SUPPOSED FLUCTUATIONS OF OPINION--CAUSES OR MEANS OF THE TRANSFORMATION
OF SPECIES.
Enough, perhaps, has been already said to disabuse the reader's mind of
the common misconception of Buffon, namely, that he was more or less of
an elegant trifler with science, who cared rather about the language in
which his ideas were clothed than about the ideas themselves, and that
he did not hold the same opinions for long together; but the accusation
of instability has been made in such high quarters that it is necessary
to refute it still more completely.
Mr. Darwin, for example, in his "Historical Sketch of the Recent
Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species" prefixed to all the later
editions of his own 'Origin of Species,' says of Buffon that he "was the
first author who, in modern times, has treated" the origin of species
"in a scientific spirit. But," he continues, "as his opinions fluctuated
greatly at different periods, and as he does not enter on the causes or
means of the transformation of species, I need not here enter on
details."[51]
Mr. Darwin seems to have followed the one half of Isidore Geoffroy St.
Hilaire's "full account of Buffon's conclusions" upon the subject of
descent with modification,[52] to which he refers with approval on the
second page of his historical sketch.[53]
Turning, then, to Isidore Geoffroy's work, I find that in like manner he
too has been following the one half of what Buffon actually said. But
even so, he awards Buffon very high praise.
"Buffon," he writes, "is to the doctrine of the mutability of species
what Linnaeus is to that of its fixity. It is only since the appearance
of Buffon's 'Natural History,' and in consequence thereof, that the
mutability of species has taken rank among scientific questions."[54]
. . . . . .
"Buffon, who comes next in chronological order after Bacon, follows him
in no other respect than that of time. He is entirely original in
arriving at the doctrine of the variability of organic types, and in
enouncing it after long hesitation, during which one can watch the
labour of a great intelligence freeing itself little by little from the
yoke of orthodoxy.
"But from this source come difficulties in the interpretation of
Buffon's work which have misled many writers. Buffon expresses
absolutely different opinions in different parts of his natural
history--so much so that partisans and opponents of the doctrine of the
fixity of species have alike believed and still believe themselves at
liberty to claim Buffon as one of the great authorities upon their
side."
Then follow the quotations upon which M. Geoffroy relies--to which I
will return presently--after which the conclusion runs thus:--
"The dates, however, of the several passages in question are sufficient
to explain the differences in their tenor, in a manner worthy of Buffon.
Where are the passages in which Buffon affirms the immutability of
species? At the beginning of his work. His first volume on animals[55]
is dated 1753. The two following are those in which Buffon still shares
the views of Linnaeus; they are dated 1755 and 1756. Of what date are
those in which Buffon declares for variability? From 1761 to 1766. And
those in which, after having admitted variability and declared in favour
of it, he proceeds to limit it? From 1765 to 1778.
"The inference is sufficiently simple. Buffon does but correct himself.
He does not fluctuate. He goes once for all from one opinion to the
other, from what he accepted at starting on the authority of another to
what he recognized as true after twenty years of research. If while
trying to set himself free from the prevailing notions, he in the first
instance went, like all other innovators, somewhat to the opposite
extreme, he essays as soon as may be to retrace his steps in some
measure, and thenceforward to remain unchanged.
"Let the reader cast his eye over the general table of contents wherein
Buffon, at the end of his 'Natural History,' gives a _resume_ of all of
it that he is anxious to preserve. He passes over alike the passages in
which he affirms and those in which he unreservedly denies the
immutability of species, and indicates only the doctrine of the
permanence of essential features and the variability of details (toutes
les touches accessoires); he repeats this eleven years later in his
'Epoques de la Nature'" (published 1778).[56]
But I think I can show that the passages which M. Geoffroy brings
forward, to prove that Buffon was in the first instance a supporter of
invariability, do not bear him out in the deduction he has endeavoured
to draw from them.
"What author," he asks, "has ever pronounced more decidedly than Buffon
in favour of the invariability of species? Where can we find a more
decided expression of opinion than the following?
"'The different species of animals are separated from one another by a
space which Nature cannot overstep.'"
On turning, however, to Buffon himself, I find the passage to stand as
follows:--
"_Although_ the different species of animals are separated from one
another by a space which Nature cannot overstep--_yet some of them
approach so nearly to one another in so many respects that there is only
room enough left for the getting in of a line of separation between
them_,"[57] and on the following page he distinctly encourages the idea
of the mutability of species in the following passage:--
"In place of regarding the ass as a degenerate horse, there would be
more reason in calling the horse a more perfect kind of ass (un ane
perfectionne), and the sheep a more delicate kind of goat, that we have
tended, perfected, and propagated for our use, and that the more perfect
animals in general--especially the domestic animals--_draw their origin
from some less perfect species of that kind of wild animal which they
most resemble. Nature alone not being able to do as much as Nature and
man can do in concert with one another_."[58]
But Buffon had long ago declared that if the horse and the ass could be
considered as being blood relations there was no stopping short of the
admission that all animals might also be blood relations--that is to
say, descended from common ancestors--and now he tells us that the ass
and horse _are_ in all probability descended from common ancestors. Will
a reader of any literary experience hold that so laborious, and yet so
witty a writer, and one so studious of artistic effect, could ignore the
broad lines he had laid down for himself, or forget how what he had said
would bear on subsequent passages, and subsequent passages on it? A less
painstaking author than Buffon may yet be trusted to remember his own
work well enough to avoid such literary bad workmanship as this. If
Buffon had seen reason to change his mind he would have said so, and
would have contradicted the inference he had originally pronounced to be
deducible from an admission of kinship between the ass and the horse.
This, it is hardly necessary to say, he never does, though he frequently
thinks it well to remind his reader of the fact that the ass and the
horse are in all probability closely related. This is bringing two and
two together with sufficient closeness for all practical purposes.
Should not M. Geoffroy's question, then, have rather been "Who has ever
pronounced more grudgingly, even in an early volume, &c., &c., and who
has more completely neutralized whatever concession he might appear to
have been making?"
Nor does the only other passage which M. Geoffroy brings forward to
prove that Buffon was originally a believer in the fixity of species
bear him out much better. It is to be found on the opening page of a
brief introduction to the wild animals. M. Geoffroy quotes it thus: "We
shall see Nature dictating her laws, so simple yet so unchangeable, and
imprinting her own immutable characters upon every species." But M.
Geoffroy does not give the passage which, on the same page, admits
mutability among domesticated animals, in the case of which he declares
we find Nature "rarement perfectionnee, souvent alteree, defiguree;" nor
yet does he deem it necessary to show that the context proves that this
unchangeableness of wild animals is only relative; and this he should
certainly have done, for two pages later on Buffon speaks of the
American tigers, lions, and panthers as being "degenerated, if their
original nature was cruel and ferocious; or, rather, they have
experienced the effect of climate, and under a milder sky have assumed a
milder nature, their excesses have become moderated, and by the changes
which they have undergone they have become more in conformity with the
country they inhabit."[59]
And again:--
"If we consider each species in the different climates which it
inhabits, we shall find perceptible varieties as regards size and form:
they all derive an impress to a greater or less extent from the climate
in which they live. _These changes are only made slowly and
imperceptibly._ Nature's great workman is Time. He marches ever with an
even pace, and does nothing by leaps and bounds, but by degrees,
gradations, and succession he does all things; and the changes which he
works--at first imperceptible--become little by little perceptible, and
show themselves eventually in results about which there can be no
mistake.
"Nevertheless animals in a free, wild state are perhaps less subject
than any other living beings, man not excepted, to alterations, changes,
and variations of all kinds. Being free to choose their own food and
climate, they vary less than domestic animals vary."[60] The conditions
of their existence, in fact, remaining practically constant, the animals
are no less constant themselves.
The writer of the above could hardly be claimed as a very thick and thin
partisan of immutability, even though he had not shown from the first
how clearly he saw that there was no middle position between the denial
of all mutability, and the admission that in the course of sufficient
time any conceivable amount of mutability is possible. I will give a
considerable part of what I have found in the first six volumes of
Buffon to bear one way or the other on his views concerning the
mutability of species; and I think the reader, so far from agreeing with
M. Isidore Geoffroy that Buffon began his work with a belief in the
fixity of species, will find, that from the very first chapter onward,
he leant strongly to mutability, even if he did not openly avow his
belief in it.
In support of this assertion, one quotation must suffice:--
"Nature advances by gradations which pass unnoticed. She passes from one
species, and often from one genus to another by imperceptible degrees,
so that we meet with a great number of mean species and objects of such
doubtful characters that we know not where to place them."[61]
The reader who turns to Buffon himself will find the idea that Buffon
took a less advanced position in his old age than he had taken in middle
life is also without foundation.
Mr. Darwin has said that Buffon "does not enter into the causes or means
of the transformation of species." It is not easy to admit the justice
of this. Independently of his frequently insisting on the effect of all
kinds of changed surroundings, he has devoted a long chapter of over
sixty quarto pages to this very subject; it is to be found in his
fourteenth volume, and is headed "De la Degeneration des Animaux," of
which words "On descent with modification" will be hardly more than a
literal translation. I shall give a fuller but still too brief outline
of the chapter later on, and will confine myself here to saying that the
three principal causes of modification which Buffon brings forward are
changes of climate, of food, and the effects of domestication. He may
be said to have attributed variation to the direct and specific action
of changed conditions of life, and to have had but little conception of
the view which he was himself to suggest to Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and
through him to Lamarck.
Isidore Geoffroy, writing of Lamarck, and comparing his position with
that taken by Buffon, says, on the whole truly, that "what Buffon
ascribes to the general effects of climate, Lamarck maintains to be
caused, especially in the case of animals, by the force of habits; _so
that, according to him, they are not, properly speaking, modified by the
conditions of their existence, but are only induced by these conditions
to set about modifying themselves_."[62] But it is very hard to say how
much Buffon saw and how much he did not see. He may be trusted to have
seen that if he once allowed the thin end of this wedge into his system,
he could no more assign limits to the effect which living forms might
produce upon their own organisms by effort and ingenuity in the course
of long time, than he could set limits to what he had called the power
of Nature if he was once to admit that an ass and a horse might, through
that power, have been descended from a common ancestor. Nevertheless, he
shows no unwillingness or recalcitrancy about letting the wedge enter,
for he speaks of domestication as inducing modifications "sufficiently
profound to become constant and hereditary in successive generations ...
_by its action on bodily habits it influences also their natures,
instincts, and most inward qualities_."[63]
This is a very thick thin end to have been allowed to slip in unawares;
but it is astonishing how little Buffon can see when he likes. I hardly
doubt but he would have been well enough pleased to have let the wedge
enter still farther, but this fluctuating writer had assigned himself
his limits some years before, and meant adhering to them. Again, in this
very chapter on Degeneration, to which M. Geoffroy has referred, there
are passages on the callosities on a camel's knees, on the llama, and on
the haunches of pouched monkeys which might have been written by Dr.
Darwin himself.[64] They will appear more fully presently. Buffon now
probably felt that he had said enough, and that others might be trusted
to carry the principle farther when the time was riper for its
enforcement.
FOOTNOTES:
[51] 'Origin of Species,' p. xiii. ed. 1876.
[52] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' tom. ii. p. 405, 1859.
[53] 'Origin of Species,' p. xiv. 1876.
[54] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' tom. ii. p. 383.
[55] Tom. iv.
[56] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' tom. ii. p. 391, 1859.
[57] Tom. v. p. 59, 1755.
[58] Tom. v. p. 60.
[59] Tom. vi. p. 58, 1756.
[60] Tom. vi. pp. 59-60, 1756.
[61] Tom. i. p. 13, 1749.
[62] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' tom. ii. p. 411, 1859.
[63] Tom. xi. p. 290, 1764 (misprinted on title-page 1754).
[64] See tom. xiv. p. 326, 1766; and p. 162 of this volume.