The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



tending even to cannibalism; workers of 

 every class and manufacturers of every kind, 

 and, in a higher order of capacities, engineers 

 and surgeons, chemists and physicists, natu- 

 ralists and physiologists, topographers and 

 meteorologists, geometricians and logicians, 

 and many more, whose enumeration we will 

 leave to the reader. 



" Let us assemble facts in order to ob- 

 tain ideas," said Buffon. In this process may 

 be summed up the whole of the great Pro- 

 vencal naturalist's scientific work. If he 

 notes the least circumstances of the little 

 lives that unfold themselves before his eyes, 

 he does so not merely as an observer and an 

 artist who would not miss the smallest ele- 

 ment of knowledge or beauty, but also as a 

 philosopher who wishes to understand all 

 that he sees, and for that reason neglects 

 nothing. In entomology the smallest facts 

 are not only the most curious and pictur- 

 esque, they are often the most significant: 

 maxima in minimis. Those minute details 

 which are in danger of being regarded as 

 " puerilities are connected with the most 

 solemn questions which it is possible for man 

 to consider." 1 



1 Souvenirs, x., p. 92. 



332 



