So with what magnificence Nature shines upon the earth! A pure light
extending from east to west gilds successively the hemispheres of the
globe. An airy transparent element surrounds it; a warm and fruitful
heat animates and develops all its germs of life; living and salutary
waters tend to their support and increase; high points scattered over
the lands, by arresting the airy vapors, render these sources
inexhaustible and always fresh; gathered into immense hollows, they
divide the continents. The extent of the sea is as great as that of the
land. It is not a cold and sterile element, but another empire as rich
and populated as the first. The finger of God has marked the boundaries.
When the waters encroach upon the beaches of the west, they leave bare
those of the east. This enormous mass of water, itself inert, follows
the guidance of heavenly movements. Balanced by the regular oscillations
of ebb and flow, it rises and falls with the planet of night; rising
still higher when concurrent with the planet of day, the two uniting
their forces during the equinoxes cause the great tides. Our connection
with the heavens is nowhere more clearly indicated. From these constant
and general movements result others variable and particular: removals of
earth, deposits at the bottom of water forming elevations like those
upon the earth's surface, currents which, following the direction of
these mountain ranges, shape them to corresponding angles; and rolling
in the midst of the waves, as waters upon the earth, are in truth the
rivers of the sea.
The air, too, lighter and more fluid than water, obeys many forces: the
distant action of sun and moon, the immediate action of the sea, that of
rarefying heat and of condensing cold, produce in it continual
agitations. The winds are its currents, driving before them and
collecting the clouds. They produce meteors; transport the humid vapors
of maritime beaches to the land surfaces of the continents; determine
the storms; distribute the fruitful rains and kindly dews; stir the sea;
agitate the mobile waters, arrest or hasten the currents; raise floods;
excite tempests. The angry sea rises toward heaven and breaks roaring
against immovable dikes, which it can neither destroy nor surmount.
The land elevated above sea-level is safe from these irruptions. Its
surface, enameled with flowers, adorned with ever fresh verdure, peopled
with thousands and thousands of differing species of animals, is a place
of repose; an abode of delights, where man, placed to aid nature,
dominates all other things, the only one who can know and admire. God
has made him spectator of the universe and witness of his marvels. He is
animated by a divine spark which renders him a participant in the divine
mysteries; and by whose light he thinks and reflects, sees and reads in
the book of the world as in a copy of divinity.
Nature is the exterior throne of God's glory. The man who studies and
contemplates it rises gradually towards the interior throne of
omniscience. Made to adore the Creator, he commands all the creatures.
Vassal of heaven, king of earth, which he ennobles and enriches, he
establishes order, harmony, and subordination among living beings. He
embellishes Nature itself; cultivates, extends, and refines it;
suppresses its thistles and brambles, and multiplies its grapes
and roses.
Look upon the solitary beaches and sad lands where man has never dwelt:
covered--or rather bristling--with thick black woods on all their rising
ground, stunted barkless trees, bent, twisted, falling from age; near
by, others even more numerous, rotting upon heaps already
rotten,--stifling, burying the germs ready to burst forth. Nature, young
everywhere else, is here decrepit. The land surmounted by the ruins of
these productions offers, instead of flourishing verdure, only an
incumbered space pierced by aged trees, loaded with parasitic plants,
lichens, agarics--impure fruits of corruption. In the low parts is
water, dead and stagnant because undirected; or swampy soil neither
solid nor liquid, hence unapproachable and useless to the habitants both
of land and of water. Here are swamps covered with rank aquatic plants
nourishing only venomous insects and haunted by unclean animals. Between
these low infectious marshes and these higher ancient forests extend
plains having nothing in common with our meadows, upon which weeds
smother useful plants. There is none of that fine turf which seems like
down upon the earth, or of that enameled lawn which announces a
brilliant fertility; but instead an interlacement of hard and thorny
herbs which seem to cling to each other rather than to the soil, and
which, successively withering and impeding each other, form a coarse mat
several feet thick. There are no roads, no communications, no vestiges
of intelligence in these wild places. Man, obliged to follow the paths
of savage beasts and to watch constantly lest he become their prey,
terrified by their roars, thrilled by the very silence of these profound
solitudes, turns back and says:--
Primitive nature is hideous and dying; I, I alone, can make it living
and agreeable. Let us dry these swamps; converting into streams and
canals, animate these dead waters by setting them in motion. Let us use
the active and devouring element once hidden from us, and which we
ourselves have discovered; and set fire to this superfluous mat, to
these aged forests already half consumed, and finish with iron what fire
cannot destroy! Soon, instead of rush and water-lily from which the toad
compounds his venom, we shall see buttercups and clover, sweet and
salutary herbs. Herds of bounding animals will tread this once
impracticable soil and find abundant, constantly renewed pasture. They
will multiply, to multiply again. Let us employ the new aid to complete
our work; and let the ox, submissive to the yoke, exercise his strength
in furrowing the land. Then it will grow young again with cultivation,
and a new nature shall spring up under our hands.
How beautiful is cultivated Nature when by the cares of man she is
brilliantly and pompously adorned! He himself is the chief ornament, the
most noble production; in multiplying himself he multiplies her most
precious gem. She seems to multiply herself with him, for his art brings
to light all that her bosom conceals. What treasures hitherto ignored!
What new riches! Flowers, fruits, perfected grains infinitely
multiplied; useful species of animals transported, propagated, endlessly
increased; harmful species destroyed, confined, banished; gold, and iron
more necessary than gold, drawn from the bowels of the earth; torrents
confined; rivers directed and restrained; the sea, submissive and
comprehended, crossed from one hemisphere to the other; the earth
everywhere accessible, everywhere living and fertile; in the valleys,
laughing prairies; in the plains, rich pastures or richer harvests; the
hills loaded with vines and fruits, their summits crowned by useful
trees and young forests; deserts changed to cities inhabited by a great
people, who, ceaselessly circulating, scatter themselves from centres to
extremities; frequent open roads and communications established
everywhere like so many witnesses of the force and union of society; a
thousand other monuments of power and glory: proving that man, master of
the world, has transformed it, renewed its whole surface, and that he
shares his empire with Nature.
However, he rules only by right of conquest, and enjoys rather than
possesses. He can only retain by ever-renewed efforts. If these cease,
everything languishes, changes, grows disordered, enters again into the
hands of Nature. She retakes her rights; effaces man's work; covers his
most sumptuous monuments with dust and moss; destroys them in time,
leaving him only the regret that he has lost by his own fault the
conquests of his ancestors. These periods during which man loses his
domain, ages of barbarism when everything perishes, are always prepared
by wars and arrive with famine and depopulation. Man, who can do nothing
except in numbers, and is only strong in union, only happy in peace, has
the madness to arm himself for his unhappiness and to fight for his own
ruin. Incited by insatiable greed, blinded by still more insatiable
ambition, he renounces the sentiments of humanity, turns all his forces
against himself, and seeking to destroy his fellow, does indeed destroy
himself. And after these days of blood and carnage, when the smoke of
glory has passed away, he sees with sadness that the earth is
devastated, the arts buried, the nations dispersed, the races enfeebled,
his own happiness ruined, and his power annihilated.