Fabre never attempts to solve the problems which he propounds a priori. Before thinking as a philosopher he observes as a scientist. His method is strictly experimental. “To observe the crude fact, to record it, then to ask what conclusion may be based upon this solid foundation, such is M. Fabre’s only rule; and if we oppose him with arguments he demands observations.” [159] “See first; you can argue afterwards.” “The precise facts are alone worthy of science. They cast premature theories into oblivion.” He always makes direct for the facts as Nature presents them. The books fail him or are not to his liking. Most of them dissect the insect; he wants it alive and acting. The best contain but the shadow of life; he prefers life itself. If he happens to quote them, it is usually to deplore their deficiencies or to correct their errors, or perhaps to do homage to a precursor or a rival, but not to borrow from them the history of an insect. This history he wishes to take from life, and he refuses to write except according to Nature and the data provided by the living subject. His narratives are always the result of strictly conscientious and objective inquiries: he records nothing that he has not seen, and if he has sometimes heightened his pictures by somewhat vivid hues, he has only given his style the relief and the colour of his subject. The danger of such scientific records when they are written by a man of letters and a poet like Fabre into the bargain is that there is a danger of their being written with more art than exactitude. And it is apparently this that causes so many scientists to distrust science that also claims to be literature. Fabre was not always immune from this species of discredit which the writer may so easily cast upon the scientist. But this unjust accusation was long ago withdrawn, and to-day all are agreed as to the absolute truthfulness of his portraits and his records. He has talent and imagination, it is true, but he has applied his talent to the sincere investigation of the facts, and his imagination only to achieve the more complete and faithful expression of the reality. A great thinker once uttered this profound saying: “Things are perceived in their truth only when they are perceived in their poetry.” This saying might serve as a motto for the whole of Fabre’s entomological work.