Commonplace Wednesday 6

From The Passionate Observer by Jean-Henri Fabre

My conviction is that we can say things without using a barbarous vocabulary: lucidity is the sovereign politeness of the visitor. I do my best to achieve it.

Others again have reproached me with my style, which has not the solemnity, nay, better, the dryness of the schools. They fear lest a page that is read without fatigue should not always be the expression of the truth. Were I to take their word for it, we are profound only on condition of being obsure.

You rip up the animal and I study it alive; you turn it into an object of horror and pity, whereas I cause it to be loved; you labor in a torture-chamber and dissecting-room, I make my observations under the blue sky to the song of the Cicadas; you subject cell and protoplasm to chemical tests, I study instinct in its loftiest manifestations; you pry into death, I pry into life.

…the insect interests me much more when engaged in its work than when stuck on a pin in a cabinet.