BUFFON'S METHOD--THE IRONICAL CHARACTER OF HIS WORK.
Buffon's idea of a method amounts almost to the denial of the
possibility of method at all. "The true method," he writes, "is the
complete description and exact history of each particular object,"[39]
and later on he asks, "is it not more simple, more natural and more true
to call an ass an ass, and a cat a cat, than to say, without knowing
why, that an ass is a horse, and a cat a lynx."[40]
He admits such divisions as between animals and vegetables, or between
vegetables and minerals, but that done, he rejects all others that can
be founded on the nature of things themselves. He concludes that one who
could see things in their entirety and without preconceived opinions,
would classify animals according to the relations in which he found
himself standing towards them:--
"Those which he finds most necessary and useful to him will occupy the
first rank; thus he will give the precedence among the lower animals to
the dog and the horse; he will next concern himself with those which
without being domesticated, nevertheless occupy the same country and
climate as himself, as for example stags, hares, and all wild animals;
nor will it be till after he has familiarized himself with all these
that curiosity will lead him to inquire what inhabitants there may be in
foreign climates, such as elephants, dromedaries, &c. The same will hold
good for fishes, birds, insects, shells, and for all nature's other
productions; he will study them in proportion to the profit which he can
draw from them; he will consider them in that order in which they enter
into his daily life; he will arrange them in his head according to this
order, which is in fact that in which he has become acquainted with
them, and in which it concerns him to think about them. This order--the
most natural of all--is the one which I have thought it well to follow
in this volume. My classification has no more mystery in it than the
reader has just seen ... it is preferable to the most profound and
ingenious that can be conceived, for there is none of all the
classifications which ever have been made or ever can be, which has not
more of an arbitrary character than this has. Take it for all in all,"
he concludes, "it is more easy, more agreeable, and more useful, to
consider things in their relation to ourselves than from any other
standpoint."[41]
"Has it not a better effect not only in a treatise on natural history,
but in a picture or any work of art to arrange objects in the order and
place in which they are commonly found, than to force them into
association in virtue of some theory of our own? Is it not better to let
the dog which has toes, come after the horse which has a single hoof,
in the same way as we see him follow the horse in daily life, than to
follow up the horse by the zebra, an animal which is little known to us,
and which has no other connection with the horse than the fact that it
has a single hoof?"[42]
Can we suppose that Buffon really saw no more connection than this? The
writer whom we shall presently find[43] declining to admit any essential
difference between the skeletons of man and of the horse, can here see
no resemblance between the zebra and the horse, except that they each
have a single hoof. Is he to be taken at his word?
It is perhaps necessary to tell the reader that Buffon carried the
foregoing scheme into practice as nearly as he could in the first
fifteen volumes of his 'Natural History.' He begins with man--and then
goes on to the horse, the ass, the cow, sheep, goat, pig, dog, &c. One
would be glad to know whether he found it always more easy to decide in
what order of familiarity this or that animal would stand to the
majority of his readers than other classifiers have found it to know
whether an individual more resembles one species or another; probably he
never gave the matter a thought after he had gone through the first
dozen most familiar animals, but settled generally down into a
classification which becomes more and more specific--as when he treats
of the apes and monkeys--till he reaches the birds, when he openly
abandons his original idea, in deference, as he says, to the opinion of
"le peuple des naturalistes."
Perhaps the key to this piece of apparent extravagance is to be found
in the word "mysterieuse."[44] Buffon wished to raise a standing protest
against mystery mongering. Or perhaps more probably, he wished at once
"to turn to animals and plants under domestication," so as to insist
early on the main object of his work--the plasticity of animal forms.
I am inclined to think that a vein of irony pervades the whole, or much
the greater part of Buffon's work, and that he intended to convey, one
meaning to one set of readers, and another to another; indeed, it is
often impossible to believe that he is not writing between his lines for
the discerning, what the undiscerning were not intended to see. It must
be remembered that his 'Natural History' has two sides,--a scientific
and a popular one. May we not imagine that Buffon would be unwilling to
debar himself from speaking to those who could understand him, and yet
would wish like Handel and Shakespeare to address the many, as well as
the few? But the only manner in which these seemingly irreconcilable
ends could be attained, would be by the use of language which should be
self-adjusting to the capacity of the reader. So keen an observer can
hardly have been blind to the signs of the times which were already
close at hand. Free-thinker though he was, he was also a powerful member
of the aristocracy, and little likely to demean himself--for so he would
doubtless hold it--by playing the part of Voltaire or Rousseau. He would
help those who could see to see still further, but he would not dazzle
eyes that were yet imperfect with a light brighter than they could
stand. He would therefore impose upon people, as much as he thought was
for their good; but, on the other hand, he would not allow inferior men
to mystify them.
"In the private character of Buffon," says Sir William Jardine in a
characteristic passage, "we regret there is not much to praise; his
disposition was kind and benevolent, and he was generally beloved by his
inferiors, followers, and dependents, which were numerous over his
extensive property; he was strictly honourable, and was an affectionate
parent. In early youth he had entered into the pleasures and
dissipations of life, and licentious habits seem to have been retained
to the end. But the great blemish in such a mind was his declared
infidelity; it presents one of those exceptions among the persons who
have been devoted to the study of nature; and it is not easy to imagine
a mind apparently with such powers, scarcely acknowledging a Creator,
and when noticed, only by an arraignment for what appeared wanting or
defective in his great works. So openly, indeed, was the freedom of his
religious opinions expressed, that the indignation of the Sorbonne was
provoked. He had to enter into an explanation which he in some way
rendered satisfactory; and while he afterwards attended to the outward
ordinances of religion, he considered them as a system of faith for the
multitude, and regarded those most impolitic who most opposed them."[45]
This is partly correct and partly not. Buffon was a free-thinker, and as
I have sufficiently explained, a decided opponent of the doctrine that
rudimentary and therefore useless organs were designed by a Creator in
order to serve some useful end throughout all time to the creature in
which they are found.
He was not, surely, to hide the magnificent conceptions which he had
been the first to grasp, from those who were worthy to receive them; on
the other hand he would not tell the uninstructed what they would
interpret as a license to do whatever they pleased, inasmuch as there
was no God. What he did was to point so irresistibly in the right
direction, that a reader of any intelligence should be in no doubt as to
the road he ought to take, and then to contradict himself so flatly as
to reassure those who would be shocked by a truth for which they were
not yet ready. If I am right in the view which I have taken of Buffon's
work, it is not easy to see how he could have formed a finer scheme, nor
have carried it out more finely.
I should, however, warn the reader to be on his guard against accepting
my view too hastily. So far as I know I stand alone in taking it.
Neither Dr. Darwin nor Flourens, nor Isidore Geoffroy, nor Mr. Charles
Darwin see any subrisive humour in Buffon's pages; but it must be
remembered that Flourens was a strong opponent of mutability, and
probably paid but little heed to what Buffon said on this question;
Isidore Geoffroy is not a safe guide, as will appear presently; Mr.
Charles Darwin seems to have adopted the one half of Isidore Geoffroy's
conclusions without verifying either; and Dr. Erasmus Darwin, who has no
small share of a very pleasant conscious humour, yet sometimes rises to
such heights of unconscious humour, that Buffon's puny labour may well
have been invisible to him. Dr. Darwin wrote a great deal of poetry,
some of which was about the common pump. Miss Seward tells us, as we
shall see later on, that he "illustrated this familiar object with a
picture of Maternal Beauty administering sustenance to her infant."
Buffon could not have done anything like this.
Buffon never, then, "arraigned the Creator for what was wanting or
defective in His works;" on the contrary, whenever he has led up by an
irresistible chain of reasoning to conclusions which should make men
recast their ideas concerning the Deity, he invariably retreats under
cover of an appeal to revelation. Naturally enough, the Sorbonne
objected to an artifice which even Buffon could not conceal completely.
They did not like being undermined; like Buffon himself, they preferred
imposing upon the people, to seeing others do so. Buffon made his peace
with the Sorbonne immediately, and, perhaps, from that time forward,
contradicted himself a little more impudently than heretofore.
It is probably for the reasons above suggested that Buffon did not
propound a connected scheme of evolution or descent with modification,
but scattered his theory in fragments up and down his work in the
prefatory remarks with which he introduces the more striking animals or
classes of animals. He never wastes evolutionary matter in the preface
to an uninteresting animal; and the more interesting the animal, the
more evolution will there be commonly found. When he comes to describe
the animal more familiarly--and he generally begins a fresh chapter or
half chapter when he does so--he writes no more about evolution, but
gives an admirable description, which no one can fail to enjoy, and
which I cannot think is nearly so inaccurate as is commonly supposed.
These descriptions are the parts which Buffon intended for the general
reader, expecting, doubtless, and desiring that such a reader should
skip the dry parts he had been addressing to the more studious. It is
true the descriptions are written _ad captandum_, as are all great
works, but they succeed in captivating, having been composed with all
the pains a man of genius and of great perseverance could bestow upon
them. If I am not mistaken, he looked to these parts of his work to keep
the whole alive till the time should come when the philosophical side of
his writings should be understood and appreciated.
Thus the goat breeds with the sheep, and may therefore serve as the text
for a dissertation on hybridism, which is accordingly given in the
preface to this animal. The presence of rudimentary organs under a pig's
hoof suggests an attack upon the doctrine of final causes in so far as
it is pretended that every part of every animal or plant was specially
designed with a view to the wants of the animal or plant itself once and
for ever throughout all time. The dog with his great variety of breeds
gives an opportunity for an article on the formation of breeds and
sub-breeds by man's artificial selection. The cat is not honoured with
any philosophical reflections, and comes in for nothing but abuse. The
hare suggests the rabbit, and the rabbit is a rapid breeder, although
the hare is an unusually slow one; but this is near enough, so the hare
shall serve us for the theme of a discourse on the geometrical ratio of
increase and the balance of power which may be observed in nature. When
we come to the carnivora, additional reflections follow upon the
necessity for death, and even for violent death; this leads to the
question whether the creatures that are killed suffer pain; here, then,
will be the proper place for considering the sensations of animals
generally.
Perhaps the most pregnant passage concerning evolution is to be found in
the preface to the ass, which is so near the beginning of the work as to
be only the second animal of which Buffon treats after having described
man himself. It points strongly in the direction of his having believed
all animal forms to have been descended from one single common ancestral
type. Buffon did not probably choose to take his very first opportunity
in order to insist upon matter that should point in this direction; but
the considerations were too important to be deferred long, and are
accordingly put forward under cover of the ass, his second animal.
When we consider the force with which Buffon's conclusion is led up to;
the obviousness of the conclusion itself when the premises are once
admitted; the impossibility that such a conclusion should be again lost
sight of if the reasonableness of its being drawn had been once
admitted; the position in his scheme which is assigned to it by its
propounder; the persistency with which he demonstrates during forty
years thereafter that the premises, which he has declared should
establish the conclusion in question, are indisputable;--when we
consider, too, that we are dealing with a man of unquestionable genius,
and that the times and circumstances of his life were such as would go
far to explain reserve and irony--is it, I would ask, reasonable to
suppose that Buffon did not, in his own mind, and from the first, draw
the inference to which he leads his reader, merely because from time to
time he tells the reader, with a shrug of the shoulders, that _he_ draws
no inferences opposed to the Book of Genesis? Is it not more likely that
Buffon intended his reader to draw his inferences for himself, and
perhaps to value them all the more highly on that account?
The passage to which I am alluding is as follows:--
"If from the boundless variety which animated nature presents to us, we
choose the body of some animal or even that of man himself to serve as a
model with which to compare the bodies of other organized beings, we
shall find that though all these beings have an individuality of their
own, and are distinguished from one another by differences of which the
gradations are infinitely subtle, there exists at the same time a
primitive and general design which we can follow for a long way, and the
departures from which (_degenerations_) are far more gentle than those
from mere outward resemblance. For not to mention organs of digestion,
circulation, and generation, which are common to all animals, and
without which the animal would cease to be an animal, and could neither
continue to exist nor reproduce itself--there is none the less even in
those very parts which constitute the main difference in outward
appearance, a striking resemblance which carries with it irresistibly
the idea of a single pattern after which all would appear to have been
conceived. The horse, for example--what can at first sight seem more
unlike mankind? Yet when we compare man and horse point by point and
detail by detail, is not our wonder excited rather by the points of
resemblance than of difference that are to be found between them? Take
the skeleton of a man; bend forward the bones in the region of the
pelvis, shorten the thigh bones, and those of the leg and arm, lengthen
those of the feet and hands, run the joints together, lengthen the jaws,
and shorten the frontal bone, finally, lengthen the spine, and the
skeleton will now be that of a man no longer, but will have become that
of a horse--for it is easy to imagine that in lengthening the spine and
the jaws we shall at the same time have increased the number of the
vertebrae, ribs, and teeth. It is but in the number of these bones, which
may be considered accessory, and by the lengthening, shortening, or mode
of attachment of others, that the skeleton of the horse differs from
that of the human body.... We find ribs in man, in all the quadrupeds,
in birds, in fishes, and we may find traces of them as far down as the
turtle, in which they seem still to be sketched out by means of furrows
that are to be found beneath the shell. Let it be remembered that the
foot of the horse, which seems so different from a man's hand, is,
nevertheless, as M. Daubenton has pointed out, composed of the same
bones, and that we have at the end of each of our fingers a nail
corresponding to the hoof of a horse's foot. Judge, then, whether this
hidden resemblance is not more marvellous than any outward
differences--whether this constancy to a single plan of structure which
we may follow from man to the quadrupeds, from the quadrupeds to the
cetacea, from the cetacea to birds, from birds to reptiles, from
reptiles to fishes--in which all such essential parts as heart,
intestines, spine, are invariably found--whether, I say, this does not
seem to indicate that the Creator when He made them would use but a
single main idea, though at the same time varying it in every
conceivable way, so that man might admire equally the magnificence of
the execution and the simplicity of the design.[46]
"If we regard the matter thus, not only the ass and the horse, _but even
man himself, the apes, the quadrupeds, and all animals might be regarded
but as forming members of one and the same family_. But are we to
conclude that within this vast family which the Creator has called into
existence out of nothing, there are other and smaller families,
projected as it were by Nature, and brought forth by her in the natural
course of events and after a long time, of which some contain but two
members, as the ass and the horse, others many members, as the weasel,
martin, stoat, ferret, &c., and that on the same principle there are
families of vegetables, containing ten, twenty, or thirty plants, as the
case may be? If such families had any real existence they could have
been formed only by crossing, by the accumulation of successive
variations (_variation successive_), and by degeneration from an
original type; but if we once admit that there are families of plants
and animals, so that the ass may be of the family of the horse, and
that the one may only differ from the other through degeneration from a
common ancestor, we might be driven to admit that the ape is of the
family of man, that he is but a degenerate man, and that he and man have
had a common ancestor, even as the ass and horse have had. It would
follow then that every family, whether animal or vegetable, had sprung
from a single stock, which after a succession of generations, had become
higher in the case of some of its descendants and lower in that of
others."
What inference could be more aptly drawn? But it was not one which
Buffon was going to put before the general public. He had said enough
for the discerning, and continues with what is intended to make the
conclusions they should draw even plainer to them, while it conceals
them still more carefully from the general reader.
"The naturalists who are so ready to establish families among animals
and vegetables, do not seem to have sufficiently considered the
consequences which should follow from their premises, for these would
limit direct creation to as small a number of forms as anyone might
think fit (reduisoient le produit immediat de la creation, a un nombre
d'individus aussi petit que l'on voudroit). _For if it were once shown
that we had right grounds for establishing these families; if the point
were once gained that among animals and vegetables there had been, I do
not say several species, but even a single one, which had been produced
in the course of direct descent from another species; if for example it
could be once shown that the ass was but a degeneration from the
horse--then there is no further limit to be set to the power of nature,
and we should not be wrong in supposing that with sufficient time she
could have evolved all other organized forms from one primordial type
(et l'on n'auroit pas tort de supposer, que d'un seul etre elle a su
tirer avec le temps tous les autres etres organises)._"
Buffon now felt that he had sailed as near the wind as was desirable.
His next sentence is as follows:--
"But no! It is certain _from revelation_ that all animals have alike
been favoured with the grace of an act of direct creation, and that the
first pair of every species issued full formed from the hands of the
Creator."[47]
This might be taken as _bona fide_, if it had been written by Bonnet,
but it is impossible to accept it from Buffon. It is only those who
judge him at second hand, or by isolated passages, who can hold that he
failed to see the consequences of his own premises. No one could have
seen more clearly, nor have said more lucidly, what should suffice to
show a sympathetic reader the conclusion he ought to come to. Even when
ironical, his irony is not the ill-natured irony of one who is merely
amusing himself at other people's expense, but the serious and
legitimate irony of one who must either limit the circle of those to
whom he appeals, or must know how to make the same language appeal
differently to the different capacities of his readers, and who trusts
to the good sense of the discerning to understand the difficulty of his
position, and make due allowance for it.
The compromise which he thought fit to put before the public was that
"Each species has a type of which the principal features are engraved in
indelible and eternally permanent characters, while all accessory
touches vary."[48] It would be satisfactory to know where an accessory
touch is supposed to begin and end.
And again:--
"The essential characteristics of every animal have been conserved
without alteration in their most important parts.... The individuals of
each genus still represent the same forms as they did in the earliest
ages, especially in the case of the larger animals" (so that the generic
forms even of the larger animals prove not to be the same, but only
'especially' the same as in the earliest ages).[49]
This transparently illogical position is maintained ostensibly from
first to last, much in the same spirit as in the two foregoing passages,
written at intervals of thirteen years. But they are to be read by the
light of the earlier one--placed as a lantern to the wary upon the
threshold of his work in 1753--to the effect that a single, well
substantiated case of degeneration would make it conceivable that all
living beings were descended from a single common ancestor. If after
having led up to this by a remorseless logic, a man is found
five-and-twenty years later still substantiating cases of degeneration,
as he has been substantiating them unceasingly in thirty quartos during
the whole interval, there should be little question how seriously we
are to take him when he wishes us to stop short of the conclusions he
has told us we ought to draw from the premises that he has made it the
business of his life to establish--especially when we know that he has a
Sorbonne to keep a sharp eye upon him.
I believe that if the reader will bear in mind the twofold, serious and
ironical, character of Buffon's work he will understand it, and feel an
admiration for it which will grow continually greater and greater the
more he studies it, otherwise he will miss the whole point.
Buffon on one of the early pages of his first volume protested against
the introduction of either "_plaisanterie_" or "_equivoque_" (p. 25)
into a serious work. But I have observed that there is an unconscious
irony in most disclaimers of this nature. When a writer begins by saying
that he has "an ineradicable tendency to make things clear," we may
infer that we are going to be puzzled; so when he shows that he is
haunted by a sense of the impropriety of allowing humour to intrude into
his work, we may hope to be amused as well as interested. As showing how
far the objection to humour which he expressed upon his twenty-fifth
page succeeded in carrying him safely over his twenty-sixth and
twenty-seventh, I will quote the following, which begins on page
twenty-six:--
"Aldrovandus is the most learned and laborious of all naturalists; after
sixty years of work he has left an immense number of volumes behind him,
which have been printed at various times, the greater number of them
after his death. It would be possible to reduce them to a tenth part if
we could rid them of all useless and foreign matter, and of a prolixity
which I find almost overwhelming; were this only done, his books should
be regarded as among the best we have on the subject of natural history
in its entirety. The plan of his work is good, his classification
distinguished for its good sense, his dividing lines well marked, his
descriptions sufficiently accurate--monotonous it is true, but
painstaking; the historical part of his work is less good; it is often
confused and fabulous, and the author shows too manifestly the credulous
tendencies of his mind.
"While going over his work, I have been struck with that defect, or
rather excess, which we find in almost all the books of a hundred or a
couple of hundred years ago, and which prevails still among the
Germans--I mean with that quantity of useless erudition with which they
intentionally swell out their works, and the result of which is that
their subject is overlaid with a mass of extraneous matter on which they
enlarge with great complacency, but with no consideration whatever for
their readers. They seem, in fact, to have forgotten what they have to
say in their endeavour to tell us what has been said by other people.
"I picture to myself a man like Aldrovandus, after he has once conceived
the design of writing a complete natural history. I see him in his
library reading, one after the other, ancients, moderns, philosophers,
theologians, jurisconsults, historians, travellers, poets, and reading
with no other end than with that of catching at all words and phrases
which can be forced from far or near into some kind of relation with his
subject. I see him copying all these passages, or getting them copied
for him, and arranging them in alphabetical order. He fills many
portfolios with all manner of notes, often taken without either
discrimination or research, and at last sets himself to write with a
resolve that not one of all these notes shall remain unused. The result
is that when he comes to his account of the cow or of the hen, he will
tell us all that has ever yet been said about cows or hens; all that the
ancients ever thought about them; all that has ever been imagined
concerning their virtues, characters, and courage; every purpose to
which they have ever yet been put; every story of every old woman that
he can lay hold of; all the miracles which certain religions have
ascribed to them; all the superstitions they have given rise to; all the
metaphors and allegories which poets have drawn from them; the
attributes that have been assigned to them; the representations that
have been made of them in hieroglyphics and armorial bearings, in a word
all the histories and all fables in which there was ever yet any mention
either of a cow or hen. How much natural history is likely to be found
in such a lumber room? and how is one to lay one's hand upon the little
that there may actually be?"[50]
It is hoped that the reader will see Buffon, much us Buffon saw the
learned Aldrovandus. He should see him going into his library, &c., and
quietly chuckling to himself as he wrote such a passage as the one in
which we lately found him saying that the larger animals had
"especially" the same generic forms as they had always had. And the
reader should probably see Daubenton chuckling also.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] Tom. i. p. 24, 1749.
[40] Tom. i. p. 40, 1749.
[41] Vol. i. p. 34, 1749.
[42] Tom. i. p. 36.
[43] See p. 88 of this volume; see also p. 155, and 164.
[44] Tom. i. p. 33.
[45] 'The Naturalist's Library,' vol. ii. p. 23, Edinburgh, 1843.
[46] Tom. iv. p. 381, 1753.
[47] Tom. iv. p. 383, 1753 (this was the first volume on the lower
animals).
[48] Tom. xiii. p. ix. 1765.
[49] Sup. tom. v. p. 27, 1778.
[50] Tom. i. p. 28, 1749.