of all the countries in the world (added the prefect) giphantia is the only one where nature still preserves her primitive vigor. she is incessantly labouring to increase the numerous tribes of vegetables and animals, and to produce new kinds. she organizes all with admirable skill; but she does not always succeed, in rendering them perpetual. the mechanism of propagation is the master-piece of her wisdom: sometimes she fails and her productions return for ever into nothing. we cherish, with our utmost care, such as are sufficiently organized to produce their 17kind; and then plant them out in the earth.
a naturalist wonders sometimes to find plants that had never been noticed before: it is because we had just then supplied the earth with them, of which he had not the least suspicion.
sometimes also these exotics not meeting with a proper climate, decay by degrees and the species is lost. such are those productions which are mention’d by the antients and which the moderns complain are no where to be found.
such a plant still subsists but has long droop’d, and lost its qualities, and deceives the physician who is daily disappointed. the art is blam’d; it is 18not known that the fault is in nature.
i have now a collection of new simples of the greatest virtue; and i should have imparted them to mankind before now, had there not been strong reasons to induce me to delay it.
for instance, i have a sovereign plant to fix the human mind, and which would give steadiness even to a babylonian: but for these fifty years i have been diligently observing babylon, and have not found one single moment, wherein the inclinations, customs, and manners have been worth fixing.
i have another plant, most excellent for checking the too lively sallies of the spirit of invention: but thou knowest 19how rare these sallies are now-a-days: never was invention at a lower ebb. one would think that every thing has been said, and that nothing more remained but to adapt things to the taste and mode of the age.
i have a root which would never fail to allay that sourness of the learned who censure one another: but i observe that without their abusing and railing at each other, no man would concern himself about their disputes. it is a sort of pleasure to see them bring themselves as well as learning into contempt. i leave the malignity of the readers to divert themselves with the malignity of the authors.
moreover, do not imagine that nature sleeps in any part of the earth; she 20strenuously labours even in those infinitely minute spaces where the eye cannot reach. at giphantia, she disposes matter on extraordinary plans, and perpetually tends to produce something new: she every where incessantly repeats her labours, still endeavouring to carry her works to a degree of perfection which she never attains. these flowers which so agreeably strike the eye, she strives to render still more beautiful. these animals, which to you seem so dextrous, she endeavours to render still more so. in short, man that to you appears so superior to the rest, she tries to render still more perfect; but in this her endeavours prove the most unsuccessful.
indeed, one would think that mankind do all in their power to remain 21in a much lower rank than nature designs them! and they seldom fail to turn to their hurt the best dispositions she gives them for their good. on the babylonians, for instance, nature has bestowed an inexhaustible fund of agreeableness. her aim was manifestly to form a people the most aimable. they were made to enliven reason, to root out the thorns that spring from the approaches of the sciences, to soften the austerity of wisdom, and, if possible, to adorn virtue. thou knowest it: her favours which should have been diffused on these objects have been diverted from their destination; and frivolousness and debauchery have been cloathed with them. in the hands of the babylonians, vice loses all her deformity. behold in their manners, their discourses, their writings, with what discretion vice unveils herself, with 22what art she ingages, with what address she insinuates: you have not yet thought of her, and she is seated in your heart. even he who, by his function, lifts up his voice against her, dares not paint her in her true colours. in a word, no where does vice appear less vice than at babylon. even to the very names, all things are changed, all things are softened. the sincere and honest are now-a-days your modish men who are outwardly all complaisance but inwardly full of corruption: good company are not the virtuous but those who excel in palliating vice. the man of fortitude is not he that bears the shocks of fortune unmoved, but he that braves providence. bare-faced irreligion is now styled free-thinking, blasphemy is called boldness of speech, and the most shameful excesses, gallantry. thus it is that with what 23they might become a pattern to all nations, the babylonians (to say no worse) are grown libertines of the most seducing and most dangerous kind.
