.

  A howl salutes the Chief’s action and that clamor of the Unanimous rolls beneath the domes of verdure to announce to the forest something new and redoubtable: young Humanity is beginning to find Symbols! In honor of them, they will soon bloody the world. And thus are initiated the rites of the holocaust.

  LIV. The Siesta

  As soon as Daâh has swallowed the eye, the women and children hurl themselves on the prey; with sharp stones and wooden levers, they dig into it and skin it; those who succeed in tearing away a good morsel draw away in order to devour it at their ease. They drool. They break the bones in order to pump out the marrow. The vociferations are soon succeeded by the noise of chomping jaws and gurgling throats. Laughter bursts out intermittently.

  Gradually, the process of digestion numbs one’s will, memory and all energy, even fear. No one thinks about the prowling death that might be nearby. Torsos collapse into the grass. No one has the idea of posting a sentinel who will watch over the safety of the horde; In any case, if that service were demanded of anyone, the notion of duty required to keep him alert is lacking.

  Very close to one another, they lie down, not on their backs but on their sides; with a swiveling of the shoulders they have hollowed out heir hole in the elastic soil, and limply, with a mechanical gesture, they pull leaves and branches over them, as much to shield them from the rain as to hide them from gazes. Arms that beat the air fall back on a neighbor, who grunts; heads find support, at random
, on a flank or a breast. A snore emerges from the heap and floats with the flies.

  That siesta after the feast reposes the fatigues of the nocturnal sleep. They wake up; they stretch; the soul is indulgent; fingernails slowly scratch the skin, tracing long furrows; the hands make limp gestures to pick up a trotting beetle or catch a damsel fly that alights, and the lazy fingers amuse themselves by pulling the legs, wings and wing cases off, one after another, like the petals of a flower, while the eye of the torturer, still vague, widens without malevolence over the diminishing insect.

  Leisure is dangerous among all impulsive beings; the instrument that is not being used works at hazard. This one comes back to life with a reserve of nervous energy and a need to utilize it. Beneath its deceptive calm, the animal is in its plenitude, it is entirely itself, an exaggeration of itself, and its very tranquility is preparing for actions that trivia unleash. It searches: in that head which turns to the right and the left there is the betrayal of a feline; in the eye that blinks as it inspects the surroundings, a sly gleam ignites and fades away; the muscles are getting ready for bounding. The best that the future might bring is that a young male might throw himself on a female, or run off to play games.