It was only by belonging fully to himself that he could fruitfully exercise his talents. Necessary to every scholar, to every inquirer, to an open-air observer like Fabre liberty and leisure were more than usually essential; failing these he might never have accomplished his mission. How many lives are wasted, how many minds expended in sheer loss, in default of this sufficiency of leisure! How many scholars tied to the soil, how many physicians absorbed by an exigent practice, who perhaps had somewhat to say, have succeeded only in devising plans, for ever postponing their realization to some miraculous tomorrow, which always recedes! But we must not fall into illusions. How many might be tempted to imitate him, hoping to see some unknown talent awaken or expand within them, only to find themselves incapable of producing anything, and to consume themselves in an insurmountable and barren ennui! One must be rich in one's own nature, rich in will and in ability, to live apart and seek new paths in solitude, and it is not without reason that the majority prefer the turmoil of cities and the murmur of men to the silence of the country. The atmosphere of a great capital, for instance, is singularly conducive to work. Living constantly within the circle of light shed by the masters, within reach of the laboratories and the great libraries, we are less likely to go astray; we are stimulated by the contact of others; we profit by their advice and experience; and it is easy to borrow ideas if we lack them. Then there is the stimulant of self-respect, the sense of rivalry, the eager desire to advance, to distinguish oneself, to shine, to attract attention, to become in one's turn an arbiter, an object of wonder and envy, without which stimulus many would merely have existed, and would never have become what they are. On the other hand, a man needs an intrinsic radio-activity, and a real talent; and the aid, moreover, of exceptional circumstances, if fame is to consent to come to him and take him by the hand in the depths of some unknown Maillane, some obscure Sérignan; even, as in the case of Fabre, at the end only of a long life. But he, by a kind of fatality inherent in his nature, loved "to circumscribe himself," according to the happy expression of Rousseau; and he profited, rather than otherwise, by living entirely to himself; for he had long been, indeed he always was, the man who, at twenty-five, writing to his brother, had said, in speaking of his native countryside: "For a impassioned botanist, it is a delightful country, in which I could pass a month, two months, three months, a year even, alone, quite alone, with no other companion than the crows and the jays which gossip among the oak-trees; without being weary for a moment; there would be so many beautiful fungi, orange, rosy, and white, among the mosses, and so many flowers in the fields." (6/4.)