But cannot society give us more?  Who doubts it?  Errors have been committed in this distribution of tasks and workers.  Time will diminish the number of them; with new lights a better division will arise; the elements of society go on toward perfection, like everything else.  The difficulty is to know how to adapt ourselves to the slow step of time, whose progress can never be forced on without danger.

August 14th, six o’clock A.M.—­My garret window rises upon the roof like a massive watch-tower.  The corners are covered by large sheets of lead, which run into the tiles; the successive action of cold and heat has made them rise, and so a crevice has been formed in an angle on the right side.  There a sparrow has built her nest.

I have followed the progress of this aerial habitation from the first day.  I have seen the bird successively bring the straw, moss, and wool designed for the construction of her abode; and I have admired the persevering skill she expended in this difficult work.  At first, my new neighbor spent her days in fluttering over the poplar in the garden, and in chirping along the gutters; a fine lady’s life seemed the only one to suit her.  Then all of a sudden, the necessity of preparing a shelter for her brood transformed our idler into a worker; she no longer gave herself either rest or relaxation.  I saw her always either flying, fetching, or carrying; neither rain nor sun stopped her.  A striking example of the power of necessity!  We are indebted to it not only for most of our talents, but for many of our virtues!

Is it not necessity that has given the people of less favored climates that constant activity which has placed them so quickly at the head of nations?  As they are deprived of most of the gifts of nature, they have supplied them by their industry; necessity has sharpened their understanding, endurance awakened their foresight.  While elsewhere man, warmed by an ever brilliant sun, and loaded with the bounties of the earth, was remaining poor, ignorant, and naked, in the midst of gifts he did not attempt to explore, here he was forced by necessity to wrest his food from the ground, to build habitations to defend himself from the intemperance of the weather, and to warm his body by clothing himself with the wool of animals.  Work makes him both more intelligent and more robust:  disciplined by it, he seems to mount higher on the ladder of creation, while those more favored by nature remain on the step nearest to the brutes.

I made these reflections while looking at the bird, whose instinct seemed to have become more acute since she had been occupied in work.  At last the nest was finished; she set up her household there, and I followed her through all the phases of her new existence.