The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



marcation which divides it from intelligence, 

 and to demonstrate whether human reason 

 is an irreducible faculty or whether it is only 

 a degree higher on a scale whose base de- 

 scends into the depths of animality. More 

 generally he propounds the question of the 

 identity or the difference between the animal 

 mind and the human. He also seeks to 

 examine the problem of evolution; finally, 

 to discover whether geometry rules over all 

 things, and whether it tells us of a Universal 

 Geometer, or whether " the strictly beauti- 

 ful, the domain of reason, that is, order, is 

 the inevitable result of a blind mechanism." * 



And to tell the whole story in a few 

 words, the essential object, the general 

 impulse of this curious and powerful 

 m nd, which refuses to divide science from 

 philosophy, is to consider the insect, how it 

 lives; to note its actions and its movements; 

 to reach its inner from its outer life; its in- 

 ward impulse from its external action; and 

 then to climb upwards from the insect to 

 man and from man to God. 



Fabre never attempts to solve the prob- 

 lems which he propounds a priori. Before 

 thinking as a philosopher he observes as a 

 scientist. His method is strictly experimen- 



1F. Marguet, op. cit. 



314 



