Equality in the Presence of the Maggot

The chemistry of man's final dissolution is eloquent enough of our emptiness: there is no need to add imaginary horrors. The worm of the sepulchre is an invention of cantankerous minds, incapable of seeing things as they are. Covered by but a few inches of earth, the dead can sleep their quiet sleep: no fly will ever come to take advantage of them. At the surface of the soil, exposed to the air, the hideous invasion is possible; ay, it is the invariable rule. For the melting down and remolding of matter, man is no better, corpse for corpse, than the lowest of the brutes. Then the fly exercises her rights and deals with us as she does with any ordinary animal refuse. Nature treats us with magnificent indifference in her great regenerating factory: placed in her crucibles, animals and men, beggars and kings are one and all alike. There you have true equality, the only equality in this world of ours: equality in the presence of the maggot.

Fabre spent his life watching insects in his own yard. Here he looks at the blowfly and finds the only democracy he trusts.

Source: J.-Henri Fabre, The Life of the Fly, trans. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1913), ch. XIV "The Bluebottle: The Laying." Text: Project Gutenberg. Public domain in the US. Pairs with: Major Arcana: Death A note from 2026: Some flies do reach buried bodies: phorid "coffin flies" (Conicera) dig down to them, and forensic entomologists record it.

Public domain in the United States.