Fabre, Poet of Science

by Georges Victor Legros

so, after he had painfully laboured for twelve years in his well, he saw others, more cunning than he, come to his perch, who by dint of "stamping on his toe," succeeded in ousting him. Pending the appearance of artificial alizarine, which was presently to turn the whole madder industry upside down, these more sophisticated persons were able to benefit at leisure by the ingenious processes discovered by Fabre, so that the practical result of so much assiduity, so much patient research, was absolutely nil, and he found himself as poor as ever.

So faded his dream: and, if we except his domestic griefs, this was certainly the deepest and cruellest disappointment he had ever experienced.

Thenceforth he saw his salvation only in the writing of textbooks, which were at last to throw open the door of freedom. Already he had set to work, under the powerful stimulus of Duruy, preoccupied as he always was by his incessant desire for freedom. The first rudiments of his "Agricultural Chemistry," which sounded so fresh a note in the matter of teaching, had given an instance and a measure of his capabilities.

But he did not seriously devote himself to this project until after the industrial failure and the distressing miscarriage of his madder process; and not until he had been previously assured of the co-operation of Charles Delagrave, a young publisher, whose fortunate intervention contributed in no small degree to his deliverance. Confident in his vast powers of work, and divining his incomparable talent as popularizer, Delagrave felt that he could promise Fabre that he would never leave him without work; and this promise was all the more comforting, in that the University, despite his twenty-eight years of assiduous service, would not accord him the smallest pension.

Victor Duruy was the great restorer of education in France, from elementary and primary education, which should date, from his great ministry, the era of its deliverance, to the secondary education which he himself created in every part. He was also the real initiator of secular instruction in France, and the Third Republic has done little but resume his work, develop his ideas, and extend his programme. Finally, by instituting classes for adults, the evening classes which enabled workmen, peasants, bourgeois, and young women to fill the gaps in their education, he gave reality to the generous and fruitful idea that it is possible for all to divide life into two parts, one having for its object our material needs and our daily bread, and the other consecrated to the spiritual life and the delights of the Ideal.

At the same time he emancipated the young women of France, formerly under the exclusive tutelage of the clergy, and opened to them for the first time the golden gates of knowledge; an audacious innovation, and formidable withal, for it shrewdly touched the interests of the Church, struck a blow at her ever-increasing influence, and clashed with her consecrated privileges and age-long prejudices. [(4/25.)]

At Avignon Fabre was instructed to give his personal services. He gave them with all his heart; and it was then that he undertook, in the ancient Abbey of Saint-Martial, those famous free lectures which have remained celebrated in the memory of that generation. There, under the ancient Gothic vault, among the pupils of the primary Normal College, an eager crowd of listeners pressed to hear him; and among the most assiduous was Roumanille, the friend of Mistral, he who so exquisitely wove into his harmonies "the laughter of young maidens and the flowers of springtime." No one expounded a fact better than Fabre; no one explained it so fully and so clearly. No one could teach as he did, in a fashion so simple, so animated, so picturesque, and by methods so original.

He was indeed convinced that even in early childhood it was possible for both boys and girls to learn and to love many subjects which had hitherto never been proposed; and in particular that Natural History which to him was a book in which all the world might read, but that university methods had reduced it to a tedious and useless study in which the letter "killed the life."

He knew the secret of communicating his conviction, his profound faith, to his hearers: that sacred fire which animated him, that passion for all the creatures of nature.

These lectures took place in the evening, twice a week, alternately with the municipal lectures, to which Fabre brought no less application and ardour. In the intention of those who instituted them these latter were above all to be practical and scientific, dealing with science applied to agriculture, the arts, and industry.