Chapter II (2)

In common justice they owed him also compensation for the great and glorious things they had prevented him from accomplishing. He had ripened his plan of an ideal colony, and sent project after project to Versailles. Sometimes he offered himself to civilise Corsica, sometimes to conquer Jersey, or North America, or to found a small state in France itself, within the king's dominions. Nobody had deigned to take any notice of his plans, unless perhaps "some intriguing, avaricious protegé" should have stolen his ideas and was preparing to carry them out in his stead; such things did happen sometimes. He laid the blame of the culpable negligence of the Government upon the head clerk of the Foreign Office, and he did not spare his reproaches. The excellent Hennin groaned, grieved over it, but did not get angry. He himself counted upon recompense also, and he did not count in vain. As soon as this mind diseased recovered itself a little, there were most delightful outpourings to the good and true friend who was never harsh or unfeeling. Then there are periods in their correspondence like oases of peace and poetry. In the beginning of 1781 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, at Hennin's suggestion, quitted his wretched furnished room, and took a lodging in the rue Neuve-Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, which he called his donjon, and where cheerfulness streamed in at every window. The staircase was in the courtyard to the right, and on ascending to the fourth story under the roof, one found four small bright rooms, from which one looked out upon a little bit of country. It was nothing but gardens, orchards, convents, peaceful little cottages, the wide sky overhead, and the low horizon. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre felt that he was saved. He wrote a letter to Hennin which is a song of joy. He says:--

"I shall come to see you with the first violet; I shall have to walk five miles, but shall do it joyfully, and I intend to give you such a description of my abode as will make you long to come and see me and take a meal with me. Horace invited Mecænas to come to his cottage at Tivoli, to eat a quarter of lamb and drink Falernian wine. As my purse is getting very low, I shall only offer you strawberries and mugs of milk, but you will have the pleasure of hearing the nightingales sing in the groves of the convent of the English nuns, and of seeing the young novices play in their garden." (February 7, 1781.)

Another year April perfumes the air, and Hennin has promised to come and dine in the donjon. His friend describes the menu to him: "Simple viands, amongst which will be found a big pie that Mme. Mesnard is going to give me; a pure wine, good of its kind; excellent coffee, and punch, which I make well, let me say without vanity." It is a question of fixing a day. "Nature must undertake the chief cost of this little feast, therefore I expect she will have carpeted the paths with verdure and decorated the groves of trees in my landscape with leaves and flowers. If you were an observer of nature, I should say to you start the very first day that you see the chestnut tree set out its chandeliers; but you are one of those who only have eyes for the evolution of human forces. Let me know the day you choose," &c.

The dinner was as charming as the invitation. It was talked of at Versailles, and some fair dames lamented aloud that they had not been invited.

To most of them the donjon would have appeared a hateful abode: one froze in it in winter and was roasted in summer, and every gust of wind threatened to blow it away. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, obstinate dreamer that he was, preserved all his life the most tender and faithful remembrance of his aërial lodging: "It was there," he wrote in his mature age, "in the midst of a profound solitude, and under a bewitching horizon, that I experienced the sweetest joys of my life. I should perhaps still be there if for a whim they had not forced me to turn out in order to pull it down. It was there that I put the finishing touches to my _Études de la Nature_, and from there I published it."[17] And it is there that one must look upon him in order to do him justice after our earlier sad pictures of him.

Before he had become a morose beggar, suffering with weak nerves, he was, we must remember, possessed with the idea that to a man carrying in his head a book which he believes to be good and useful, all means are fair for accomplishing his destiny of creative artist and intellectual guide. He recognises no choice of means, he is the slave, and at need the victim of a superior power, which commands him to sacrifice his repose and his pride on condition that he acquits himself of his debt towards mankind by giving to it a work which will bring a little happiness to our poor world. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was quite certain that he possessed the magic word which lifts up the heart, and rather than throw it to the four winds of heaven, he would have begged alms on the highway. Was he right? was he wrong? We owe it to his great faith to leave our verdict undecided.

Think of him in his garret, and you will understand that he begged not for himself, but for his book, which is a very different matter. He is avaricious because he hopes still to write another chapter before going on the tramp again. He has only one coat for the whole year, winter and summer. He does his own housekeeping, sweeps, cleans, cooks. He allows himself so little firing that in winter the water remains frozen for eight days in his rooms, and his pitchers burst. He goes on foot to Versailles to see Hennin, and returns in the same way at night; all the better if it is moonlight, all the worse if it rains. His health suffers, but his head recovers, and he is happy; he has a "whole trunk" full of rough draughts, which he copies, corrects, and arranges. "You cannot imagine," he writes to Hennin, "the tenderness of an author for his production; that of a mother for her son is not to be compared to it. I am always adding to or cutting out something of mine. A bear does not lick her cub with more care than I; I fear in the end I shall rub away the muzzle of mine with my licking. I do not wish to touch it any more.... There have been moments when I have caught a glimpse of heaven." (December 18, 1783.)

When the moment arrives to have his work printed, he redoubles his economy. He is sordid and at the same time a greater borrower, more in debt than ever; for after all it is in order to commit some extravagance for his "child"--to have fine paper, to add a print here, a pretty frontispiece there. The extravagance accomplished, he writes to Hennin, one of his principal lenders, to demonstrate to him that this is an excellent speculation:--

"It is not a superfluous expense, even if the print in 12º itself comes to fourteen or fifteen pounds, because it is possible that many people will buy my work for the print alone, as has happened to others. Moreover, I shall raise the price of my edition with it, so as to reap more than I sowed. So...." (June 29, 1784.)

Thus it was as clear as noonday that this lovely engraving would make his fortune, a very important matter to his creditors. We do not possess Hennin's reply, but there is no doubt, after what we know of his kindness, that he made pretence of being convinced.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] _Poems._ Translated by Villemain.

[10] Pecheur d'Islande.

[11] Portraits littéraires, 1836.

[12] Causeries du lundi, 1852.

[13] Essay upon J. J. Rousseau.

[14] Chinese name for a bitter-sweet root used in medicine.--TRANSLATOR.

[15] He has expressed the same sentiment, only more energetically, in a passage of the _Huitième Promenade_, where he represents himself as escaping at last from the "procession of the wicked."

[16] This curious note does not appear in the complete works. It formed part of the collection of autographs belonging to M. Feuillet de Conches. I owe the information to the kindness of Mme. Feuillet de Conches.

[17] Sequel to the _Vows of a Hermit_.

III.

THE "ÉTUDES DE LA NATURE."

The _Études de la Nature_ appeared in three volumes towards the end of 1784. It did not then comprise the fragments of _l'Arcadie_, which have been since added to it, nor _Paul and Virginia_, which the author had cut out in consequence of an adventure that has been recounted a thousand times, and that we must recount yet again in order to give consolation to any disappointed young man who may be breaking his heart because he is not understood.

Mme. Necker had invited him to come and read some of his MSS. aloud, promising that he should have for his audience some distinguished judges. Amongst them were in fact Buffon, the Abbé Galiani, Thomas, Necker, and some others. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre chose _Paul and Virginia_. At first they listened in silence, then they began to whisper, to pay less attention, to yawn, and finally not to listen at all. Thomas fell asleep, those nearest the door slipped out, Buffon looked at his watch and called for his carriage. Necker smiled at seeing some of the women, who dared not appear otherwise touched, in tears. The reading ended, not one of these persons, though trained in the world's deceits, could find a word of praise for the author. Mme. Necker was the only person to speak, and it was to remark that the conversations between Paul and the old man suspended the action of the story, and chilled the reader; that it was "a glass of iced water": a very just definition, but ungracious, and it reduced Bernardin de Saint-Pierre to despair.

He thought he was condemned without appeal, and returned to his house so prostrated in spirit that he thought of burning _Paul and Virginia_, the _Études_, and _l'Arcadie_--all his papers in fact--so as not to be tempted to touch them again. One of the Vernets turned up at this crisis, took pity upon his suffering, had the despised work read over to him, and recognised the charm of it. He applauded, wept, proclaimed it a masterpiece, the MSS. are saved, and the author consoled, without, however, gaining sufficient courage to print a work which had sent Thomas to sleep, and put Buffon to flight. _Paul and Virginia_ remained in a drawer.

It was the same with the fragments of the _Arcadie_, and with much more reason. _L'Arcadie_, begun after the publication of the _Voyage to the Isle of France_, was to be an epic poem in prose in twelve books, and was inspired by _Telémaque_ and _Robinson Crusoe_. Saint-Pierre proposed "to represent the three successive states through which most nations pass: that of barbarism, of nature, and of corruption."[18] Notice in passing this progression. The state of nature is not the first state, it is between the two, after the state of barbarism and before the state of over-civilisation, which proves that before admiring or despising natural man, according to the eighteenth century, it is as well to understand the sense which each writer gives to the words.

The picture of these three states furnished our author with the means of expressing his ideas upon the ideal republic which he proposed to form. Thus _l'Arcadie_ became the instrument of propagandism, just the thing to lead M. de Saint-Pierre to fortune, and he never forgave himself for having given up this work, a little through Rousseau's fault, who proclaimed the plan of the book admirable, but, nevertheless, advised him to re-write it from beginning to end. Jean Jacques acknowledged at the same time, with a smile, that he had ceased to believe in poetical and virtuous shepherds since a certain journey which he had taken beside the Lignon: "I once made an excursion to Forez," he continued, with the geniality of his good days, "solely to see the country of Celadon and Astrea, of which Urfé gives us such charming pictures. Instead of loving shepherds, I only saw on the banks of the Lignon farriers, blacksmiths, and edge-tool makers." "What!" cried Saint-Pierre, overwhelmed with astonishment, "that all, in so delightful a country?" "It is only a country of smithies," replied Rousseau. "It was that journey to Forez which cured me of my illusion; up to that time never a year passed without my reading Astrea from end to end. I was acquainted with all its characters. Thus does science rob us of our pleasures.[19]"

It was in the bois de Boulogne, seated under a tree, that Jean Jacques Rousseau taught his astonished disciple not to take the Astrea for history. He also told him with great modesty that he felt himself incapable of governing the Republic of their dreams; that all he could do would be to live in it. This declaration piqued Bernardin de Saint-Pierre; he thought he perceived an underlying criticism, and enlarged with enthusiasm upon the sublime virtues of his future subjects which would make them easy to govern. But even while disputing about it he grew disgusted with _l'Arcadie_, put it on one side, and used up the materials for his _Études_. Posterity has no reason to regret it. The fragments which have reached us suggest a work in which the ideas are false and the characters conventional. One reads in it for example: "One could see by her timidity that she was a shepherdess." The contrary is the case in point of fact, and Saint-Pierre knew it better than any one; he who had trotted on foot through the whole of Normandy in quest of models for his heroes, before tracing the portraits of the beautiful Cyanée of Tirteé, her father, and their guest Amasis. His rustics seem to be drawn by a wit who is a clumsy imitator of Fénélon. He was quite wise to give it up.

According to his correspondence, the _Études de la Nature_ was begun in 1773. The plan of it was at that time gigantic. He informs us on the first page that he wished "to write a general history of nature, in imitation of Aristotle, of Pliny, of Bacon, and other modern celebrities." He set to work, but he soon acknowledged, in making his observations of a strawberry-plant, that he would never have the time to observe all that there is on the earth. Although the page upon the strawberry-plant has become classical, it is as well to re-read it in order to be able to realise its effect upon readers, who up to that time had dwelt upon our beautiful Mother Earth deaf and blind, without hearing the pulsation of her life, without seeing her prodigious eternal productiveness.

"One summer day ... I perceived upon a strawberry-plant, which had by chance been placed upon my window-sill, a lot of little flies, so pretty, that I became possessed of the wish to describe them. The next day I saw another kind, and of them also I wrote a description. During three weeks I observed thirty-seven different species of them; but they came in such numbers at last, and in so many varieties, that I gave up the study of them, although it was most interesting, because I had not sufficient leisure, or, to tell the truth, sufficient command of language for the task.

"The flies which I did observe were distinguished from each other by their colours, their forms, and their habits. There were some of a golden hue, some silver, some bronze, speckled, striped, blue, green, some dusky, some irridescent. In some the head was round like a turban; in others, flat like the head of a nail. In some they appeared dark like a spot of black velvet; in others, they shone out like a ruby. There was no less variety in their wings; some had them long and brilliant like a sheet of mother-o'-pearl; in others, they were short and broad, resembling the meshes of the finest gauze. Each one had its own way of carrying its wings and of using them. Some carried them erect, and others horizontally, and they seemed to take pleasure in spreading them out. Some would fly, fluttering about like butterflies; others would rise in the air, flying against the wind by aid of a mechanism somewhat resembling toy beetles. Some would alight upon a plant to deposit their eggs; others simply to seek shelter from the sun. But most of them came for reasons which were quite unknown to me; for some flew to and fro in perpetual movement, while others only moved their backs. There were some who remained quite immoveable, and were, perhaps, like me, engaged in making observations. I disdained, as I already knew them so well, all the tribes of other insects which were attracted to my strawberry-plant: such as the snails which nestled under its leaves; the butterflies which fluttered around it; the beetles which dug at its roots; the little worms which found the means of living in the cellular tissue, that is to say, simply in the thickness of a leaf; the wasps and the bees which hummed about its flowers; the aphis which sucked the stems, the ants which ate up the aphis; and last of all, the spiders which wove their webs near at hand in order to catch all these different victims."

He then had recourse to the microscope to examine into the world of the infinitely little, and saw that the only limit to his observation was the imperfections of our instruments; each leaf of the strawberry-plant was a little universe in which creatures invisible to the naked eye were born, lived, and died. This led to the reflection that his plant would be more densely peopled if it had not been in a pot, in the midst of the smoke of Paris; that, moreover, he had only made his observations of it at one hour of the day, and at one season of the year; and he perceived that the complete history of one species of plant, comprising its relations with the animal world, would be sufficient to occupy several naturalists. His thoughts turned to the immense number of plants and animals known to us, and to the small amount of attention which up to that time had been given to their instincts, their appearances, their friendships and enmities, so that almost everything remained still to be found out. He thought over the weakness of his intention, and acknowledged himself vanquished at the outset. Far from being able to embrace in his work this formidable mass of information which we call creation, he felt himself incapable of explaining fully even its details. "All my ideas," he wrote to Hennin, "are but the shadows of nature, collected by another shadow." He also compared himself to a child who has dug a hole in the sand with a shell, to contain the sea. So he gave up his project of writing a general history, and lowered his ambition till it was more in accordance with his powers, declaring himself satisfied that he had given his readers some new delights, and extended their views in the infinite and mysterious world of nature.

Nevertheless, if his work was given to the public only in a curtailed and mutilated form, his object remained. The _Études de la Nature_ was destined to paraphrase the first part of Fénélon's _Traité de l'existence de Dieu_, especially of the second chapter, entitled "Proofs of the Existence of God, taken from the Consideration of the Chief Marvels of Nature." Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was born religious at heart in an age which had "lost the taste for God," to use Bossuet's expression, when believers themselves were wanting in spirit and tenderness. He was brought up upon the celebrated phrase of Voltaire--"The people must have a religion"--and never could reconcile himself to hear repeated around him that in truth, "Religion is the portion of the people, just a kind of political engine invented to keep them in check" (_Études_). Atheism seemed to him a diminution of our being, a lessening of its most noble sensations and its most elevated emotions. "It is only religion," he said, "which gives to our passions a lofty character"; and he related, apropos of this, that the day on which he himself had perceived most vividly the power of the "divine majesty" of suffering was in contemplating a peasant woman from Caux prostrated at the foot of the cross one stormy day, praying, with clasped hands, her eyes cast up to heaven, for a boat which was in danger. The seventeenth century would not have admitted for poetical reasons that they believed thus in God. Men's minds were then too serious; and the great spiritual directors of the time of Bossuet and Bourdaloue, without mentioning the Jansenists, would have been shocked at the sentimental religion of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. But the eighteenth century had taught men to be less nice, and such things appeared to it to be sublime.

It must be said that they were very tired of arguments and philosophy, and the idea that they might seek for truth by some less tiresome paths was very pleasing. They had for so long lived like the Carthusian friars of the _Harmonies_. "One day one of my friends went to visit a Carthusian friar. It was the month of May; the garden of the recluse was covered with flowers, in the borders and on the fruit-trees. As for him, he had shut himself up in his room, from which he could see absolutely nothing. 'Why,' asked my friend, 'have you closed your shutters?' 'In order,' replied the friar, 'to be able to meditate without distraction on the attributes of God.' 'Ah!' said my friend, 'don't you think that perhaps you may find greater distraction in your own heart than nature would give to you in the month of May? Take my advice, open your shutters and shut the door upon your imagination.'"

Open your shutters and shut your books, cried this new-comer in the world of letters. Nature is the source of everything which is ingenious, useful, pleasant and beautiful, but she must be contemplated in all simplicity of heart. It is for our happiness that she hides from us the laws which govern her mighty forces, and there is a kind of thoughtless impiety in wishing to penetrate too deeply into her mysteries. Besides, we always fail, and our imprudent efforts only succeed in adding the mist of our errors to the cloud which veils her divinity. Let us make up our minds to not being taken into the Divine confidence; content to examine Nature at work, observing her work without studying it on a system, forgetting what the scholars and the academies have decided and decreed as a matter of doctrine. The forces of Nature, ever young and active, form one of the most wonderful and admirable spectacles which the universe affords us. The same spirit of life which formed our world out of chaos, continues to develop the germs under our eyes, to repair the wounded plants and renew their injured tissues with fresh growths. They tell you that Nature brings forth at hazard, producing pell-mell and indifferently the good and the bad, annulling the good by this disorder. But I tell you that not a blade of grass has been made at hazard, and that the least mite testifies to the existence of a sovereign intelligence and goodness. I assure you also that this goodness has only had one pre-occupation--yourself; but one aim--your happiness. God made nature for man, and man for Himself. Man is the end and aim of everything upon the earth, and the proofs of this are infinite in number.

A great part of the _Études_ is taken up with the gathering together of these proofs. I do not believe that there exists another so intrepid a partisan of final causes. Nothing turns him from his demonstration, not facts, nor absurdities, nor ridicule. Things are so because it is necessary to the happiness of man that they should be so: nothing turns Bernardin de Saint-Pierre from that opinion. I do not say that he scoffed at science; he looked upon himself as a scientific spirit who was to set his predecessors right, including Descartes and Newton; I only say that he speaks about it rather as though he were laughing at it.

Our earth, then, has been solidified, modelled and carved out by God for our needs and our comfort. There is not a mountain whose height, breadth, and site have not been calculated by Divine wisdom for our advantage. One is intended to refresh us with its ice, another to protect us from the north wind, a third to produce a healthful current of air; this last we call eolian. Those islands of rock strewn along the seashore, and vulgarly called sand-banks, are fortifications placed there by Providence, without which our coasts would be demolished by the ocean. Those which one remarks at the mouths of water-courses "form channels for the rivers, each channel taking a different direction, so that if one becomes stopped up by the winds or the currents from the sea, the water can escape by another." It speaks for itself that God does not have to try a thing over and over again before it is perfect. Creation was perfect from the first day, and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre suppresses the slow evolutions, due to the action of the forces of nature, which according to some incessantly alter the surface of the earth. That surface is unchangeable. There is no example that the sea ever "hollowed out a bay, or detached anything from the continent;" that the "rivers formed at their entrance into the sea sand-banks and promontories;" that ancient ports had been effaced, islands destroyed, or mountains denuded and levelled to the ground. In truth, the works of God, like those of man, are subject to wear, and need reparation; but the Divine Architect is never idle, and works without ceasing to maintain them, which amounts to the same thing.

The means which He employs for reparation often escape our notice from their very simplicity. What pedestrian has not execrated the clouds of sand or dust which the wind raises on the strand or on barren plains. He would have been rather astonished if he had known that he was witnessing the dispersal of materials designed by Providence to replace the soil in the mountains, which had been worn away by water. Sand and dust are transported to the tops of the peaks upon the wings of storms, thanks to the "fossil attractions" of the mountains.

It was six years after Buffon's _Époques de la Nature_ had appeared, that Bernardin de Saint-Pierre offered to the public this astonishing system of the Universe. It needed a certain amount of courage to be so deliberately behindhand.

The theory of final causes thus carried to extremes occasioned a good deal of embarrassment to the Deist. It is no slight matter to undertake to explain, to the advantage of Providence, everything that there is upon the earth without any exception; so many things appear useless, so many hurtful. Saint-Pierre never despaired of finding justification for every one of them, with human happiness as its basis. He went on bravely without disturbing himself that the laugh was at his expense, and with an ardour of conviction which convinced many of the men and almost all the women who read him. The spirit of that day was not very scientific.

Of what use are volcanoes? Hardly any one has failed to perceive that rivers are, so to speak, the drains of the continent. The oils, the resin, and the nitre of vegetables and animals are carried by the water-courses to the sea, where all their component parts become dissolved, covering the surface with fatty matter, which does not evaporate because it resists the action of the air. Without the intervention of Providence the entire ocean since the existence of the world would be defiled with these tainted oils; but Providence made volcanoes, and the waters were purified. In fact, volcanoes "do not proceed from heat inside the earth, but they owe their origin to the waters, and the matter contained in them. One can convince one's self of this fact by remarking that there is not a single volcano in the interior of a continent, unless it is in the neighbourhood of some great lake like that of Mexico." Nature, obeying a Divine impulse, has "lighted these vast furnaces on the shores of the ocean," so that the oils of which we have spoken, being attracted towards them by a phenomenon which the author does not explain, are burnt up as the weeds in a garden are burnt in the autumn by a careful gardener. One does in truth find lava in the interior of a country, but a proof that it owes its origin to water is that the volcanoes which have produced it have become extinct, when the waters have failed. Those volcanoes were lighted there like those of our day, by the animal and vegetable fermentations with which the earth was covered after the Deluge, when the remains of so many forests and so many animals, whose trunks and bones are still found in our quarries, floated on the surface of the ocean, forming huge deposits, which the currents accumulated in the cavities of the mountains, so that the ancient craters of the Auvergne mountains prove that all volcanoes are found beside the sea. Inundations afford us the pleasures of boating and fishing. That is the reason that the nations which inhabit the shores of the Amazon and the Orinico, and many other rivers which overflow their banks, looked upon these inundations as blessings from heaven before the arrival of Europeans, who upset their ideas: "Was it, then, so displeasing a spectacle for them to see their immense forests intersected by long water-roads, which they could navigate without trouble of any sort in their canoes, and of which they could gather in the produce with the greatest ease? Some colonies like those on the Orinico, convinced of these advantages, had adopted the strange habit of living in the tops of trees, like the birds, seeking board, lodging and shelter under their foliage. In spite of the epithet _strange_, one feels that he regretted these picturesque manners, and that it would not have displeased him at all to see the dwellers on the banks of the Loire, nesting with the magpies and jays in their own poplars."

Beasts of prey rid the earth of dead bodies, which without them would not fail to infect the air. Every year there dies a natural death at least the twentieth part of the quadrupeds, the tenth part of the birds, and an infinite number of insects, of which most of the species only live a year. There are some insects even who only live a few hours, such as the ephemera. This enormous destruction would soon poison the air and the water without the aid of the innumerable army of grave-diggers created and maintained by Nature to keep the surface of the globe clean. Saint-Pierre draws a description of it which is wonderful for its colour and spirit: "It is above all in hot countries, where the effects of decomposition are most rapid and most dangerous, that Nature has multiplied carnivorous animals. Tribes of lions, tigers, leopards, panthers, civet-cats, lynxes, jackals, hyenas, condors, &c., there come to reinforce the wolves, foxes, martens, otters, vultures, ravens, &c. Legions of voracious crabs make their homes in the sand there; alligators and crocodiles lie in ambush amongst their reeds, an innumerable species of shell-fish, armed with implements to enable them to suck, to bore, to file, to crush, bristle on the rocks and pave their sea-shores. Clouds of sea-birds fly screaming along the rocks, or sail round them on the tops of the waves seeking their prey; eels, garfish, shad, and every species of cartiaginous fish which only lives upon flesh, such as long sharks, big skate, hammer-fish, octopuses armed with suckers, and every variety of dog-fish, swim about in shoals, occupied all the time in devouring the remains of the dead bodies which collect there. Nature also musters insects to hasten on the destruction. Wasps armed with shears cut the flesh, flies pump out the fluids, marine worms separate the bones.... What remains of all these bodies, after having served as food to numberless shoals of other kinds of fish, some with snouts formed like a spoon, others like a pipe, so that they can pick up every crumb from the vast table, at last converted by so many digestions into oils and fats and added to the vegetable pulps which descends from all parts into the ocean, would reproduce a new chaos of putrefaction in its waters, if the currents did not carry it to the volcanoes, the fires of which succeed in decomposing it and giving it back to the elements. It is for this reason, as we have already indicated, that volcanoes ... are all in the neighbourhood of the sea or big lakes."

How happy are the poets! for they can talk nonsense with impunity. With all his extravagant ideas, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre has brought home to us like no one else, the sensation of the activity of Nature, and of the swarming life which covers the earth, moves inside it, and fills the air and the sea.

He had quite foreseen that people would oppose to all this the sufferings inflicted by beasts of prey, large and small, upon living animals, men even, but this objection did not embarrass him in the least. As far as animals are concerned, it would disappear of itself only by taking a broader view of things. "It is true," he said, "several species of carnivorous beasts devour living animals.... Let us return to the great principle of Nature: she has made nothing in vain. She destines few animals to die of old age, and I believe even that it is only man whom she permits to run through the entire course of life, because it is only man whose old age can be useful to his fellows. Among animals what would be the use of unreflecting old age to their posterity, which is born with the instinct which takes the place of experience? On the other hand, how would the decrepid parents find sustenance among their children who leave them the moment they know how to swim, fly, or walk? Old age would be for them a weight from which the wild beasts deliver them." Let us add that to them death means little suffering. They are generally destroyed in the night during their sleep. "They do not attach to this fatal moment any of the feelings which render it so bitter to the greater part of humanity--the regrets for the past and anxieties for the future. _In the midst of a life of innocence, often with their dreams of love still fresh, their untroubled spirits wing their flight into the shades of night._ It is very prettily phrased, but unhappily no one has ever succeeded, often as it has been tried, in convincing those who are eaten that it is for their good."

The objection relative to man is dismissed with the same ease. "Man has nothing to fear from beasts of prey. Firstly, most of them only go abroad in the night, and they possess striking characteristics which announce their approach even before they become visible. Some of them have strong odours of musk like the marten, the civet cat, and the crocodile; others shrill voices which can be heard for long distances in the night like the wolves and jackals; again, others have strongly-marked colours which can be distinguished a long way off upon the neutral tint of their skins: such are the dark stripes of the tiger and the distinct spots of the leopard. They all have eyes which shine in the darkness.... Even those which attack the human body have distinguishing signs; either they have a strong odour like the bug, or contrasts in colour to the parts to which they attach themselves, like white insects on the hair, or the blackness of fleas against the whiteness of the skin." How about fleas upon the negro?

The flea's usefulness does not stop with its blackness. It is also useful from the point of view of political economy, by obliging "the rich to employ those who are destitute, in the capacity of domestics, to keep things clean about them." Furthermore hail, with the help of its ally, the hurricane, destroys a great many insects; earthquakes are no less necessary and useful, their function being to purify the atmosphere. Hail, tempests, earthquakes, are in reality so many benefactors, unrecognised because we are not penetrated to the marrow of our bones with these fundamental truths: the happiness of man is the first law of the world; "nothing superfluous exists, only such things as are useful relatively to man."

Here are some more proofs which Bernardin de Saint-Pierre considers striking. Nature invented the hideous scorpion to be a salutary terror to us, to keep us away from damp, unhealthy places, its ordinary abode. She has given four teats to the cow, which only brings forth one calf at a time, and a dozen to the sow, which has to bring up as many as fifteen young ones, and this because mankind liking milk and pork, the cow had to be made to give us of "the superabundance of her milk, and the sow of that of her young."

What shall be said of the "royal foresight" of the Divinity when it wishes to act upon our hearts and prepare them to learn patience, or open them to gentle feelings? Every one of us has mourned a dog, and has asked himself why these faithful animals have so short a life. Listen to the answer. "If the death of the dog of the house reduces our children, whose companion and contemporary he has been, to despair, doubtless Nature wished to give them, through the loss of an animal so worthy of human affection, their first experience of the privations of which human life is full." The example of the melon and the pumpkin is still more characteristic. While most fruits are cultivated for the mouth of man, like cherries and plums, or for his hand like pears and apples, the melon much larger and divided into quarters, "seems intended to be eaten by the family." As for the enormous pumpkin, Nature intends that one should share it with one's neighbours; it is pre-eminently a sociable fruit.

In spite of all these benefits, we hear our impious race accusing Nature, and blaspheming Providence. We are angry against Heaven when we suffer, when this or that fails us, as though Providence could be at fault, and as though we were not ourselves the real authors of our woes. A little faith, a little confidence, and we should be comforted, but we do not possess it, and we rush to our ruin through ignorance and unbelief, just as it happened one day to some men who had landed upon a desert island where there were no cocoa-nut trees. Soon the sea "threw upon the strand several sprouting cocoa-nuts, as if Providence were eager to persuade them by this useful and agreeable present to remain upon the island and cultivate it." Notice that this was not brought about by any chance currents, because sea-currents are regular, and those which surrounded this island had had time since the creation of the world to sow it with all sorts of seeds. "However that may be, the emigrants planted the cocoa-nuts, and in the course of a year and a half they sent up shoots four feet in height. So marked a favour from Heaven was, nevertheless, not sufficient to keep them in this happy spot: a thoughtless desire to procure for themselves wives, induced them to leave it, and plunged them in a long series of misfortunes, which most of them could not survive. _For my part, I do not doubt that if they had had that confidence in Providence which they owed to her, she would have sent wives to them in their desert island, as she had sent them cocoa-nuts._"

Providence also takes touching care of the animals. The thorns of the brambles and bushes protect the little birds in their nests, and collect the sheep's wool to line the nests with. Ermines have the tips of their tails black, "so that these small animals, entirely white, when going after one another in the snow, where they leave hardly any footmarks, may recognise one another in the luminous reflections of the long nights of the North." Hairy animals are generally white underneath because white keeps them warmer than any other colour, and because "the stomach needs most heat on account of the digestive and other functions; on the other hand, the head is always the deepest in colour, above all in hot countries, because that part has most need of coolness in the animal economy." It is also for the last reason that several of the birds in hot regions have tufts and crests on their heads, to shade them. Lastly, all animals without exception find their table set for them ever since the world began, even those who only feed upon carrion. "Ancient trees grow in the depths of new forests to afford sustenance to the insects and birds who find it in their aged trunks. _Corpses were created for the carnivorous animals._ In every age there must come forth creatures young, old, living and dying." There is always an essential difference in the methods of Providence towards animals and towards man. God takes care of us for our own sakes, He only takes care of animals or plants as they affect us, and in such measure as they are useful or agreeable to us. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was never tired of making remarks in support of these diverse opinions, and we could multiply quotations indefinitely, but what has already been said gives an adequate idea of his theory of the universe.

At first sight we are inclined to shrug our shoulders and pity the final causes for having found an advocate capable of such sad nonsense; but on reflection we are obliged to admit that once the principle is conceded, there is no means of stopping one's self in the downward course. Why admit this final cause and reject that one? If the world is arranged for the happiness of man, ought we not to explain the utility of moths and weevils after that of wool and corn? And if we see in it, as Saint-Pierre did, a means of compelling the monopolists to sell their merchandise for fear that the poor would have to go naked or die of hunger, have we not the right to maintain that one argument is worth another, and that it would be difficult for you to find a better? On the whole, Bernardin only developed Fénélon's idea, who also subordinated the creation to man, and was led by that, in spite of all his cleverness, to affirm that the stars were made to give us light; that the dog is born "to give us a pleasant picture of society, friendship, fidelity, and tender affection;" that wild beasts are intended "to exercise the courage, strength, and skill of mankind." Between Fénélon and Saint-Pierre, as between all determined partisans of final causes, it is only a question of more or less ingenuity, and Saint-Pierre was very ingenious. Grimm wrote, "I do not believe that any man had as yet ventured to recognise Providence, or to attribute to it more skilful attention, more refined research, more delicacy of feeling; but his idea is carried beyond all bounds, and leads him occasionally into all kinds of nonsense and absurd puerilities. His book is one long collection of eclogues, hymns, and madrigals in honour of Providence."[20] The _Études de la Nature_ makes us still better able to understand the warmth with which Buffon repudiated the theory of final causes.

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre would have been immensely astonished if he had been told that he was labouring to prepare generations of pessimists by attributing to Providence the cares and solicitude of a nurse in its relations with men. Nothing was further from his thoughts, and yet nothing is more certain from the moment that his works became a success with the public, and exerted an influence over men's minds. Man once convinced that his happiness is the concern of God, considers it the duty of the Divinity to secure it. In misfortune he has no patience to bear his troubles, because he looks upon himself as injured by Providence. The horror of the injustice done to him redoubles his suffering, and he curses the Heaven which does not respect his rights. It would be doing too much honour to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre if we were to make him answerable for the gloomy and bitter turn of mind of our contemporaries, but he certainly helped it on, since for a thoughtful mind his philosophy has a fatal tendency to demonstrate the fallibility of Providence.

He perceived the difficulty quite well, and felt that it is not sufficient to keep repeating over and over again the axiom: "All is for the best in the best of worlds." When one has finished repeating it, the evil is not ended nor explained. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was only too glad to fall back upon his own century, on which he had turned his back during his religious exaltation, and to explain by reasons taken from Diderot and Jean-Jacques the sufferings of humanity in a world created perfect. So he wrote: "Man is born good; it is society that makes bad people, and your education which prepares them." Man is born good; take the savages, who alone upon the earth still possess "real virtue." A good man continues happy so long as he does not turn aside from "the law of nature." Take the savages again--their happiness is perfect, according to the missionaries, so long as they have no intercourse with civilised nations. Society "makes bad people" by its stupid and brutal laws, which ignore and defy those of nature and precipitate us into abysses of evil. Our education prepares our young people to be in their turn wicked, because it is founded upon the false idea with which our whole civilisation is impregnated: it develops the intelligence instead of developing the heart. Nature "does not wish man to be skilful and vainglorious; she wishes him to be happy and good." We are going against her intentions when we undertake to invent scientific systems which "deprave the heart," instead of cultivating sweet and tender sentiments amongst our children. In doing so we commit a criminal error every day of our lives, the fatal consequences of which are quite apparent. Consider what man has become under the influence of this civilisation of which we are so proud.

"Nature, which intended him to be loving, did not furnish him with arms, and so he forged them himself to fight his fellows with. She provides food and shelter for all her children; and the roads leading to our towns are only distinguishable from afar by their gibbets! The history of nature presents only benefits, that of man nothing but wrath and rapine." And further on: "There are many lands which have never been cultivated; but there are none known to Europeans which have not been stained with human blood. Even the lonely wastes of the sea swallow up in their depths shiploads of men sent to the bottom by their fellows. In the towns, flourishing as they seem with their arts and monuments, pride and cunning, superstition and impiety, violence and treachery wage their eternal strife and fill with trouble the lot of the unfortunate inhabitants. _The more civilised the society there, the more cruel are its evils and the more they increase in number._"

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre had his Rousseau beside him, when he thus launched his anathemas against civilisation and the sciences. He occasionally makes use of expressions which closely recall the _Discours sur les lettres, les sciences et les arts_, and the _Discours sur l'inegalité parmi les hommes_. Unhappily for his thesis, his eloquent rage against our social state rings false. We feel that it is a rhetorical artifice to help him out of the difficulty of his theory of final causes, and to open out a way for him to bring at last his character of legislator before the public. The occasion was unique for showing to France what she had lost through the incapacity of her ministers, who allowed the memorials of M. de Saint-Pierre to moulder in their portfolios. We thus return to _Robinson Crusoe_, the ideal colony, and those famous laws of nature which it is our mission to contrast with the laws made by man.

The laws of nature are "moral" and "sentimental" laws; they comprise in the first place all the good and noble sentiments which God has placed in our hearts. Just as reason is a miserable and inferior faculty, so sentiment is the glory and strength of mankind; man owes to it everything great and splendid which he has ever accomplished. "Reason has produced many men of mind in the so-called civilised ages, and sentiment men of genius in the so-called barbarous ages. Reason varies from age to age, sentiment is always the same. Errors of reason are local and transitory, the truths of sentiment are unchanging and universal. By reason the ego is made Greek, English, Turkish; by sentiment it becomes human, divine.... In truth, reason gives us some pleasures; but if it reveals some portion of the order of the universe, it shows us at the same time our own destruction, which is involved in the laws of its preservation. It shows us at once past ills and those that are to come.... The wider it explores it brings back to us the evidence of our nothingness; and far from calming our anxieties by its researches, it often only increases them by its knowledge. On the contrary sentiment, blind in its desires, surveys the relics of all countries and all times; it trusts in the midst of ruins, of battles, even of death, in some vague, eternal existence; in all its yearnings it strives after the attributes of the Divinity--infinity, scope, duration, power, greatness, and glory; it adds ardent desire to all our passions, gives to them a sublime impulse, and in subjugating our reason, becomes itself the noblest and best instinct of human life." We must correct Descartes and say: "I feel, therefore I exist."

The apotheosis of sentiment, "blind in its desires" and indomitable in their pursuit, which "subjugates our reason" and makes us act on impulse, strongly resembles an apotheosis of passion, and in fact has led to it. So George Sand strikes some roots in the insipid sensibility of the last century, but we know already that it was not within the scope of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre to calculate the not very remote consequences of his principles. He dreamt, without the very least anxiety, of a world entirely governed by sentiment, and emancipated from that abominable reason. No danger could threaten this regenerated community, because its leader had sorted out the sentiments common to humanity, and only allowed such of them to prevail as pity, innocence, admiration, melancholy, and love. This choice promised to the world a succession of Idylls. As for the bad sentiments, hate, avarice, jealousy, ambition, there was no need to take them into consideration or to fear their usurpation; they would disappear from the face of France so soon as the plan of education placed at the end of the _Études de la Nature_ had been adopted.

There is nothing like coming at the right time. At the beginning of the Revolution these sorts of things were listened to with a contrite spirit, and no one thought of laughing at them. Such sentiments appeared as wise as they were beautiful; no one doubted his own virtue and goodness, and all rejoiced in this picture of the delightful emotions which awaited the new society. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre laboured to draw seductive pictures of it, and his efforts have procured us some analyses of public feeling which their date render most interesting.