288 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
liiin who has suflfered much, and that he has passed twelve years — 
twelve mortal years in those hateful prisons of childhood, called 
schools and colleges. And that God, in placing in his heart from 
the tenderest aofe the uncontrollable love of birds, and of strolliner 
free, had evidently destined him to the high mission of cosmopol- 
itan hunter and explorer of the globe, and that henceforth he is 
bound to no gratitude toward a stepmother society that has bro- 
ken the development of his glorious vocation to make a writer of 
him in spite of himself. 
Many have written on beasts without sufficiently investigating 
their moral resemblance with man from the point of view of pas- 
sional analogy. 
The beast is the mirror of man as m.an is the mirror of God. 
Poets alone seem to have understood the true character of the 
beast, and have sometimes ascribed to it appropriate language. 
The author forewarns his public that the present treatise on the 
spirit of beasts is designed to continue the work of poetry, and to 
supply an enormous omission of science ; wherefore he preludes 
by some indispensable considerations on the origin of beasts and 
on passional analogy, as well as on the loves of plants and the sub- 
versive character of the last creation. 
One law sways the universe : love. Love is the divine, irre- 
sistible motive which draws the Earth toward the Sun, the lover 
to his mistress, the sap to the extremity of the boughs, the metal- 
lic molecule called insensible tow'^ard the molecule of the same 
nature. 
Whether this power be called love, attraction, or molecular affin- 
ity, the name changes nothing in the matter ; it is one — it is the 
universal principle of movement and of life ; it is the force coming 
from on high, to which all celestial beings yield with transport. 
Sages have called this power passion, from the Latin word Pati^ 
which means to suffer, to express the idea of the passiveness of 
man, and of his forced obedience to the superior law. I accept 
the expression because it is just. 
Passion, the universal principle of movement, is the eternal word 
by which God causes all His creations to understand His will and 
His law. Passion is the permanent revelation of the will of God. 
