The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



help of masters : the assistance of luminous, 

 living books, capable of teaching without fa- 

 tigue and without tedium. His class books 

 are, in fact, models of their kind. In them 

 you will find no vague phraseology, but the 

 simplest, most precise, yet most natural lan- 

 guage; no idle excess of erudition, but the 

 most perfect lucidity of text as of diagram; 

 no dryness, nothing commonplace, but every- 

 where something picturesque, original, and 

 full of life, giving charm and relief to all 

 that is learned; and above all the constant 

 care never to isolate oneself from life, to 

 keep in touch with reality, by leading the 

 youthful mind from the spectacles which are 

 most familiar to it to the conceptions of sci- 

 ence and from these to such of their appli- 

 cations as are most usual and most familiar. 

 To sum up, a rare talent for simply and 

 clearly expounding the most difficult theories 

 in such a way as to render them accessible to 

 the youngest minds; a wonderful power of 

 capturing the attention from all sides, of 

 breaking down the water-tight partition 

 which too often exists between the mind and 

 the heart, between science and life, between 

 theory and practice: such are the essential 

 characteristics which earned Fabre the title 

 of *' the incomparable populariser." 

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