Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1926-01-19
NEW BOOKS
AT RANDOM
THE HEAVENS. Jean-Henri Fabre.
i r Iipnincntt Co
/. G.. NJ.

THE HEAVENS. Jean-Henri Fabre.
j. B. Lippincott Co.
In an important sense, science, no
less than trade, demands the middle
man. Like commerce, science is
sourced in great bodies Of accumu-
lated fact. To produce Ineligible and
useful contacts between the general
public and this bulk of scientific
knowledge there is need of some
agency that corresponds roughly TO
the middleman who in trade operates
between producers and consumers.
The broad function of this new in
termediary office is SO to illuminate
the wide field of science as to bring
it out into the clear light of day; to
translate it into terms of plain
speech: to interpret it by way of its
countless and varied manifestations in
common daily life. Increasingly, day
by day, science comes closer to man,
directing and controlling every form
of industry. 1t enters into the sim
plest as we'll as into the most complex
of human activities. 1t is, on the
other hand, the great magician, pro-
ducing in the modern world hitherto
undreamed marVelS of achievement.
OF itself it is Il cryptic and hidden
thing. Its researches are highly spe-
cialized processes, open only to the
select few. It's language is technical.
quite unintelligible to the average.
The nature of it's countless applica-
tons TO daily life is the deepest of
secrets.
Were it not for the fact that here
and there the man of science is also
the poet, the dramatiSt, the story
teller the painter Of pictures, the
great world of natural law-brought
to hand by mans Unsuitable curiosity,
by his quenchleSS zeal for knowledge
would still be the fearsOme mystery
that it was to primitive man, that ii
even yet is to remote and untaught
tribes.
Among the poet scientists to whom
the general reader is in debt for
creating immediate and actual life out
| of the distractions Of learning-fOr
/ standing as inspired middleman be
tween the world of nature and that
of man himsef-is Jean-Henri F'abrc.
whose plants and flowers and bees and
bugs and ants, on his own tiny
French acreage, have yielded to him
the intimate secrets of their lives in
as free handed an exchange az Fabre
himself, on his side, has accorded
them. Indeed, the wonders of nature
that these living things reveal under
the mans lifelong devotion to them
are no more interesting and SlgniH-
cant than is FabreS revelation OF his
own spirit under the stimulus of their
long and loving friendship for him.
The man is like a child-busy finding
out world Of things, talking eagerly
and joyously about them.
In this book Jean Henri Fabre
takes the whole Of the heavens as
mis- companion. He approaches ii in
mood as spontaneous and enthu-
siastic as that marking his compan-
ionship with flower and bee.
a wider fling of adventure. this,
to be sure. A grand and imposing
panorama here. One not to be
cramped into any reduced scale by
rigid mathematical laws. Instead a
stupendous thing to be spread out
wide and free in its ordered ways.
\ paGeantry 10 which mans mind
and emotions are lifted here upon the
wings of the authors poetic imagi-
nation, as we'll as upon the line of
the scientists irrefutable deductions.
The big story reads with the clear.
swift motion OF some shining way
side tale. Yet it is the Yeritable
story of the nightly procession OF
the stars across the celestial field. ii
story which since time began has
opened out the soul Of poet and phi
losopher and searcher after the living
truth.
A great story whose power is that
of expanding man TO its measure
rather than that of combining it to
lesser dimensions than are inner
emily its own.