Add the marvellous work of continual purification of everything dangerous and unclean, which some species accomplish. If this war and this work ceased but for one day, man would disappear from the earth.
This daily victory of the beloved son of light over death, over a murderous and tenebrous life, is the fitting theme of his song, of that hymn of joy with which the bird salutes each Dawn.
But, besides song, the bird has many other languages. Like man, he prattles, recites, converses. He and man are the only beings which have really a language. Man and the bird are the voice of the world.
The bird, with its gift of augury, is ever drawing near to man, who is ever inflicting injury upon him. He undoubtedly divines, and has a presentiment of, what he will one day become when he emerges from the barbarism in which he is now unhappily plunged.
He recognizes in him the creature unique, sanctified, and blessed, who ought to be the arbiter of all, who should accomplish the destiny of this globe by one supreme act of good—the union of all life and the reconciliation of all beings.
This pacific union must after a time be effected by a great art of education and initiation, which man begins to comprehend.
Page [64]. Training for flight (see also p. [84]).—Is it wrong for man, in his reveries, to beguile himself into a belief that he will one day be more than man, to attribute to himself wings? Dream or presentiment, it matters not.
It is certain that a power of flight such as the bird possesses is truly a sixth sense. It would be absurd to see in it only an auxiliary of touch. (See, among other works, Huber, Vol des oiseaux de proie, 1784).
The wing is so rapid and so infallible only because it is aided by a visual faculty which has not its equal in all creation.