@ great compiler of recipes, and to his commentators, medicine had taken possession of plants in the form of simples to such an extent that people only see in them what is not there to see—that is to say, the pretended virtues which it pleases three-quarters of mankind to attribute to them. They cannot understand that the vegetable organisation should merit some attention for its own sake; people who pass their lives in learnedly arranging a few shells mock at botany as a useless Study when it is not supplemented, as they say, by that of the properties; that is to say, when one does not abandon the observation of Nature, which does not lie and says nothing about all this, in order to yield oneself entirely to the authority of men, who are liars and who affirm many things which must be believed upon their word, founded itself most frequently upon the authority of another. Stop in a flowering plain and examine successively the flowers with which it glows; those who see you doing this, taking you for a quack~ salver, will ask for herbs to heal the itch of children, the scabies of men, or the glanders of horses.
This disgusting prejudice is destroyed in part in other countries, and especially in England, thanks to Linnzus, who has taken botany a little away from schools of pharmacy to return it to natural history and to economic use; but in France, where this study has least penetrated among any people of the world, people have remained so barbarous in this respect that a clever man from Paris, seeing in London a connois- SEVENTH PROMENADE seur’s garden, full of trees and rare plants, cried out, for all eulogy, “ There is a fine garden for an apothe- cary.” According to this view, the first apothecary was Adam, because it is not easy to imagine a garden better furnished with plants than that of Eden, These medicinal ideas are assuredly not able to render the study of botany agreeable; they spoil the glory of the fields, the glitter of flowers, dry up the freshness of the woods, render the verdure and the shades insipid and disgusting: all these charm- ing and gracious structures interest very little anyone who does wish to bray them in a mortar, and no one will go seeking garlands for shepherdesses among herbs for enemas.
None of this pharmacopeia sullied my rustic pictures; nothing was further from my mind than cordials and plasters. I have often thought, when looking closely upon the fields, the hedgerows, the woods and their numerous inhabitants, that the Vegetable Kingdom was a magazine of food given by Nature to men and beasts; but it never entered my mind to think of seeking drugs or remedies there. I do not see anything in these diverse products, which indicates for me such an usage; and Nature would have shown us the way to choose, if she had prescribed it for us, as she has done for vegetables. I even feel that the pleasure I take in walking about the groves would be poisoned by the sentiment of- human infirmities, if it allowed me to think of the REVERIES OF A SOLITARY fever, the Stone, the gout, and epilepsy. For the rest, I do not deny to plants the great virtues which are attributed to them; I only say that in supposing these virtues to be real, it is pure malice in sick men for them to continue to be so; because among all the maladies which men have given themselves, there is not a single one which twenty sorts of herbs do not radically heal.
These tendencies of the mind, which always bring back everything to our material interests, which make us seek for profit or remedies everywhere, and which would make us regard with indifference the whole of Nature if we were always well, have never been mine, I feel myself of a contrary opinion to other men con- cerning them: all which concerns my needs saddens and spoils my thoughts, and never have I found true charms in the pleasures of the mind save by losing entirely the interest of my body. Thus, even if I myself believed in medicine, and even if its remedies were agreeable, I should never find, in occupying myself with it, those delights which a pure and disinterested contemplation gives, and my soul could not exalt itself and soar above nature, so long as I felt it held in the chains of my body. Moreover, without ever having had any great confidence in medicine, I have had much in doGtors whom I efteemed, whom I loved, and to whom I allowed full authority in governing my body. Fifteen years of experience have made me wise at my own expense; I have returned to the SEVENTH PROMENADE law of my nature, and have thereby recovered my first health. If the doétors had no other reason for. complaint against me, who would be astonished at their hatred? I am the living proof of the vanity of their art and the uselessness of their attentions.
No, nothing personal, nothing which concerns the interest of my body, can truly occupy my soul. I do not meditate, do not dream ever more delightfully than when I forget myself. I feel ecstasies, inexpres- sible ravishments, in mingling myself with the system of beings, so to speak, in identifying myself with the whole of Nature. So long as men were my brothers, I made projects of earthly felicity; these projects being always relative to the whole, I could not be happy except in public felicity, and never has the idea of a particular happiness touched my heart except when I have seen my brothers seeking theirs in my misery. Then, not to hate them, it was necessary to fly them; then, taking refuge in the common mother, I have sought in her arms to withdraw myself from the attacks of her children; I have become solitary, or, as they say, unsociable and misanthropic, because the wildest solitude appears to me preferable to the society of the wicked, which only feeds upon betrayal and hatreds.
Compelled to abstain from thinking, for fear of think- ing of my sorrows despite myself: forced to restrain the remains of a Strong but languishing imagination, which so much distress might eventually terrify; forced to REVERIES OF A SOLITARY attempt to forget the men who weigh me down with ignominy and outrage for fear lest indignation should at last embitter me against them, I could not concentrate myself entirely in myself, because my expansive soul seeks, despite what I feel, to ex- tend its feelings and its existence over other beings, and I cannot, as once, throw myself head foremost into this vast ocean of Nature, because my faculties, enfeebled and relaxed, do not find objeéts sufficiently determined and fixed, sufficiently within my grasp, to hold firmly to them, and because I do not feel myself Strong enough to swim in the chaos of former ecstasies, My ideas are scarcely more than sensations, and the sphere of my understanding does not surpass the objects with which I am immediately surrounded, Flying from men, seeking solitude, not imagining any more, thinking even less, yet Still dowered with a lively temperament, which keeps me far from languish- ing and melancholy apathy, I began to interest myself in all that surrounded me, and by 2 very natural instin&t I gave the preference to the most agreeable objects. The Mineral Kingdom has nothing in itself either amiable or attra¢tive; its riches, enclosed in the breagt of the earth, seem to have been removed from the gaze of man in order not to tempt his cupidity; they are there like a reserve to serve one day as a supplement to the true wealth which is more within his grasp, and for which he loses taste according to the extent of his corruption. Then he is compelled SEVENTH PROMENADE SEVENTH PROMENADE to call in industry, to struggle, and to labour to alleviate his miseries; he searches the entrails of earth; he goes seeking to its centre, at the risk of his life and at the expense of his health, for imaginary goods in place of the real good which the earth offers of herself if he knew how to enjoy it. He flies from the sun and the day, which he is no longer worthy to see; he buries himself alive, and does well, not being worthy of living in the light of day, There quarries, pits, forges, furnaces, a battery of anvils, hammers, smoke and fire, succeed to the fair images of his rustic labours. The wan faces of the unhappy people who languish in the poisonous vapours of mines, of black forgemen, of hideous cyclops, are the spectacle which the working of the mine substitutes, in the heart of the earth for that of green fields and flowers, the azure sky, amorous shepherds and robust labourers upon its surface, It is easy, I admit, to go gathering sand and Stone, to fill one’s pockets and one’s study with it, and to give oneself the airs of a naturalig&t; but those who attach themselves and limit themselves to these sorts of colle€tions are, ordinarily, ignorant rich people who seek only for the pleasure of display. To profit by the Study of minerals, it is necessary to be a chemist and a physicist; it is necessary to make difficult and costly experiments, to work in laboratories, to ex- pend much money and time with charcoal, crucibles, furnaces, retorts, in Stifling smoke and vapours, always REVERIES OF A SOLITARY at the risk of one’s life, and often at the expense of one’s health. From all this dreary and fatiguing labour comes, ordinarily, much less knowledge than pride: and where is the mogt mediocre chemist who does not believe that he has penetrated into all the great opera~ tions of Nature because he has found, probably by chance, a few little combinations of the art?
The Animal Kingdom is more within our grasp and certainly deserves more to be Studied; but finally, has not this study also its difficulties, its embarrassments, its disgusts and its worries, above all for a solitary who has not, either in his play or his labour, any hope of assistance from anyone? How to observe, disseét, Study, understand the birds in the air, the fish in the water, the quadrupeds more swift than the wind, more Strong than men, and which are not more disposed to come and offer themselves to my researches than I am to run after them in order to make them submit by force? I might have recourse to snails, worms, flies, and I might pass my life in getting out of breath by running after butterflies, and impale poor inse€ts, disse&t mice when I could find them, or corpses of beasts when I found them dead. The study of animals is nothing without anatomy; it is by this that one learns to classify and to distinguish the genera, the species. To Study them for their behaviour, their characters, it is necessary to have birdcages, vivariums, menageries; it is necessary to conétrain them, in what~ ever manner that can be, to remain assembled near SEVENTH PROMENADE SEVENTH PROMENADE one; I have not the taste, nor the means to retain them in captivity, nor the necessary agility to follow them in their tracks when they are at liberty. I should be compelled then to Study them dead, to tear them up, to disarticu- late their bones, to grope at leisure in their palpitating entrails! What a frightful equipage is an anatomical amphitheatre!—stinking corpses, dripping and livid flesh, blood, disgusting entrails, frightful skeletons, pestilential vapours! It is not there, upon my word, that Jean Jacques will go seeking his amusements.
Brilliant flowers enamelling the meadows, fresh shade, rivulets, groves, verdure, come and purify my imagination defiled by all these hideous objects. My soul, dead to all vast questions, can no longer be moved except by sensible objeéts; I have only sensations, and it is through them alone that pain and pleasure can reach me here below. Attracted by the charming objeéts which surround me, I con- sider them, I contemplate them, I compare them, I learn finally to classify them, and there I am all of a sudden as much a botanist as any one needs to be who does not wish to Study Nature except to find perpetually new reasons for loving her!
I do not seek to instru€ myself; it is too late. However, I have never noticed that so much science ever contributed to the happiness of life; but I seek to give myself sweet and simple amusements, which I can enjoy without pain and which digtraé& me from my evils. It costs me nothing, nor need REVERIES OF A SOLITARY I take trouble in wandering carelessly from herb to herb, from plant to plant, in order to examine them, to compare their divers characters, to mark their simi- larities and their differences, in short to observe the vegetable organisation so as to follow the growth and the play of these living machines, to seek with success sometimes their general laws, the reason and the end of their diverse Stru€tures, and to yield myself to the charms of a grateful admiration for the Hand which allows me to enjoy all this.
Plants seem to have been sown with profusion upon the earth, like the Stars in heaven—to invite men, through the attraction of pleasure and of curiosity, to the Study of Nature, But Stars are placed far from us; it is necessary to make preliminary Studies, to have instru- ments, machines, very long ladders, to reach them and bring them within our reach. Plants are there naturally; they are born under our feet, and in our hands, so to speak; and if the smallness of their essential parts sometimes removes them from our sight, the instruments which will enable us to see them are much easier to use than those of aStronomy. Botany is the Study of an idle and unemployed solitary; a needle and a magnifying lens are all the apparatus that is necessary for him to have. He walks about, he wanders freely from one obje& to another; he makes a review of every flower with intere&t and curiosity; and as soon as he commences to grasp the laws of their Structure, he tastes a pleasure without Stain in observing them, as SEVENTH PROMENADE SEVENTH PROMENADE lively as if it co&t him much. There is in this leisurely occupation a charm which is only felt when the passions are calmed, but which alone suffices to render life happy and sweet; but as soon as there is mingled a motive of interest or of vanity, either to fill empty places or to make books, as soon as we only wish to learn in order to teach, and only gather specimens to become an author or professor, all this sweet charm evaporates, we see in the plants nothing but the instruments of our passions, we do not find any true pleasure in their study, we do not wish to know but to show that we know, and in the woods we are only in the theatre of the world, occupied with the care of getting our- selves admired; or rather, limiting ourselves to the botany of the Study and the garden at the most, instead of observing plants in Nature, we only occupy ourselves with systems and methods; an eternal matter for dispute, which does not make one plant the better known, and does not throw any true light upon natural history or the Vegetable Kingdom —hence these hatreds, these jealousies, which the competition for celebrity excites among botanical authors, as much and more than among other scholars. Distorting this amiable study, they transplant it into the mid& of cities and academies, where it degenerates no less than the exotic plants in the gardens of the curious.
Very different opinions have made for me of this REVERIES OF A SOLITARY Study a sort of passion which fills the void of all those which I have no longer. I mount the rocks, the mountains, I bury myself in the valleys, in the woods, to conceal myself, as far as is possible, from the remem- brance of men and the approaches of evilly-disposed people. It seems to me that under the shade of the woods I am forgotten, free, and peaceful, as if I had no more enemies, or as if the foliage of the woods would guard me from their approaches as it withdraws them from my memory; and I] imagine in my stupidity that, when I am not thinking of them, they do not think of me. I find so great a sweetness in this illusion, that I should yield myself entirely to it, if my situation, my weakness, and my needs would permit. The more the solitude in which I live is profound, the more I require some obje& to fill the void; and those which my imagination refuses or my memory rejects are supplemented by the spontaneous productions that the earth, not forced by men, offers to my eyes on all sides. The pleasure of going into a solitude to seek for new plants overlaps that of escaping from my persecutors; and having arrived in places where I do not see any trace of men, I breathe more at my ease, as in a retreat where their hatred does not pursue me.
I shall remember all my life a botanical excursion I made one day in the direction of the Robaila, a mountain belonging to Chief Justice Clerc. I was alone, I plunged into the ravines of the mountain; and from wood to wood, from rock to rock, I attained SEVENTH PROMENADE a spot so hidden that I have never seen a wilder scene in my life. Black pines mingled with pro- digious beeches, several of which had fallen from old age and interlaced themselves with each other, closed this retreat with impenetrable barriers; such intervals as were left in this sombre enclosure did not show beyond anything but rocks broken into peaks, and horrible precipices, which I dared not look at except by lying down flat on my Stomach. The eagle owl, the small owl and the buzzard made their cries heard in the chasms of the mountain; some small birds, rare but familiar, tempered, however, the horror of this solitude; there I found the toothed Heptaphyllos, the Cyclamen, the Nidus avis, the large Lacerpitium, and some other plants which charmed and amused me for a long time; but insensibly dominated by the Strong impression of objects, I forgot botany and plants, I seated myself upon cushions of Lycopodium and moss, and allowed myself to dream at ease, thinking that I was there in a refuge unknown to all the universe, and where persecutors would not unearth me. A senti- ment of pride mingled soon with this reverie. I com- pared myself to those great travellers who discover a deserted island, and I said to myself with com- plaisance: “ Without a doubt I am the first mortal who has penetrated here.” I looked on myself almost as another Columbus. While I prided myself on this idea, I heard not far off from me a certain clicking sound which I thought I recognised; 15 15 REVERIES OF A SOLITARY I ligtened; the same sound repeated itself, and was multiplied. Surprised and curious, I got up, and pierced through a mass of undergrowth on the side from which the sound came, and in a coomb, at twenty paces from the place where I believed I was the first to come, I found a stocking-factory!
T cannot express the confused and contradictory agitation which I felt in my heart at this discovery. My first sensation was a feeling of joy at finding myself amongst human beings when I had believed myself to be totally alone; but this sensation, more rapid than the lightning flash, soon gave place to a painful feeling, more lasting, as if not even in the caves of Alps had I been able to escape from the cruel hands of men determined to torment me. For I felt quite sure that there were perhaps not two men in this factory who were not initiated into the plot which the preacher Montmollin had headed against me, and which drew from further off its first motives. I hastened to cast off this sad notion, and I ended by laughing at myself, and at my puerile vanity, and at the comic manner in which I had been punished.
But, in fa&, who ever could have expeted to find a factory under a precipice! It is only in Switzerland that one finds this mixture of savage nature and human industry. The whole of Switzerland is nothing, so to speak, but a great city whose roads, longer and wider than those of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, are sown with forests, cut by mountains and whose SEVENTH PROMENADE houses, scattered and isolated, do not communicate with each other except through English gardens. I recall on this subje€& another botanising trip which Du Peyron, d’Escherny, Colonel de Pury, Justice Clerc, and myself had made some time before on the mountain of Chasseron, from the summit of which one can see seven lakes. We were told that there was only a single house on this mountain, and we should surely not have guessed the profession of the man who inhabited it, if it had not been added that he was a bookseller, and one who carried on his business successfully in this country. It seems to me that a single faét of that sort makes Switzerland better known than all the descriptions of travellers.
Here is another of the same kind, or almost so, which is equally characteristic of a very different people. During my sojourn at Grenoble I often made small botanical excursions outside the town with the Sieur Bouvier, a lawyer of that country; not that he knew or loved botany, but because having made himself my body-guard, he made it a law, as much as possible, not to quit my side so much as a Step. One day we were walking along the Isére in a place full of thorn- poplars. I saw on these shrubs ripe fruits; I had the curiosity to taste them, and finding in them a slight acidity very agreeable, I began to eat these berries to refresh myself: the Sieur Bouvier remained at my side without imitating me, and said nothing. One of his friends came up, who, seeing me nibble at these REVERIES OF A SOLITARY berries, said: “Sir, what are you doing there? Don’t you know that fruit is poisonous?”—“ Poison!” said I, greatly surprised.—“ Without a doubt,” he replied; “and everyone knows it so well that no one in the country attempts to taste it” I looked at the Sieur Bouvier, and said: “Why did you not tell me?”—“‘Ah, sir,” he replied, in a tone of respect, “T did not dare take such a liberty.” I started to laugh at this provincial humility, while discontinuing never- theless my little feast. I was persuaded, as I am Sill, that every natural produétion, agreeable to taste, cannot be harmful to the body, or at least is not so except by its excess. However, I admit that I paid some attention to myself for the rest of the day; but I got off with nothing worse than a little disquiet; I supped very well, slept better, and awakened in the morning in perfeé health, after having swallowed the day before fifteen or twenty berries of that terrible Hippophe, which poisons with the smallest dose, according to what everyone told me in Grenoble the next day. This adventure seemed to me so amusing that I never recall it without laughing at the singular discretion of the advocate Bouvier.
All my botany excursions, the different impressions of the locality of objects which have Struck me, the ideas which they have called up in me, the incidents which are mixed up with them—all this has left me impres- sions which are renewed by the aspect of plants gathered in the same places. I shall never see again those SEVENTH PROMENADE beautiful landscapes, rocks, forests, groves, mountains, the aspect of which has always touched my heart; but now that I can no more traverse those pleasant lands, I have only to open my herbal, and soon I am transported there. The fragments of plants which T have collected there suffice to recall to me all that magnificent speCtacle. This herbal is for me a journal of botanical excursions, which has made me recom- mence them with a new delight, and has produced the effect of the vision which formerly painted them to my eyes, It is the chain of accessory ideas which has attached me to botany. Itreassembles and recalls to my imagin- ation all the ideas which formerly gave it pleasure; the meadows, the waters, the woods, solitude, peace above all, and the rest one finds in the midé of all this, are retraced by it incessantly upon my memory. It makes me forget the persecutions of men, their hatred, their scorn, their outrages, and all the evils with which they have repaid my tender and sympathetic attachment for them. It transports me into peaceful habitations, in the midst of simple good people, such as those with whom I once lived. It recalls to me both my youth and my innocent pleasures; it makes me enjoy them over again, and often renders me happy Hill, in the mid& of the saddest lot that has ever befallen a human being.
EIGHTH PROMENADE N meditating upon the tendencies of my soul in all the situations of my life, I have been extremely Struck to see so little proportion between the diverse combinations of my destiny and the habitual feelings of well or evil being with which they have affected me. The diverse intervals of my short prosperities have allowed me scarcely any agreeable recollection of the intimate and permanent manner in which they have affe&ted me; and, on the other hand, in all the miseries of my life, I have felt myself constantly filled with tender feelings, touching and delicious, which, pouring a salutary balm upon the wounds of my broken heart, seem to convert the pain into pleasure, the charming remembrance of which alone comes back to me, free from the evils which I felt at the same time. It seems to me that I have tasted more sweetness of living, that I really lived more, when my feelings were com- pressed, so to speak, about my heart by destiny, and did not allow themselves to evaporate on all the exterior objeéts which men eSteem and which form the sole occu- pation of those people who are believed to be happy. When everything was in order about me, when I was content with all that surrounded me, and with the sphere in which I had to live, I filled it with my affeCtion.
EIGHTH PROMENADE My expansive soul stretched out towards other objects; and, always drawn far from myself by tastes of a thou- sand kinds, by pleasing attachments which incessantly occupied my heart, I forgot myself to some extent; I was entirely devoted to that which was Strange to me, and experienced in the continual agitation of my heart all the vicissitude of human things. This stormy life did not leave me either peace within or rest outside. Happy in appearance, I had not a sentiment which could endure the test of refleétion, and with which I could truly please myself. Never was I perfeétly content either with the world or myself. The tumult of the world deafened me, and solitude wearied me; I felt the need to change places unceasingly, and I was not happy anywhere. I was féted however, well wished, well received, caressed everywhere; I had not an enemy, not an ill-wisher, not an envious person; as no one sought but to oblige me, I often had the pleasure myself of obliging many people, and without wealth, with- out employment, without supporters, without great talents well known or well developed, I enjoyed the advantages attached to all this, and I did not see anyone in any state whose lot appeared preferable to mine. What was lacking, then, in order to be happy? Ido not know; but I know that I was not happy. What is lacking to me to-day to be the most unfortunate of mortals? Nothing that men could do on their part to make me so. Yet, in this deplorable state, 1 would not change my existence and my destiny REVERIES OF A SOLITARY with the most fortunate of them; and I still prefer to be myself in all my misery than to be any of these people in all their prosperity. Reduced to myself alone, I feed myself, it is true, on my own substance, but it is not exhausted. I suffice myself, although I chew a non-existent cud, so to speak, and though my wrecked imagination and my extinguished ideas do not furnish any food to my heart. My soul, offended, weighed down by my organs, weakens from day to day; and under the weight of these heavy masses lacks vigour to leap out from its old envelope, as in the past, Adversity forces us to recoil upon ourselves; and perhaps it is that which renders it most unendurable to the greater part of men. For myself, who find only faults to reproach myself with, I accuse my weakness, and I console myself; for never has pre~ meditated evil approached my heart.
However, unless I am Stupid, how can I contem- plate my situation for a moment, without seeing it as horrible as others have made it, and without perishing of sorrow or despair? Far from this, I, the moét sensitive of beings, contemplate it and am unmoved; and without a struggle, without making an effort, I see myself almost with indifference in a sate, the sight of which no other man perhaps could endure without horror, How have I come to this? For I was far from this peaceful State of mind at the fir& suspicion of the plot in which I had long been entangled without having the EIGHTH PROMENADE least perception of it. This new discovery completely upset me, Infamy and treason took me by surprise. What honest soul is prepared for this sort of suffering? It would be necessary to merit them in order to fore- see them. I fell into all the snares which were digged beneath my feet. Indignation, fury, delirium seized upon me; I lost my direction. My head was turned, and in the horrible darkness in which men have not ceased to keep me plunged, I perceived neither a gleam to guide me, nor a support, nor 2 foothold to stand firmly on and to resist the despair which cartied me away.
How could I live happy and tranquil in this frightful State? Yet lam Still in it and more deeply entangled than ever, and I have rediscovered calm and peace there, and live there happy and tranquil, and I laugh at the unbelievable pains which my persecutors con- tinually give themselves, while I remain in peace, occupied with flowers, with Stamens and childish things, and I do not even dream of them.
How has this change taken place? Naturally, insensibly, and without pain. The first surprise was frightful. I, who felt myself worthy of esteem and love, I who believed myself honoured, cherished, as I deserved to be, I saw myself suddenly travestied into a frightful monster, such as never existed. I saw a whole generation throw themselves entirely into this Grange delusion, without any explanation, without doubt, without shame, and without my being able to REVERIES OF A SOLITARY learn even the cause of this Strange revolution. I Struggled violently and I only succeeded in entangling myself worse. I tried to force my persecutors to explain themselves; they paid no attention. After tormenting myself for a long time without success, I was forced to take breath. However, I still hoped; I said: a blindness so Stupid, a prejudice so absurd, cannot reach the whole of the human race. There are men of sense who do not partake of this de- lirium; there are just men who detest baseness and treachery, Let me seek, I shall perhaps find a man at last; if I find him, they will be confounded. I have sought in vain; I have not found him. The league against me is universal, without exception, without change; and I am certain of ending my days in-this frightful proscription, without ever penetrating its mystery.
In this deplorable State, after long agonies, instead of the despair which seemingly should be finally my lot, I have rediscovered serenity, tranquillity, peace, even happiness, because each day of my life recalls to me with pleasure that of the day before, and that I do not desire a different one for the morrow.
Whence comes this difference? From a single thing: it is that I have learned how to bear the yoke of necessity without murmuring; it is that I was yet struggling to hold on to a thousand things, and that all these holds having successively escaped me, I was reduced to myself alone and finally regained my EIGHTH PROMENADE balance. Pressed on all sides, I remain in equilibrium, because I depend upon no one but myself.