set by nature to the variations of animals have no existence in
society. When Buffon describes the lion, he dismisses the lioness with
a few phrases; but in society a wife is not always the female of the
male. There may be two perfectly dissimilar beings in one household.
The wife of a shopkeeper is sometimes worthy of a prince, and the wife
of a prince is often worthless compared with the wife of an artisan.
The social state has freaks which Nature does not allow herself; it is
nature _plus_ society. The description of social species would thus be
at least double that of animal species, merely in view of the two
sexes. Then, among animals the drama is limited; there is scarcely any
confusion; they turn and rend each other--that is all. Men, too, rend
each other; but their greater or less intelligence makes the struggle
far more complicated. Though some savants do not yet admit that the
animal nature flows into human nature through an immense tide of life,
the grocer certainly becomes a peer, and the noble sometimes sinks to
the lowest social grade. Again, Buffon found that life was extremely
simple among animals. Animals have little property, and neither arts
nor sciences; while man, by a law that has yet to be sought, has a
tendency to express his culture, his thoughts, and his life in
everything he appropriates to his use. Though Leuwenhoek, Swammerdam,
Spallanzani, Reaumur, Charles Bonnet, Muller, Haller and other patient
investigators have shown us how interesting are the habits of animals,
those of each kind, are, at least to our eyes, always and in every age
alike; whereas the dress, the manners, the speech, the dwelling of a
prince, a banker, an artist, a citizen, a priest, and a pauper are
absolutely unlike, and change with every phase of civilization.

Hence the work to be written needed a threefold form--men, women, and
things; that is to say, persons and the material expression of their
minds; man, in short, and life.