the cares of man she is
brilliantly and pompously adorned! He himself is the chief ornament, the
most noble production; in multiplying himself he multiplies her most
precious gem. She seems to multiply herself with him, for his art brings
to light all that her bosom conceals. What treasures hitherto ignored!
What new riches! Flowers, fruits, perfected grains infinitely
multiplied; useful species of animals transported, propagated, endlessly
increased; harmful species destroyed, confined, banished; gold, and iron
more necessary than gold, drawn from the bowels of the earth; torrents
confined; rivers directed and restrained; the sea, submissive and
comprehended, crossed from one hemisphere to the other; the earth
everywhere accessible, everywhere living and fertile; in the valleys,
laughing prairies; in the plains, rich pastures or richer harvests; the
hills loaded with vines and fruits, their summits crowned by useful
trees and young forests; deserts changed to cities inhabited by a great
people, who, ceaselessly circulating, scatter themselves from centres to
extremities; frequent open roads and communications established
everywhere like so many witnesses of the force and union of society; a
thousand other monuments of power and glory: proving that man, master of
the world, has transformed it, renewed its whole surface, and that he
shares his empire with Nature.

However, he rules only by right of conquest, and enjoys rather than
possesses. He can only retain by ever-renewed efforts. If these cease,
everything languishes, changes, grows disordered, enters again into the
hands of Nature. She retakes her rights; effaces man's work; covers his
most sumptuous monuments with dust and moss; destroys them in time,
leaving him only the regret that he has lost by his own fault the
conquests of his ancestors. These periods during which man loses his
domain, ages of barbarism when everything perishes, are always prepared
by wars and arrive with famine and depopulation. Man, who can do nothing
except in numbers, and is only strong in union, only happy in peace, has
the madness to arm himself for his unhappiness and to fight for his own
ruin. Incited by insatiable greed, blinded by still more insatiable
ambition, he renounces the sentiments of humanity, turns all his forces
against himself, and seeking to destroy his fellow, does indeed destroy
himself. And after these days of blood and carnage, when the smoke of
glory has passed a