Rousseau, Botany and Armchair Academia

Ruminations from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Seventh Walk):

Botany is a study for an idle and lazy solitary person: a point and a magnifying glass are all the apparatus he needs to observe plants. He walks about, wanders freely from one object to another, examines each flower with interest and curiosity, and as soon as he begins to grasp the laws of their structure, he enjoys, in observing them, a painless pleasure as intense as if it had cost him much pain. In this idle occupation there is a charm we feel only in the complete calm of the passions, but which then alone suffices to make life happy and sweet. But as soon as we mingle a motive of interest or vanity with it, either in order to obtain distinction or to write books, as soon as we want to learn only in order to instruct, as soon as we look for flowers only in order to become an author or professor, all this sweet charm vanishes. We no longer see in plants anything but the instruments of our passions. We no longer find any true pleasure in their study. We no longer want to know, but to show that we know. And in the woods, we are only on the world's stage, preoccupied with making ourselves admired. Or else, restricting ourselves to armchair and garden botany at the most, instead of observing vegetation in nature, we concern ourselves only with systems and methods--an eternal matter of dispute which does not lead to an additional plant being known and throws no true light on natural history and the vegetable realm. That is the source of the hatreds and the jealousies that rivalry for fame excites among other learned men. Altering the nature of this love study, they transplant it to the middle of cities and academies where it withers no less than exotic plants in the gardens of connoisseurs.