For him the feathered race means just the bird, and the reptile family the snake, without other differences than those of magnitude. Ignorant of everything, he generalises to the utmost, simplifying in his inability to see the complex. Later on he will learn that the Sparrow is not the Bullfinch, that the Linnet is not the Greenfinch; he will particularise, and he will do so more and more daily as his faculty of observation is more widely exercised. At first he saw nothing but resemblances, now he sees differences, but not yet so clearly as to avoid incongruous comparisons and zoological solecisms like those which my gardener utters. [138] This chapter was to have taken the form of a letter addressed to Charles Darwin, the illustrious naturalist who now lies buried beside Newton in Westminster Abbey. It was my task to report to him the result of some experiments which he had suggested to me in the course of our correspondence: a very pleasant task, for, though facts, as I see them, disincline me to accept his theories, I have none the less the deepest veneration for his noble character and his scientific honesty. I was drafting my letter when the sad news reached me: Darwin was dead: [139] after searching the mighty question of origins, he was now grappling with the last and darkest problem of the hereafter. [140] This is what we need at the head of the seventh chapter of the second volume of the Souvenirs. Especially coming after what has gone before them, these few lines shed a more brilliant light upon Fabre’s secret attitude toward those very thinkers whose ideas he opposes most keenly than could any number of lectures. We have here the practical exemplification of that beautiful profession of faith inspired by Saint Augustine, which he has recorded elsewhere: “I wage war boldly upon those ideas that I believe untrue: but God preserve me from ever doing so upon those who maintain them.” [141] In his constant skirmishes against the theory of evolution, even in the set battles which he occasionally fights, whenever he writes Charles Darwin’s name he mentions it with evident accents of respect and sympathy, gladly referring to him as “the master,” “the illustrious master,” “the venerated master.”