826 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
even how many seconds there are in a century ; but I should, per- 
haps, look in vain for a single zoologist capable of informing me 
of the passional title or the genealogy of the most common animal 
— of the duck, for example. 
Yes, should I even address M. Flourens himself, whose immor- 
tal researches upon this interesting volatile have opened to him the 
doors of the French Academy — should I ask of M. Flourens the 
passional title of the duck, M. le docteur Flourens, instead of an- 
swering me that the duck is the emblem of the bewdtched hus- 
band, would probably turn his back on me. Should I question 
the honorable member on the genealogy of the same creature, he 
might reply that the duck has come into the world just so, and 
that he of the Institute is not the cause of it. 
I know very well that they at the Institute are not the cause 
that the male of this species w’^ears a frizzled feather on his tail ; 
but say wdiat you will of it, this is no answer. The learned an- 
cients were certainly not as strong as the moderns in the art of 
tinging the tibias of ducks with red, and yet I am very sure that 
they would not have remained dumb before the above questions. 
For ancient wisdom had divined the principle of solidarity, which 
connects all the beings of nature with each other; and the chil- 
dren of Greece, in learning the histor}’^ of men, learned at the same 
time that of beasts and flowers, in which their seductive mythol- 
ogy had incarnated all the types of human passion. A noble and 
touching religion, do you know it, that of universal solidarity, that 
holds the doors of the imagination wide open to all poetic devel- 
opments, and makes the heart compassionate toward all the un- 
fortunate ! Oh ! we also shall one day return to this sublime Pan- 
theism — one day when the docti ines of compression and of terror 
shall have disappeared from our books, and when we shall only be- 
lieve in the good God.^ 
^ While the Bibles of nations give but corrupt, partial, and shadowy re- 
fractions of the Divine word as it could manifest itself through the narrow, 
prejudiced intellects of a few blind teachers of the blind during periods of 
subversion, sifted still farther through the wire-woven policies of govern- 
ment and morals in each successive generation ; the living words of Na- 
ture ; plant, and beast, and indigenous human character ever reflect the 
