This paper proposes to read Jules Michelet’s natural history as an ecological manifesto, attentive to the different animal and vegetable societies and subjectivities, and as an indictment of human societies, in particular those of the industrial era. By drawing attention to the human origin of the deterioration of the environment and of the disappearance of certain species, Michelet catches sight of the beginning of what we now call the Anthropocene. Criticising both human arrogance, which leads to the most considerable massacres, technological over-enthusiasm and the lack of moral imagination of the 19th century, he imagines an ecological society where all beings and species would be equal, a democracy of all living organisms, without hierarchy, freed from anthropocentrism and its effects.