Contents

Introduction Savants

Prelude The Mask and the Veil

Part I The Great Chain of Being

1. Of the Linden Tree

2. A Course in Starvation

3. The Salt-Keeper’s Son

4. Vegetable Lambs and Barnacle Trees

5. Several Bridegrooms, Several Brides

6. The Greater Gift of Patience

7. Now in Blame, Now in Honor

8. The Seven-Headed Hydra of Hamburg

9. An Abridgment of the World Entire

10. Loathsome Harlotry

11. The Quarrel of the Universals

Part II This Prodigious Multitude

12. Goldfish for the Queen

13. Covering Myself in Dust and Ashes

14. The Only Prize Available

15. Durable and Even Eternal

16. Baobab-zu-zu

17. So Many New and Unknown Parts

18. Governed by Laws, Governed by Whim

19. A General Prototype

20. Breaking the Lens

21. My Cold Years

22. The Price of Time

Part III God’s Registrar

23. Germinal, Floreal, Thermidor, Messidor

24. Transformism and Catastrophism

26. Laughably Like Mine

27. The Rhymes of the Universe

28. Most Human of Humans

29. A Large Web or Rather a Network

Acknowledgments

For Your Exploration

Notes and Sources