BUFFON--FULLER QUOTATIONS.
Let us now proceed to those fuller quotations which may answer the
double purpose of bearing me out in the view of Buffon's work which I
have taken in the foregoing pages, and of inducing the reader to turn to
Buffon himself.
I have already said that from the very commencement of his work Buffon
showed a proclivity towards considerations which were certain to lead
him to a theory of evolution, even though he had not, as I believe he
had, already taken a more comprehensive view of the subject than he
thought fit to proclaim unreservedly.
In 1749, at the beginning of his first volume he writes:--
"The first truth that makes itself apparent on serious study of Nature,
is one that man may perhaps find humiliating; it is this--that he, too,
must take his place in the ranks of animals, being, as he is, an animal
in every material point. It is possible also that the instinct of the
lower animals will strike him as more unerring, and their industry more
marvellous than his own. Then, running his eye over the different
objects of which the universe is composed, he will observe with
astonishment that we can descend by almost imperceptible degrees from
the most perfect creature to the most formless matter--from the most
highly organized animal to the most entirely inorganic substance. He
will recognize this gradation as the great work of Nature; and he will
observe it not only as regards size and form, but also in respect of
movements, and in the successive generations of every species.[65]
"Hence," he continues, "arises the difficulty of arriving at any perfect
system or method in dealing either with Nature as a whole or even with
any single one of her subdivisions. The gradations are so subtle that we
are often obliged to make arbitrary divisions. Nature knows nothing
about our classifications, and does not choose to lend herself to them
without reserve. We therefore see a number of intermediate species and
objects which it is very hard to classify, and which of necessity
derange our system whatever it may be."[66]
"The attempt to form perfect systems has led to such disastrous results
that it is now more easy to learn botany than the terminology which has
been adopted as its language."[67]
After saying that "_la marche de la Nature_" has been misunderstood, and
that her progress has ever been by a succession of slow steps, he
maintains that the only proper course is to class together whatever
objects resemble one another, and to separate those which are unlike. If
individual specimens are absolutely alike, or differ so little that the
differences can hardly be perceived, they must be classed as of the same
species; if the differences begin to be perceptible, but if at the same
time there is more resemblance than difference, the individuals
presenting these features should be classed as of a different species,
but as of the same genus; if the differences are still more marked, but
nevertheless do not exceed the resemblances, then they must be taken as
not only specific but generic, though as not sufficient to warrant
the individuals in which they appear, being placed in different
classes. If they are still greater, then the individuals are not even
of the same class; but it should be always understood that the
resemblances and differences are to be considered in reference to the
entirety of the plant or animal, and not in reference to any particular
part only.[68] The two rocks which are equally to be avoided are, on
the one hand, absence of method, and, on the other, a tendency to
over-systematize.[69]
Like Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and more recently Mr. Francis Darwin, Buffon is
more struck with the resemblances than with the differences between
animals and plants, but he supposes the vegetable kingdom to be a
continuation of the animal, extending lower down the scale, instead of
holding as Dr. Darwin did, that animals and vegetables have been
contemporaneous in their degeneration from a common stock.
"We see," he writes, "that there is no absolute and essential difference
between animals and vegetables, but that Nature descends by subtle
gradations from what we deem the most perfect animal to one which is
less so, and again from this to the vegetable. The fresh-water polypus
may perhaps be considered as the lowest animal, and as at the same time
the highest plant."[70]
Looking to the resemblances between animals and plants, he declares that
their modes of reproduction and growth involve such close analogy that
no difference of an essential nature can be admitted between them.[71]
On the other hand, Buffon appears, at first sight, to be more struck
with the points of difference between the mental powers of the lower
animals and man than with those which they present in common. It is
impossible, however, to accept this as Buffon's real opinion, on the
strength of isolated passages, and in face of a large number of others
which point stealthily but irresistibly to an exactly opposite
conclusion. We find passages which show a clear apprehension of facts
that the world is only now beginning to consider established, followed
by others which no man who has kept a dog or cat will be inclined to
agree with. I think I have already explained this sufficiently by
referring it to the impossibility of his taking any other course under
the circumstances of his own position and the times in which he lived.
Buffon does not deal with such pregnant facts, as, for example, the
geometrical ratio of increase, in such manner as to suggest that he was
only half aware of their importance and bearing. On the contrary, in the
very middle of those passages which, if taken literally, should most
shake confidence in his judgment, there comes a sustaining sentence, so
quiet that it shall pass unnoticed by all who are not attentive
listeners, yet so encouraging to those who are taking pains to
understand their author that their interest is revived at once.
Thus, he has insisted, and means insisting much further, on the many
points of resemblance between man and the lower animals, and it has now
become necessary to neutralize the effect of what he has written upon
the minds of those who are not yet fitted to see instinct and reason as
differentiations of a single faculty. He accordingly does this, and, as
is his wont, he does it handsomely; so handsomely that even his most
admiring followers begin to be uncomfortable. Whereon he begins his next
paragraph with "Animals have excellent senses, but not _generally, all
of them_, as good as man's."[72] We have heard of damning with faint
praise. Is not this to praise with faint damnation? Yet we can lay hold
of nothing. It was not Buffon's intention that we should. An ironical
writer, concerning whom we cannot at once say whether he is in earnest
or not, is an actor who is continually interrupting his performance in
order to remind the spectator that he is acting. Complaint, then,
against an ironical writer on the score that he puzzles us, is a
complaint against irony itself; for a writer is not ironical unless he
puzzles. He should not puzzle unless he believes that this is the best
manner of making his reader understand him in the end, or without having
a _bonne bouche_ for those who will be at the pains to puzzle over him;
and he should make it plain that for long parts of his work together he
is to be taken according to the literal interpretation of his words;
but if he has observed the above duly, he is a successful or
unsuccessful writer according as he puzzles or fails to do so, and
should be praised or blamed accordingly. To condemn irony entirely, is
to say that there should be no people allowed to go about the world but
those to whom irony would be an impertinence.
Having already in some measure reassured us by the faintness with which
he disparages the senses of the lower animals, Buffon continues, that
these senses, whether in man or in animals, may be greatly developed by
exercise: which we may suppose that a man of even less humour than
Buffon must know to be great nonsense, unless it be taken to involve
that animals as well as man can reflect and remember; it now, therefore,
becomes necessary to reassure the other side, and to maintain that
animals cannot reflect, and have no memory. "_Je crois_," he writes,
"_qu'on peut demontrer que les animaux n'ont aucune connaissance du
passe, aucune idee du temps, et que par consequent ils n'ont pas la
memoire_."[73]
I am ashamed of even arguing seriously against the supposition that this
was Buffon's real opinion. The very sweepingness of the assertion, the
baldness, and I might say brutality with which it is made, are
convincing in their suggestiveness of one who is laughing very quietly
in his sleeve.
"Society," he continues, later on, "considered even in the case of a
single human family, involves the power of reason; it involves feeling
in such of the lower animals as form themselves into societies freely
and of their own accord, but it involves nothing whatever in the case of
bees, who have found themselves thrown together through no effort of
their own. Such societies can only be, and it is plain have only been,
the results--neither foreseen, nor ordained, nor conceived by those who
achieve them--of the universal mechanism and of the laws of movement
established by the Creator."[74] A hive of bees, in fact, is to be
considered as composed of "ten thousand animated automata."[75] Years
later he repeats these views with little if any modification.[76] A
still more remarkable passage is to be found a little farther on. "If,"
he asks, "animals have neither understanding, mind, nor memory, if they
are wholly without intelligence, and if they are limited to the exercise
and experience of feeling only," and it must be remembered that Buffon
has denied all these powers to the inferior animals, "whence comes that
remarkable prescient instinct which so many of them exhibit? Is the mere
power of feeling sensations sufficient to make them garner up food
during the summer, on which food they may subsist in winter? Does not
this involve the power of comparing dates, and the idea of a coming
future, an '_inquietude raisonnee_'? Why do we find in the hole of the
field-mouse enough acorns to keep him until the following summer? Why do
we find such an abundant store of honey and wax within the bee-hive? Why
do ants store food? Why should birds make nests if they do not know that
they will have need of them? Whence arise the stories that we hear of
the wisdom of foxes, which hide their prey in different spots, that they
may find it at their need and live upon it for days together? Or of the
subtilty of owls, which husband their store of mice by biting off their
feet, so that they cannot run away? Or of the marvellous penetration of
bees, which know beforehand that their queen should lay so many eggs in
such and such a time, and that so many of these eggs should be of a kind
which will develop into drones, and so many more of such another kind as
should become neuters; and who in consequence of this their
foreknowledge build so many larger cells for the first, and so many
smaller for the second?"[77]
Buffon answers these questions thus:--
"Before replying to them," he says, "we should make sure of the facts
themselves;--are they to be depended upon? Have they been narrated by
men of intelligence and philosophers, or are they popular fables only?"
(How many delightful stories of the same character does he not soon
proceed to tell us himself). "I am persuaded that all these pretended
wonders will disappear, and the cause of each one of them be found upon
due examination. But admitting their truth for a moment, and granting to
the narrators of them that animals have a presentiment, a forethought,
and even a certainty concerning coming events, does it therefore follow
that this should spring from intelligence? If so, theirs is assuredly
much greater than our own. For our foreknowledge amounts to conjecture
only; the vaunted light of our reason doth but suffice to show us a
little probability; whereas the forethought of animals is unerring, and
must spring from some principle far higher than any we know of through
our own experience. Does not such a consequence, I ask, _prove repugnant
alike to religion and common sense_?"[78]
This is Buffon's way. Whenever he has shown us clearly what we ought to
think, he stops short suddenly on religious grounds. It is incredible
that the writer who at the very commencement of his work makes man take
his place among the animals, and who sees a subtle gradation extending
over all living beings "from the most perfect creature"--who must be
man--"to the most entirely inorganic substance"--I say it is incredible
that such a writer should not see that he had made out a stronger case
in favour of the reason of animals than against it.
According to him, the test whether a thing is to have such and such a
name is whether it looks fairly like other things to which the same name
is given; if it does, it is to have the name; if it does not, it is not.
No one accepted this lesson more heartily than Dr. Darwin, whose shrewd
and homely mind, if not so great as Buffon's, was still one of no common
order. Let us see the view he took of this matter. He writes:--
"If we were better acquainted with the histories of those insects which
are formed into societies, as the bees, wasps, and ants, I make no doubt
but we should find that their arts and improvements are not so similar
and uniform as they now appear to us, but that they arose in the same
manner from experience and tradition, as the arts of our own species;
though their reasoning is from fewer ideas, is busied about fewer
objects, and is executed with less energy."[79]
And again, a little later:--
"According to the late observations of Mr. Hunter, it appears that
beeswax is not made from the dust of the anthers of flowers, which they
bring home on their thighs, but that this makes what is termed
bee-bread, and is used for the purpose of feeding the bee-maggots; in
the same way butterflies live on honey, but the previous caterpillar
lives on vegetable leaves, while the maggots of large flies require
flesh for their food. What induces the bee, who lives on honey, to lay
up vegetable powder for its young? What induces the butterfly to lay its
eggs on leaves when itself feeds on honey?... If these are not
deductions from their own previous experience or observation, all the
actions of mankind must be resolved into instincts."[80]
Or again:--
"Common worms stop up their holes with leaves or straws to prevent the
frost from injuring them, or the centipes from devouring them. The
habits of peace or the stratagems of war of these subterranean nations
are covered from our view; but a friend of mine prevailed on a
distressed worm to enter the hole of another worm on a bowling green,
and he presently returned much wounded about the head, ... which
evinces they have design in stopping the mouths of their
habitations."[81]
Does it not look as if Dr. Darwin had in his mind the very passage of
Buffon which I have been last quoting? and is it likely that the facts
which were accepted by Dr. Darwin without question, or the conclusions
which were obvious to him, were any less accepted by or obvious to
Buffon?
_The Goat--Hybridism._
In his prefatory remarks upon the goat, Buffon complains of the want of
systematic and certified experiment as to what breeds and species will
be fertile _inter se_, and with what results. The passage is too long to
quote, but is exceedingly good, and throughout involves belief in a very
considerable amount of modification in the course of successive
generations. I may give the following as an example:--
"We do not know whether or no the zebra would breed with the horse or
ass--whether the large-tailed Barbary sheep would be fertile if crossed
with our own--whether the chamois is not a wild goat; and whether it
would not form an intermediate breed if crossed with our domesticated
goats; we do not know whether the differences between apes are really
specific, or whether apes are not like dogs, one single species, of
which there are many different breeds.... Our ignorance concerning all
these facts is almost inevitable, as the experiments which would decide
them require more time, pains, and money than can be spared from, the
life and fortune of an ordinary man. I have spent many years in
experiments of this kind, and will give my results when I come to my
chapter on mules; but I may as well say at once that they have thrown
but little light upon the subject, and have been for the most part
unsuccessful."[82]
"But these," he continues, "are the very points which must determine our
whole knowledge concerning animals, their right division into species,
and the true understanding of their history." He proposes therefore, in
the present lack of knowledge, "to regard all animals as different
species which do not breed together under our eyes," and to leave time
and experiment to correct mistakes.[83]
_The Pig--Doctrine of Final Causes._
We have seen that the doctrine of the mutability of species has been
unfortunately entangled with that of final causes, or the belief that
every organ and every part of each animal or plant has been designed to
serve some purpose useful to the animal, and this not only useful at
some past time, but useful now, and for all time to come. He who
believes species to be mutable will see in many organs signs of the
history of the individual, but nothing more. Buffon, as I have said, is
explicit in his denial of final causes in the sense expressed above.
After pointing out that the pig is an animal whose relation to other
animals it is difficult to define, he says:--
"In a word, it is of a nature altogether equivocal and ambiguous, or,
rather, it must appear so to those who believe the hypothetical order of
their own ideas to be the real order of things, and who see nothing in
the infinite chain of existences but a few apparent points to which they
will refer everything.
"But we cannot know Nature by inclosing her action within the narrow
circle of our own thoughts.... Instead of limiting her action, we should
extend it through immensity itself; we should regard nothing as
impossible, but should expect to find all things--supposing that all
things are possible--nay, _are_. Doubtful species, then, irregular
productions, anomalous existences will henceforth no longer surprise us,
and will find their place in the infinite order of things as duly as any
others. They fill up the links of the chain; they form knots and
intermediate points, and also they mark its extremities: they are of
especial value to human intelligence, as providing it with cases in
which Nature, being less in conformity with herself, is taken more
unawares, so that we can recognize singular characters and fleeting
traits which show us that her ends are much more general than are our
own views of those ends, and that, though she does nothing in vain, yet
she does but little with the designs which we ascribe to her."[84]
"The pig," he continues, "is not formed on an original, special, and
perfect type; its type is compounded of that of many other animals. It
has parts which are evidently useless, or which at any rate it cannot
use--such as toes, all the bones of which are perfectly formed but
which are yet of no service to it. Nature then is far from subjecting
herself to final causes in the composition of her creatures. Why should
she not sometimes add superabundant parts, seeing she so often omits
essential ones?" "How many animals are there not which lack sense and
limbs? Why is it considered so necessary that every part in an
individual should be useful to the other parts and to the whole animal?
Should it not be enough that they do not injure each other nor stand in
the way of each other's fair development? All parts coexist which do not
injure each other enough to destroy each other, and perhaps in the
greater number of living beings the parts which must be considered as
relative, useful, or necessary, are fewer than those which are
indifferent, useless, and superabundant. But we--ever on the look out to
refer all parts to a certain end--when we can see no apparent use for
them suppose them to have hidden uses, and imagine connections which are
without foundation, and serve only to obscure our perception of Nature
as she really is: we fail to see that we thus rob philosophy of her true
character, which is to inquire into the 'how' of things--into the manner
in which Nature acts--and that we substitute for this true object a vain
idea, seeking to divine the 'why'--the ends which she has proposed in
acting."[85]
_The Dog--Varieties in consequence of Man's Selection._
"Of all animals the dog is most susceptible of impressions, and becomes
most easily modified by moral causes. He is also the one whose nature
is most subject to the variations and alterations caused by physical
influences: he varies to a prodigious extent, in temperament, mental
powers, and in habits: his very form is not constant;" ... but presents
so many differences that "dogs have nothing in common but conformity of
interior organization, and the power of interbreeding freely."...
... "How then can we detect the characters of the original race? How
recognize the effects produced by climate, food, &c.? How, again,
distinguish these from those other effects which come from the
intermixture of races, either when wild or in a state of domestication?
All these causes, in the course of time, alter even the most constant
forms, so that the imprint of Nature does not preserve its sharpness in
races which man has dealt with largely. Those animals which are free to
choose climate and food for themselves can best conserve their original
character, ... but those which man has subjected to his own
influence--which he has taken with him from clime to clime, whose food,
habits, and manner of life he has altered--must also have changed their
form far more than others; and as a matter of fact we find much greater
variety in the species of domesticated animals than in those of wild
ones. Of all these, however, the dog is the one most closely attached to
man, living like man the least regular manner of life; he is also the
one whose feelings so master him as to make him docile, obedient,
susceptible of every kind of impression, and even of every kind of
constraint; it is not surprising, then, that he should of all animals
present us with the greatest variety in shape, stature, colour, and all
physical and mental qualities."
Here again the direct cause of modification is given as being the inner
feelings of the animal modified, change of conditions being the indirect
cause as with Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck.
"Other circumstances, however, concur to produce these results. The dog
is short-lived: he breeds often and freely: he is perpetually under the
eye of man; hence when--by some chance common enough with Nature--a
variation or special feature has made its appearance, man has tried to
perpetuate it by uniting together the individuals in which it has
appeared, as people do now who wish to form new breeds of dogs and other
animals. Moreover, though species were all formed at the same time, yet
the number of generations since the creation has been much greater in
the short-lived than in the long-lived species: hence variations,
alterations, and departure from the original type, may be expected to
have become more perceptible in the case of animals which are so much
farther removed from their original stock.
"Man is now eight times nearer Adam than the dog is to the first
dog--for man lives eighty years, while the dog lives but ten. If, then,
these species have an equal tendency to depart from their original type,
the departure should be eight times more apparent with the dog than with
man."[86]
Here follow remarks upon the great variability of ephemeral insects and
of animal plants, on the impossibility of discovering the parent-stock
of our wheat and of others of our domesticated plants,[87] and on the
tendency of both plants and animals to resume feral characteristics on
becoming wild again after domestication.[88]
_The Hare--Geometrical Ratio of Increase._
We have already seen that it was Buffon's pleasure to consider the hare
a rabbit for the time being, and to make it the text for a discourse
upon fecundity. I have no doubt he enjoyed doing this, and would have
found comparatively little pleasure in preaching the same discourse upon
the rabbit. Speaking of the way in which even the races of mankind have
struggled and crowded each other out, Buffon says:--
"These great events--these well-marked epochs in the history of the
human race--are yet but ripples, as it were, on the current of life;
which, as a general rule, flows onward evenly and in equal volume.
"It may be said that the movement of Nature turns upon two immovable
pivots--one, the illimitable fecundity which she has given to all
species; the other, the innumerable difficulties which reduce the
results of that fecundity, and leave throughout time nearly the same
quantity of individuals in every species.[89]... Taking the earth as a
whole, and the human race in its entirety, the numbers of mankind, like
those of animals, should remain nearly constant throughout time; for
they depend upon an equilibrium of physical causes which has long since
been reached, and which neither man's moral nor his physical efforts can
disturb, inasmuch as these moral efforts do but spring from physical
causes, of which they are the special effects. No matter what care man
may take of his own species, he can only make it more abundant in one
place by destroying it or diminishing its numbers in another. When one
part of the globe is overpeopled, men emigrate, spread themselves over
other countries, destroy one another, and establish laws and customs
which sometimes only too surely prevent excess of population. In those
climates where fecundity is greatest, as in China, Egypt, and Guinea,
they banish, mutilate, sell, or drown infants. Here, we condemn them to
a perpetual celibacy. Those who are in being find it easy to assert
rights over the unborn. Regarding themselves as the necessary, they
annihilate the contingent, and suppress future generations for their own
pleasure and advantage. Man does for his own race, without perceiving
it, what he does also for the inferior animals: that is to say, he
protects it and encourages it to increase, or neglects it according to
his sense of need--according as advantage or inconvenience is expected
as the consequence of either course. And since all these moral effects
themselves depend upon physical causes, which have been in permanent
equilibrium ever since the world was formed, it follows that the numbers
of mankind, like those of animals, should remain constant.
"Nevertheless, this fixed state, this constant number, is not absolute,
all physical and moral causes, and all the results which spring from
them, balance themselves, as though, upon a see-saw, which has a certain
play, but never so much as that equilibrium should be altogether lost.
As everything in the universe is in movement, and as all the forces
which are contained in matter act one against the other and
counterbalance one another, all is done by a kind of oscillation; of
which the mean points are those to which we refer as being the ordinary
course of nature, while the extremes are the periods which deviate from
that course most widely. And, as a matter of fact, with animals as much
as with plants, a time of unusual fecundity is commonly followed by one
of sterility; abundance and dearth come alternately, and often at such
short intervals that we may foretell the production of a coming year by
our knowledge of the past one. Our apples, pears, oaks, beeches, and the
greater number of our fruit and forest trees, bear freely but about one
year in two. Caterpillars, cockchafers, woodlice, which in one year may
multiply with great abundance, will appear but sparsely in the next.
What indeed would become of all the good things of the earth, what would
become of the useful animals, and indeed of man himself, if each
individual in these years of excess was to leave its quotum of
offspring? This, however, does not happen, for destruction and sterility
follow closely upon excessive fecundity, and, independently of the
contagion which follows inevitably upon overcrowding, each species has
its own special sources of death and destruction, which are of
themselves sufficient to compensate for excess in any past generation.
"Nevertheless the foregoing should not be taken in an absolute sense,
nor yet too strictly,--especially in the case of those races which are
not left entirely to the care of Nature. Those which man takes care
of--commencing with his own--are more abundant than they would be
without his care, yet, as his power of taking this care is limited, the
increase which has taken place is also fixed, and has long been
restrained within impassable boundaries. Again, though in civilized
countries man, and all the animals useful to him, are more numerous than
in other places, yet their numbers never become excessive, for the same
power which brings them into being destroys them as soon as they are
found inconvenient."[90]
_The Carnivora--Sensation._
Buffon begins his seventh volume with some remarks on the _carnivora_ in
general, which I would gladly quote at fuller length than my space will
allow. He dwells on the fact that the number, as well as the fecundity
of the insect races is greater than that of the mammalia, and even than
of plants; and he points out that "violent death is almost as necessary
an usage as is the law that we must all, in one way or another, die."
This leads him to the question whether animals can feel. "To speak
seriously," (au reel) he says (and why this, if he had always spoken
seriously?[91]), "can we doubt that those animals whose organization
resembles our own, feel the same sensations as we do? They must feel,
for they have senses, and they must feel more and more in proportion as
their senses are more active and more perfect." Those whose organ of any
sense is imperfect, have but imperfect perception in respect of that
sense; and those that are entirely without the organ want also all
corresponding sensation. "Movement is the necessary consequence of acts
of perception. I have already shown that in whatever manner a living
being is organized, if it has perceptions at all, it cannot fail to show
that it has them by some kind of movement of its body. Hence plants,
though highly organized, have no feeling, any more than have those
animals which, like plants, manifest no power of motion. Among animals
there are those which, like the sensitive plant, have but a certain
power of movement about their own parts, and which have no power of
locomotion; such animals have as yet but little perception. Those,
again, which have power of locomotion, but which, like automata, do but
a small number of things, and always after the same fashion, can have
only small powers of perception, and these limited to a small number of
objects. But in the case of man, what automata, indeed, have we not
here! How much do not education and the intercommunication of ideas
increase our powers and vivacity of perception. What difference can we
not see in this respect between civilized and uncivilized races, between
the peasant girl, and the woman of the world? And in like manner among
animals, those which live with us have their perceptions increased in
range, while those that are wild have but their natural instinct, which
is often more certain but always more limited in range than is the
intelligence of domesticated animals."[92]
. . . . . .
"For perception to exist in its fullest development in any animal body,
that body must form a whole--an _ensemble_, which shall not only be
capable of feeling in all its parts, but shall be so arranged that all
these feeling parts shall have a close correspondence with one another,
and that no one of them can be disturbed without communicating a portion
of that disturbance to every other part. There must also be a single
chief centre, with which all these different disturbances may be
connected, and from which, as from a common _point d'appui_, the
reactions against them may take their rise. Hence man, and those animals
whose organization most resembles man's, will be the most capable of
perceptions, while those whose unity is less complete, whose parts have
a less close correspondence with each other--which have several centres
of sensation, and which seem, in consequence, less to envelope a single
existence in a single body than to contain many centres of existence
separated and different from one another--these will have fewer and
duller perceptions. The polypus, which can be reproduced by fission; the
wasp, whose head even after separation from the body still moves, lives,
acts, and even eats as heretofore; the lizard which we deprive neither
of sensation nor movement by cutting off part of its body; the lobster
which can restore its amputated limbs; the turtle whose heart beats long
after it has been plucked out, in a word all the animals whose
organization differs from our own, have but small powers of perception,
and the smaller the more they differ from us."[93]
This is Buffon's way of satirizing our inability to bear in mind that we
are compelled to judge all things by our own standards. He also wishes
to reassure those who might be alarmed at the tendency of some of his
foregoing remarks, and who he knew would find comfort in being told that
a thing which does not express itself as they do does not feel at all.
The diaphragm according to Buffon appears to be the centre of the powers
of sensation; the slightest injury "even to the attachments of the
diaphragm is followed by strong convulsions, and even by death. The
brain which has been called the seat of 'sensations' is yet not the
centre of 'perception,' since we can wound it, and even take
considerable parts of it away, without death's ensuing, and without
preventing an animal from living, moving and feeling in all its parts."
Buffon thus distinguishes between "sensation" and "perception."
"Sensation," he says, "is simply the activity of a sense, but perception
is the pleasantness or unpleasantness of this sensation," "perceived by
its being propagated and becoming active throughout the entire system."
I have therefore several times, when translating from Buffon, rendered
the word "_sentiment_" by "perception," and shall continue to do so. "I
say," writes Buffon, "the pleasantness or unpleasantness, because this
is the very essence of perception; the one feature of perception
consists in perceiving either pain or pleasure; and though movements
which do not affect us in either one or the other of these two ways may
indeed take place within us, yet we are indifferent to them, and do not
perceive that we are affected by them. All external movement, and all
exercise of the animal powers, spring from perception; its action is
proportionate to the extent of its excitation, to the extent of the
feeling which is being felt.[94] And this same part, which we regard as
the centre of sensation, will also be that of all the animal powers; or,
if it is preferred to call it so, it will be the common _point d'appui_
from which they all take rise. The diaphragm is to the animal what the
'stock' is to the plant; both divide an organism transversely, both
serve as the _point d'appui_ of opposing forces; for the forces which
push upward those parts of a tree which should form its trunk and
branches, bear upon and are supported by the 'stock,' as do those
opposing forces, which drive the roots downwards.
. . . . . .
"Even on a cursory examination we can see that all our innermost
affections, our most lively emotions, our most expansive moments of
delight, and, on the other hand, our sudden starts, pains, sicknesses,
and swoons--in fact, all our strong impressions concerning the pleasure
or pain of any sensation--make themselves felt within the body, and
about the region of the diaphragm. The brain, on the contrary, shows no
sign of being a seat of perception. In the head there are pure
sensations and nothing else, or rather, there are but the
representations of sensations stripped of the character of perception;
that is to say, we can remember and call to mind whether such and such a
sensation was pleasant to us or otherwise, and if this operation, which
goes on in the head, is followed by a vivid perception, then the
impression made is perceived in the interior of the body, and always in
the region of the diaphragm. Hence, in the foetus where this membrane
is without use, there is no perception, or so little that nothing comes
of it, the movements of the foetus, such as they are, being rather
mechanical than dependent on sensation and will.
"Whatever the matter may be which serves as the vehicle of perception,
and produces muscular movement, it is certain that it is propagated
through the nerves, and that it communicates itself instantaneously from
one extremity of the system to the other. In whatever manner this
operation is conducted, whether by the vibrations, as it were, of
elastic cords or by a subtle fire, or by a matter resembling
electricity, which not only resides in animal as in all other bodies,
but is being continually renewed in them by the movements of the heart
and lungs, by the friction of the blood within the arteries, and also by
the action of exterior causes upon our organs of sense--in whatever
manner, I say, the operation is conducted, it is nevertheless certain
that the nerves and membranes are the only parts in an animal body that
can feel. The blood, lymphs, and all other fluids, the fats, bone,
flesh, and all other solids, are of themselves void of sensation. And
so also is the brain; it is a soft and inelastic substance, incapable
therefore of producing or of propagating the movement, vibrations, or
concussions which, result in perception. The meninges, on the other
hand, are exceedingly sensitive, and are the envelopes of all the
nerves; like the nerves, they take rise in the head; and, dividing
themselves like the branches of the nerves, they extend even to their
smallest ramifications: they are, so to speak, flattened nerves; they
are of the same substance as the nerves, are nearly of the same degree
of elasticity, and form a necessary part of the system of sensation. If,
then, the seat of the sensations must be placed in the head, let it be
placed in the meninges, and not in the medullary part of the brain,
which is of an entirely different substance."[95]
If this is so, it appears from what will follow as though the meninges
must be the "stock" rather than the diaphragm.
"What perhaps has given rise to the opinion that the seat of all
sensations and the centre of all sensibility is in the brain, is the
fact that the nerves, which are the organs of perception, all attach
themselves to the brain, which has hence come to be regarded as the one
common centre which can receive all their vibrations and impressions.
This fact alone has sufficed to indicate the brain as the origin of
perceptions--as the essential organ of sensations; in a word, as the
common sensorium. This supposition has appeared so simple and natural
that its physical impossibility has been overlooked, an impossibility,
however, which should be sufficiently apparent. For how can a part
which cannot feel--a soft inactive substance like the brain--be the very
organ of perception and movement? How can this soft and perceptionless
part not only receive impressions, but preserve them for a length of
time, and transmit their undulatory movements (_en propage les
ebranlements_) throughout all the solid and feeling parts of the body?
It may perhaps be maintained with Descartes and M. de Peyronie that the
principle of sensation does not reside in the brain, but in the pineal
gland or in the _corpus callosum_; but a glance at the conformation of
the brain itself will suffice to show that these parts do not join on to
the nerves, but that they are entirely surrounded by those parts of the
brain which do not feel, and are so separated from the nerves that they
cannot receive any movement from them; whence it follows that this
second supposition is as groundless as the first."[96]
What, then, asks Buffon, _is_ the use of the brain? Man, the quadrupeds,
and birds all have larger brains, and at the same time more extended
perceptions, than fishes, insects, and those other living beings whose
brains are smaller in proportion. "When the brain is compressed, there
is suspension of all power of movement. If this part is not the source
of our powers of motion, why is it so necessary and so essential? Why,
again, does it seem so proportionate in each animal to the amount of
perceiving power which that animal possesses?
"I think I can answer this question in a satisfactory manner, difficult
though it seems; but in order that I may do so, I would ask the reader
to lend me his attention for a few moments while we regard the brain
simply _as brain_, and have no other idea concerning it than we can
derive from inspection and reflection. The brain, as well as the
_medulla oblongata_ and the spinal marrow, which are but prolongations
of the brain itself, is only a kind of hardly organized mucilage; we
find in it nothing but the extremities of small arteries, which run into
it in very great numbers, but which convey a white and nourishing lymph
instead of blood. When the parts of the brain are disunited by
maceration, these same small arteries, or lymphatic vessels, appear as
very delicate threads throughout their whole length. The nerves, on the
contrary, do not penetrate the substance of the brain; they abut upon
its surface only; before reaching it they lose their elasticity and
solidity, and the extremities of the nerves which are nearest to the
brain are soft, and nearly mucilaginous. From this exposition, in which
there is nothing hypothetical, it appears that the brain, which is
nourished by the lymphatic arteries, does in its turn provide
nourishment for the nerves, and that we must regard these as a kind of
vegetation which rises as trunks and branches from the brain, and become
subsequently subdivided into an infinite number, as it were, of twigs.
The brain is to the nerves what the earth is to plants: the last
extremities of the nerves are the roots, which with every vegetable are
more soft and tender than the trunk or branches; they contain a ductile
matter fit for the growth and nourishment of the nervous tree or fibre;
they draw the ductile matter from the substance of the brain itself, to
which the arteries are continually bringing the lymph that is necessary
to supply it. The brain, then, instead of being the seat of the
sensations, and the originator of perception, is an organ of secretion
and nutrition only, though a very essential organ, without which the
nerves could neither grow nor be maintained.
"This organ is greater in man, in quadrupeds, and in birds, because the
number or bulk of the nerves is greater in these animals than in fishes
or insects, whose power of perception is more feeble, for this very
reason, that they have but a small brain; one, in fact, that is
proportioned to the small quantity of nerves which that brain must
support. Nor can I omit to state here that man has not, as has been
pretended by some, a larger brain than has any other animal; for there
are apes and cetacea which have more brain than man in proportion to the
volume of their bodies--another fact which proves that the brain is
neither the seat of sensations nor the originator of perception, since
in that case these animals would have more sensations and perception
than man.
"If we consider the manner in which plants derive their nourishment, we
shall find that they do not draw up the grosser parts either of earth or
water; these parts must be reduced by warmth into subtle vapours before
the roots can suck them up into the plant. In like manner the nutrition
of the nerves is only effected by means of the more subtle parts of the
humidity of the brain, which are sucked up by the roots or extremities
of the nerves, and are carried thence through all the branches of the
sensory system. This system forms, as we have said, a whole, all whose
parts are interconnected by so close a union that we cannot wound one
without communicating a violent shock to all the others; the wounding or
simply pulling of the smallest nerve is sufficient to cause lively
irritation to all the others, and to put the body in convulsion; nor can
we ease this pain and convulsion except by cutting the nerve higher up
than the injured part; but on this all the parts abutting on this nerve
become thenceforward senseless and immovable for ever. The brain should
not be considered as of the same character, nor as an organic portion of
the nervous system, for it has not the same properties nor the same
substance, being neither solid nor elastic, nor yet capable of feeling.
I admit that on its compression perception ceases, but this very fact
shows it to be a body foreign to the nervous system itself, which,
acting by its weight, or pressure, against the extremities of the
nerves, oppresses them and stupefies them in the same way as a weight
placed upon the arm, leg, or any other part of the body, stupefies the
nerves and deadens the perceptions of that part. And it is evident that
this cessation of sensation on compression is but a suspension and
temporary stupefaction, for the moment the compression of the brain
ceases, perception and the power of movement returns. Again, I admit
that on tearing the medullary substance, and on wounding the brain till
the _corpus callosum_ is reached, convulsion, loss of sensation, and
death ensue; but this is because the nerves are so entirely deranged
that they are, so to speak, torn up by the roots and wounded all
together, and at their source.
"In further proof that the brain is neither the centre of perception nor
the seat of the sensations, I may remind the reader that animals and
even children have been born without heads and brains, and have yet had
feeling, movement, and life. There are also whole classes of animals,
like insects and worms, with a brain that is by no means a distinct mass
nor of sensible volume, but with only something which corresponds with
the _medulla oblongata_ and the spinal marrow. There would be more
reason, then, in placing the seat of the feelings and perceptions in the
spinal marrow, which no animal is without, than in the brain which is
not an organ common to all creatures that can feel."
If Buffon's ideas concerning the brain are as just as they appear to be,
the resemblance between plants and animals is more close than is
apparent, even to a superficial observer, on a first inspection of the
phenomena. Such an observer, however, on looking but a little more
intently, will see the higher _vertebrata_ as perambulating vegetables
planted upside down. So the man who had been born blind, on being made
to see, and on looking at the objects before him with unsophisticated
eyes, said without hesitation that he saw "men as trees walking," thus
seeing with more prophetic insight than either he or the bystanders
could interpret. For our skull is as a kind of flower-pot, and holds the
soil from which we spring, that is to say the brain; our mouth and
stomach are roots, in two stories or stages; our bones are the
trellis-work to which we cling while going about in search of
sustenance for our roots; or they are as the woody trunk of a tree; _we_
are the nerves which are rooted in the brain, and which draw thence the
sustenance which is supplied it by the stomach; our lungs are leaves
which are folded up within us, as the blossom of a fig is hidden within
the fruit itself.
This is what should follow if Buffon's theory of the brain is allowed to
stand, which I hope will prove to be the case, for it is the only
comfortable thought concerning the brain that I have met with in any
writer. I have given it here at some length on account of its
importance, and for the illustration it affords of Buffon's hatred of
mystery, rather than for its bearing upon evolution. The fact that our
leading men of science have adopted other theories will weigh little
with those who have watched scientific orthodoxy with any closeness.
What Buffon thought of that orthodoxy may be gathered from the
following:--
"The greatest obstacles to the advancement of human knowledge lie less
in things themselves than in man's manner of considering them. However
complicated a machine the human body may be, it is still less
complicated than are our own ideas concerning it. It is less difficult
to see Nature as she is, than as she is presented to us. She carries a
veil only, while we would put a mask over her face; we load her with our
own prejudices, and suppose her to act and to conduct her operations
even after the same fashion as ourselves.[97]
. . . . . .
"I am by no means speaking of those purely arbitrary systems which we
are able at a glance to detect as chimeras that are being pretended to
us as realities, but I refer to the methods whereby people have set
themselves seriously to study nature. Even the experimental method
itself has been more fertile of error than of truth, for though it is
indeed the surest, yet is it no surer than the hand of him who uses it.
No matter how little we incline out of the straight path, we soon find
ourselves wandering in a sterile wilderness, where we can see but a few
obscure objects scattered sparsely; nevertheless we do violence to these
facts and to ourselves, and resemble them together on a conceit of
analogies and common properties amongst them. Then, passing and
repassing complaisantly over the tortuous path which we have ourselves
beaten, we deem the road a worn one, and though it leads no whither, the
world follows it, adopts it, and accepts its supposed consequences as
first principles. I could show this by laying bare the origin of that
which goes by the name of 'principle' in all the sciences, whether
abstract or natural. In the case of the former, the basis of principle
is abstraction--that is to say, one or more suppositions: in that of the
second, principles are but the consequences, better or worse, of the
methods which may have been followed. And to speak here of anatomy only,
did not he who first surmounted his natural repugnance and set himself
to work to open a human body--did he not believe that through going all
over it, dissecting it, dividing it into all its parts, he would soon
learn its structure, mechanism, and functions? But he found the task
greater than he had expected, and renouncing such pretensions, was fain
to content himself with a method--not for seeing and judging, but for
seeing after an orderly fashion. This method ... is still the sole
business of our ablest anatomists, but it is not science. It is the road
which should lead scienceward, and might perhaps have reached science
itself, if instead of walking ever on a single narrow path men had set
the anatomy of man and that of animals face to face with one another.
For, what real knowledge can be drawn from an isolated pursuit? Is not
the foundation of all science seen to consist in the comparison which
the human mind can draw between different objects in the matter of their
resemblances and differences--of their analogous or conflicting
properties, and of all the relations in which they stand to one another?
The absolute, if it exist at all, is but of the concurrence of man's own
knowledge; we judge and can judge of things only by their bearings one
upon another; hence whenever a method limits us to only a single
subject, whenever we consider it in its solitude and without regard to
its resemblances or to its differences from other objects, we can attain
to no real knowledge, nor yet, much less, reach any general principle.
We do but give names, and make descriptions of a thing, and of all its
parts. Hence comes it that, after three thousand years of dissection,
anatomy is still but a nomenclature, and has hardly advanced a step
towards its true object, which is the science of animal economy.
Furthermore, what defects are there not in the method itself, which
should above all things else be simple and easy to be understood,
depending as it does upon inspection and having denominations only for
its end! For seeing that nomenclature has been mistaken for knowledge,
men have made it their chief business to multiply names, instead of
limiting things; they have crushed themselves under the burden of
details, and been on the look out for differences where there was no
distinction. When they had given a new name they conceived of it as a
new thing, and described the smallest parts with the most minutious
exactness, while the description of some still smaller part, forgotten
or neglected by previous anatomists, has been straightway hailed as a
discovery. The denominations themselves being often taken from things
which had no relation to the object that it was desired to denominate,
have served but to confound confusion. The part of the brain, for
example, which is called testes and nates, wherein does it so differ
from the rest of the brain that it should deserve a name? These names,
taken at haphazard or springing from some preconceived opinion, have
themselves become the parents of new prejudices and speculations; other
names given to parts which have been ill observed, or which are even
non-existent, have been sources of new errors. What functions and uses
has it not been attempted to foist upon the pineal gland, and on the
alleged empty space in the brain which is called the arch, the first of
which is but a gland, while the very existence of the other is
doubtful,--the empty space being perhaps produced by the hand of the
anatomist and the method of dissection."[98]
_The Genus felis._
In his preliminary remarks upon the lion, Buffon while still professing
to believe in some considerable mutability of species, seems very far
from admitting that all living forms are capable of modification. But he
has shown us long since how clearly he saw the impossibility of limiting
mutability, if he once admitted so much of the thin end of the wedge as
that a horse and an ass might be related. It is plain, therefore, that
he is not speaking "_au reel_" here, and we accordingly find him talking
clap-trap about the nobleness of the lion in having no species
immediately allied to it. A few lines lower on he reminds us in a casual
way that the ass and horse are related.
He writes:--
"Added to all these noble individual features the lion has also what may
be called a _specific_ nobility. For I call those species noble which
are constant, invariable, and which are above suspicion of having
degenerated. These species are commonly isolated, and the only ones of
their genus. They are distinguished by such well-marked features that
they cannot be mistaken, nor confounded with any other species. To begin
for example with man, the noblest of created beings; he is but of a
single species, inasmuch as men and women will breed freely _inter se_
in spite of all existing differences of race, climate and colour; and
also inasmuch as there is no other animal which can claim either a
distant or near relationship with him. The horse, on the other hand, is
more noble as an individual than as a species, for he has the ass as
his near neighbour, _and seems himself to be nearly enough related to
it_; ... the dog is perhaps of even less noble species, approaching as
he does to the wolf, fox, and jackal, _which we can only consider to be
the degenerated species of a single family_"[99]--all which may seem
very natural opinions for a French aristocrat in the days before the
Revolution, but which cannot for a moment be believed to have been
Buffon's own. I have not ascertained the date of Buffon's little quarrel
with the Sorbonne, but I cannot doubt that if we knew the inner history
of the work we are considering, we should find this passage and others
like it explained by the necessity of quieting orthodox adversaries. He
concludes the paragraph from which I have just been quoting by saying,
"To class man and the ape together, or the lion with the cat, and to say
that the lion is a _cat with a mane and a long tail_--this were to
degrade and disfigure nature instead of describing her and denominating
her species." Buffon very rarely uses italics, but those last given are
his, not mine; could words be better chosen to make us see the lion and
the cat as members of the same genus? No wonder the Sorbonne considered
him an infelicitous writer; why could he not have said "cat," and have
done with it, instead of giving a couple of sly but telling touches,
which make the cat as like a lion as possible, and then telling us that
we must not call her one? Sorbonnes never do like people who write in
this way.
"The lion, then, belongs to a most noble species, standing as he does
alone, and incapable of being confounded with the tiger, leopard,
ounce, &c., while, on the contrary, those species, which appear to be
least distant from the lion, are very sufficiently indistinguishable, so
that travellers and nomenclators are continually confounding them."[100]
If this is not pure malice, never was a writer more persistently
unfortunate in little ways. Why remind us here that the species which
come nearest to the lion are so hard to distinguish? Why not have said
nothing about it? As it is, the case stands thus: we are required to
admit close resemblance between the leopard and the tiger, while we are
to deny it between the tiger and the lion, in spite of there being no
greater outward difference between the first than between the second
pair, and in spite of the hurried whisper "_cat with a mane and a long
tail_" still haunting our ears. Isidore Geoffroy and his followers may
consent to this arrangement, but I hope the majority of my readers will
not do so.
I went on to the account of the tiger with some interest to see the line
which Buffon would take concerning it. I anticipated that we should find
cats, pumas, lynxes, &c., to be really very like tigers, and was
surprised to learn that the "true" tiger, though certainly not unlike
these animals, was still to be distinguished from "many others which had
since been called tigers." He is on no account to be confounded with
these, in spite of the obvious temptation to confound him. He is "a rare
animal, little known to the ancients, and badly described by the
moderns." He is a beast "of great ferocity, of terrible swiftness, and
surpassing even the proportions of the lion." The effect of the
description is that we no longer find the lion standing alone, but with
the tiger on a par with him if not above him; but at the same time we
fall easy victims to the temptation to confound the tiger with "the many
other animals which are also called tigers." A surface stream has swept
the members of the cat family in different directions, but a stealthy
undercurrent has seized them from beneath, and they are now happily
reunited.
_Animals of the Old and New World--Changed Geographical Distribution._
Writing upon the animals of the old world,[101] and referring to the
humps of the camel and the bison, Buffon shows that very considerable
modification may be effected in some animals within even a few
generations, but he attributes the effect produced to the direct
influence of climate. Buffon concludes his sketch of the animals of the
new world by pointing out that the larger animals of the African torrid
zone have been hindered by sea and desert from finding their way to
America, and by claiming to be the first "even to have suspected" that
there was not a single denizen of the torrid zone of one continent which
was common also to the other.[102]
The animals common to both continents are those which can stand the cold
and which are generally suited for a temperate climate. These, Buffon
believes, to have travelled either over some land still unknown, or
"more probably," over territory which has long since been submerged. The
species of the old and new world are never without some well-marked
difference, which however should not be held sufficient for us to refuse
to admit their practical identity. But he maintains, I imagine wilfully,
that there is a tendency in all the mammalia to become smaller on being
transported to the new world, and refers the fact to the quality of the
earth, the condition of the climate, the degrees of heat and humidity,
to the height of mountains, amounts of running or stagnant waters,
extent of forest, and above all to the brutal condition of nature in a
new country, which he evidently regards with true aristocratic
abhorrence.[103]
Then follows a passage which I had better perhaps give in full:--
The mammoth "was certainly the greatest and strongest of all quadrupeds;
but it has disappeared; and if so, how many smaller, feebler, and less
remarkable species must have also perished without leaving us any traces
or even hints of their having existed? How many other species have
changed their nature, that is to say, become perfected or degraded,
through great changes in the distribution of land and ocean, through the
cultivation or neglect of the country which they inhabit, through the
long-continued effects of climatic changes, so that they are no longer
the same animals that they once were? Yet of all living beings after
man, the quadrupeds are the ones whose nature is most fixed and form
most constant: birds and fishes vary much more easily; insects still
more again than these, and if we descend to plants, which certainly
cannot be excluded from animated nature, we shall be surprised at the
readiness with which species are seen to vary, and at the ease with
which they change their forms and adopt new natures.
"It is probable then that all the animals of the new world are derived
from congeners in the old, without any deviation from the ordinary
course of nature. We may believe that having become separated in the
lapse of ages, by vast oceans and countries which they could not
traverse, they have gradually been affected by, and derived impressions
from, a climate which has itself been modified so as to become a new one
through the operation of those same causes which dissociated the
individuals of the old and new world from one another; thus in the
course of time they have grown smaller and changed their characters.
This, however, should not prevent our classifying them as different
species now, for the difference is no less real whether it is caused by
time, climate and soil, or whether it dates from the creation. _Nature I
maintain is in a state of continual flux and movement. It is enough for
man if he can grasp her as she is in his own time, and throw but a
glance or two upon the past and future, so as to try and perceive what
she may have been in former times and what one day she may attain
to._"[104]
_The Buffalo--Animals under Domestication._
"The bison and the aurochs," says Buffon, "differ only in unessential
characteristics, and are, by consequence, of the same species as our
domestic cattle, so that I believe all the pretended species of the ox,
whether ancient or modern, may be reduced to three--the bull, the
buffalo, and the bubalus.
"The case of animals under domestication is in many respects different
from that of wild ones; they vary much more in disposition, size and
shape, especially as regards the exterior parts of their bodies: the
effects of climate, so powerful throughout nature, act with far greater
effect upon captive animals than upon wild ones. Food prepared by man,
and often ill chosen, combined with the inclemency of an uncongenial
climate--these eventuate in modifications sufficiently profound to
become constant and hereditary in successive generations. I do not
pretend to say that this general cause of modification is so powerful as
to change radically the nature of beings which have had their impress
stamped upon them in that surest of moulds--heredity; but it
nevertheless changes them in not a few respects; it masks and transforms
their outward appearance; it suppresses some of their parts, and gives
them new ones; it paints them with various colours, and _by its action
on bodily habits influences also their natures, instincts, and most
inward qualities_" (and what is this but "radically changing their
nature"?). "The modification of but a single part, moreover, in a whole
as perfect as an animal body, will necessitate a correlative
modification in every other part, and it is from this cause that our
domestic animals differ almost as much in nature and instinct, as in
form, from those from which they originally sprung."[105]
Buffon confirms this last assertion by quoting the sheep as an
example--an animal which can now no longer exist in a wild state. Then
returning to cattle, he repeats that many varieties have been formed by
the effects--"diverse in themselves, and diverse in their
combinations--of climate, food, and treatment, whether under
domestication or in their wild state." These are the main causes of
variation ("causes generales de variete"),[106] among our domesticated
animals, but by far the greatest is changed climate in consequence of
their accompanying man in his migrations. The effects of the foregoing
causes of modification, especially the last of them, are repeatedly
insisted on in the course of the forty pages which complete the
preliminary account of the buffalo.
What holds good for the buffalo does so also for the mouflon or wild
sheep. This, Buffon declares to be the source of all our domesticated
breeds: of these there are in all some four or five, "all of them being
but degenerations from a single stock, produced by man's agency, and
propagated for his convenience."[107] At the same time that man has
protected them he has hunted out the original race which was "less
useful to him,"[108] so that it is now to be found only in a few
secluded spots, such as the mountains of Greece, Cyprus, and Sardinia.
Buffon does not consider even the differences between sheep and goats to
be sufficiently characteristic to warrant their being classed as
different species.
"I shall never tire," he continues, "of repeating--seeing how important
the matter is--that we must not form our opinions concerning nature, nor
differentiate (differencier) her species, by a reference to minor
special characteristics. And, again, that systems, far from having
illustrated the history of animals, have, on the contrary, served rather
to obscure it ... leading, as they do, to the creation of arbitrary
species which nature knows nothing about; perpetually confounding real
and hypothetical existences; giving us false ideas as to the very
essence of species; uniting them and separating them without foundation
or knowledge, and often without our having seen the animal with which we
are dealing."[109]
_First and Second Views of Nature._
The twelfth volume begins with a preface, entitled "A First View of
Nature," from which I take the following:--
"What cannot Nature effect with such means at her disposal? She can do
all except either create matter or destroy it. These two extremes of
power the deity has reserved for himself only; creation and destruction
are the attributes of his omnipotence. To alter and undo, to develop and
to renew--these are powers which he has handed over to the charge of
Nature."[110]
The thirteenth volume opens with a second view of nature. After
describing what a man would have observed if he could have lived during
many continuous ages, Buffon goes on to say:--
"And as the number, sustenance, and balance of power among species is
constant, Nature would present ever the same appearance, and would be in
all times and under all climates absolutely and relatively the same, if
it were not her fashion to vary her individual forms as much as
possible. The type of each species is founded in a mould of which the
principal features have been cut in characters that are ineffaceable and
eternally permanent, but all the accessory touches vary; no one
individual is the exact facsimile of any other, and no species exists
without a large number of varieties. In the human race on which the
divine seal has been set most firmly, there are yet varieties of black
and white, large and small races, the Patagonian, Hottentot, European,
American, Negro, which, though all descended from a common father,
nevertheless exhibit no very brotherly resemblance to one another."[111]
On an earlier page there is a passage which I may quote as showing
Buffon to have not been without some--though very imperfect--perception
of the fact which evidently made so deep an impression upon his
successor, Dr. Erasmus Darwin. I refer to that continuity of life in
successive generations, and that oneness of personality between parents
and offspring, which is the only key that will make the phenomena of
heredity intelligible.
"Man," he says, "and especially educated man, is no longer a single
individual, but represents no small part of the human race in its
entirety. He was the first to receive from his fathers the knowledge
which their own ancestors had handed down to them. These, having
discovered the divine art of fixing their thoughts so that they can
transmit them to their posterity, become, as it were, one and the same
people with their descendants (_se sont, pour ainsi dire, identifies
avec leur neveux_); while our descendants will in their turn be one and
the same people with ourselves (_s'identifieront avec nous_). This
reunion in a single person of the experience of many ages, throws back
the boundaries of man's existence to the utmost limits of the past; he
is no longer a single individual, limited as other beings are to the
sensations and experiences of to-day. In place of the individual we have
to deal, as it were, with the whole species."[112]
"Differences in exterior are nothing in comparison with those in
interior parts. These last must be regarded as the causes, while the
others are but the effects. The interior parts of living beings are the
foundation of the plan of their design; this is their essential form,
their real shape, their exterior is only the surface, or rather the
drapery in which their true figure is enveloped. How often does not the
study of comparative anatomy show us that two exteriors which differ
widely conceal interiors absolutely like each other, and, on the
contrary, that the smallest internal difference is accompanied by the
most marked differences of outward appearance, changing as it does even
the natural habits, faculties and attributes of the animal?"[113]
_Apes and Monkeys._
The fourteenth volume is devoted to apes and monkeys, and to the chapter
with which the volumes on quadrupeds are brought to a conclusion--a
chapter for which perhaps the most important position in the whole work
is thus assigned. It is very long, and is headed "On Descent with
Modification" ("De la Degeneration des Animaux"). This is the chapter in
which Buffon enters more fully into the "causes or means" of the
transformation of species.
At the opening of the chapter on the nomenclature of monkeys, the theory
is broached that there is a certain fixed amount of life-substance as of
matter in nature; and that neither can be either augmented or
diminished. Buffon maintains this organic and living substance to be as
real and durable as inanimate matter; as permanent in its state of life
as the other in that of death; it is spread over the whole of nature,
and passes from vegetables to animals by way of nutrition, and from
animals back to vegetables through putrefaction, thus circulating
incessantly to the animation of all that lives.
As might be expected, Buffon is loud in his protest against any real
similarity between man and the apes--man has had the spirit of the Deity
breathed into his nostrils, and the lowest creature with this is higher
than the highest without it. Having settled this point, he makes it his
business to show how little difference in other respects there is
between the apes and man.
"One who could view," he writes, "Nature in her entirety, from first to
last, and then reflect upon the manner in which these two
substances--the living and the inanimate--act and react upon one
another, would see that every living being is a mould which casts into
its own shape those substances upon which it feeds; that it is this
assimilation which constitutes the growth of the body, whose development
is not simply an augmentation of volume, but an extension in all its
dimensions, a penetration of new matter into all parts of its mass: he
would see that these parts augment proportionately with the whole, and
the whole proportionately with these parts, while general configuration
remains the same until the full development is accomplished.... He would
see that man, the quadruped, the cetacean, the bird, reptile, insect,
tree, plant, herb, all are nourished, grow, and reproduce themselves on
this same system, and that though their manner of feeding and of
reproducing themselves may appear so different, this is only because the
general and common cause upon which these operations depend can only
operate in the individual agreeably with the form of each species.
Travelling onward (for it has taken the human mind ages to arrive at
these great truths, from which all others are derived), he would compare
living forms, give them names to distinguish them, and other names to
connect them with each other. Taking his own body as the model with
which all living forms should be compared, and having measured them,
explained them thoroughly, and compared them in all their parts, he
would see that there is but small difference between the forms of living
beings; that by dissecting the ape he could arrive at the anatomy of
man, and that taking some other animal we find always the same ultimate
plan of organization, the same senses, the same viscera, the same bones,
the same flesh, the same movements of the fluids, the same play and
action of the solids; he would find all of them with a heart, veins,
arteries, in all the same organs of circulation, respiration, digestion,
nutrition, secretion; in all of them a solid frame, composed of pieces
put together in nearly the same manner; and he would find this system
always the same, from man to the ape, from the ape to the quadrupeds,
from the quadrupeds to the cetacea, birds, fishes, reptiles; this system
or plan then, I say, if firmly laid hold of and comprehended by the
human mind, is a true copy of nature; it is the simplest and most
general point of view from which we can consider her, and if we extend
our view, and go on from what lives to what vegetates, we may see this
plan--which originally did but vary almost imperceptibly--change its
scope and descend gradually from reptiles to insects, from insects to
worms, from worms to zoophytes, from zoophytes to plants, and yet
keeping ever the same fundamental unity in spite of differences of
detail, insomuch that nutrition, development, and reproduction remain
the common traits of all organic bodies; traits eternally essential and
divinely implanted; which time, far from effacing or destroying, does
but make plainer and plainer continually."
This is the writer who can see nothing in common between the horse and
the zebra except that each has a solid hoof.[114] He continues:--
"If from this grand tableau of resemblances, in which the living
universe presents itself to our eyes as though it were a single family,
we pass to a tableau rather of the differences between living forms, we
shall see that, with the exception of some of the greater species, such
as the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, tiger, lion, which must each
have their separate place, the other races seem all to blend with
neighbouring forms, and to fall into groups of likenesses, greater or
lesser, and of genera which our nomenclators represent to us by a
network of shapes, of which some are held together by the feet, others
by the teeth, horns, and skin, and others by points of still minor
importance. And even those whose form strikes us as most perfect, as
approaching most nearly to our own--even the apes--require some
attention before they can be distinguished from one another, for the
privilege of being an isolated species has been assigned less to form
than to size; and man himself, though of a separate species and
differing infinitely from all or any others, has but a medium size, and
is less isolated and has nearer neighbours than have the greater
animals. If we study the Orang-outang with regard only to his
configuration, we might regard him, with equal justice, as either the
highest of the apes or as the lowest of mankind, because, with the
exception of the soul, he wants nothing of what we have ourselves, and
because, as regards his body, he differs less from man than he does from
other animals which are still called apes."[115]
The want of a soul Buffon maintains to be the only essential difference
between the Orang-outang and man--"his body, limbs, senses, brain and
tongue are the same as ours. He can execute whatever movements man can
execute; yet he can neither think nor speak, nor do any action of a
distinctly human character. Is this merely through want of training? or
may it not be through wrong comparison on our own parts? We compare the
wild ape in the woods to the civilized citizen of our great towns. No
wonder the ape shows to disadvantage. He should be compared with the
hideous Hottentot rather, who is himself almost as much above the lowest
man, as the lowest man is above the Orang-outang."[116]
The passage is a much stronger one than I have thought it fit to quote.
The reader can refer to it for himself. After reading it I entertain no
further doubt that Buffon intended to convey the impression that men and
apes are descended from common ancestors. He was not, however, going to
avow this conclusion openly.
"I admit," he continues, "that if we go by mere structure the ape might
be taken for a variety of the human race; the Creator did not choose to
model mankind upon an entirely distinct system from the other animals:
He comprised their form and man's under a plan which is in the main
uniform."[117] Buffon then dwells upon the possession of a soul by man;
"even the lowest creature," he avers, "which had this, would have become
man's rival."
"The ape then is purely an animal, far from being a variety of our own
species, he does not even come first in the order of animals, since he
is not the most intelligent: the high opinion which men have of the
intelligence of apes is a prejudice based only upon the resemblance
between their outward appearance and our own."[118] But the undiscerning
were not only to be kept quiet, they were to be made happy. With this
end, if I am not much mistaken, Buffon brings his chapter on the
nomenclature of apes to the following conclusion:--
"The ape, which the philosopher and the uneducated have alike regarded
as difficult to define, and as being at best equivocal, and midway
between man and the lower animals, proves in fact to be an animal and
nothing more; he is masked externally in the shape of man, but
internally he is found incapable of thought, and of all that constitutes
man; apes are below several of the other animals in respect of qualities
corresponding to their own, and differ essentially from man, in nature,
temperament, the time which must be spent upon their gestation and
education, in their period of growth, duration of life, and in fact in
all those profounder habits which constitute what is called the 'nature'
of any individual existence."[119] This is handsome, and leaves the more
timorous reader in full possession of the field.
Buffon is accordingly at liberty in the following chapter to bring
together every fact he can lay his hands on which may point the
resemblance between man and the Orang-outang most strongly; but he is
careful to use inverted commas here much more freely than is his wont.
Having thus made out a strong case for the near affinity between man and
the Orang-outang, and having thrown the responsibility on the original
authors of the passages he quotes, he excuses himself for having quoted
them on the ground that "everything may seem important in the history of
a brute which resembles man so nearly," and then insists upon the points
of difference between the Orang-outang and ourselves. They do not,
however, in Buffon's hands come to much, until the end of the chapter,
when, after a _resume_ dwelling on the points of resemblance, the
differences are again emphatically declared to have the best of it.
I need not follow Buffon through his description of the remaining
monkeys. It comprises 250 pp., and is confined to details with which we
have no concern; but the last chapter--"De la Degeneration des
Animaux"--deserves much fuller quotation than my space will allow me to
make from it. The chapter is very long, comprising, as I have said, over
sixty quarto pages. It is impossible, therefore, for me to give more
than an outline of its contents.
_Causes or Means of the Transformation of Species._
The human race is declared to be the one most capable of modification,
all its different varieties being descended from a common stock, and
owing their more superficial differences to changes of climate, while
their profounder ones, such as woolly hair, flat noses, and thick lips,
are due to differences of diet, which again will vary with the nature of
the country inhabited by any race. Changes will be exceedingly gradual;
it will take centuries of unbroken habit to bring about modifications
which can be transmitted with certainty so as to eventuate in national
characteristics.[120] It is a pleasure to find that here, too, habit is
assigned as the main cause which underlies heredity.
Modification will be much prompter with animals. When compelled to
abandon their native land, they undergo such rapid and profound
modification, that at first sight they can hardly be recognized as the
same race, and cannot be detected in their disguise till after the most
careful inspection, and on grounds of analogy only. Domestication will
produce still more surprising results; the stigmata of their captivity,
the marks of their chains, can be seen upon all those animals which man
has enslaved; the older and more confirmed the servitude, the deeper
will be its scars, until at length it will be found impossible to
rehabilitate the creature and restore to it its lost attributes.
"Temperature of climate, quality of food, and the ills of slavery--here
are the three main causes of the alteration and degeneration of animals.
The consequences of each of these should be particularly considered, so
that by examining Nature as she is to-day we may thus perceive what she
was in her original condition."[121]
I have more than once admitted that there is a wide difference between
this opinion, which assigns modification to the direct influence of
climate, food, and other changed conditions of life, and that of Dr.
Erasmus Darwin, which assigns only an indirect effect to these, while
the direct effect is given to changed actions in consequence of changed
desires; but it is surprising how nearly Buffon has approached the later
and truer theory, which may perhaps have been suggested to Dr. Darwin by
the following pregnant passage--as pregnant, probably, to Buffon himself
as to another:--
"The camel is the animal which seems to me to have felt the weight of
slavery most profoundly. He is born with wens upon his back and
callosities upon his knees and chest; these callosities are the
unmistakable results of rubbing, for they are full of pus and of
corrupted blood. The camel never walks without carrying a heavy burden,
and the pressure of this has hindered, for generations, the free
extension and uniform growth of the muscular parts of the back; whenever
he reposes or sleeps his driver compels him to do so upon his folded
legs, so that little by little this position becomes habitual with him.
All the weight of his body bears, during several hours of the day
continuously, upon his chest and knees, so that the skin of these parts,
pressed and rubbed against the earth, loses its hair, becomes bruised,
hardened, and disorganized.
"The llama, which like the camel passes its life beneath burdens, and
also reposes only by resting its weight upon its chest, has similar
callosities, which again are perpetuated in successive generations.
Baboons, and pouched monkeys, whose ordinary position is a sitting one,
whether waking or sleeping, have callosities under the region of the
haunches, and this hard skin has even become inseparable from the bone
against which it is being continually pressed by the weight of the body;
in the case, however, of these animals the callosities are dry and
healthy, for they do not come from the constraint of trammels, nor from
the burden of a foreign weight, but are the effects only of the natural
habits of the animal, which cause it to continue longer seated than in
any other position. There are callosities of these pouched monkeys which
resemble the double sole of skin which we have ourselves under our feet;
this sole is a natural hardness which our continued habit of walking or
standing upright will make thicker or thinner according to the greater
or less degree of friction to which we subject our feet."[122]
This involves the whole theory of Dr. Darwin.
Wild animals would not change either their food or climate if left to
themselves, and in this case they would not vary, but either man or some
other enemies have harassed most of them into migrations; "those whose
nature was sufficiently flexible to lend itself to the new situation
spread far and wide, while others have had no resource but the deserts
in the neighbourhood of their own countries."[123]
Since food and climate, and still less man's empire over them, can have
but little effect upon wild animals, Buffon refers their principal
varieties in great measure to their sexual habits, variations being much
less frequent among animals that pair and breed slowly, than among those
which do not mate and breed more freely. After running rapidly over
several animals, and discussing the flexibility or inflexibility of
their organizations, he declares the elephant to be the only one on
which a state of domestication has produced no effect, inasmuch as "it
refuses to breed under confinement, and cannot therefore transmit the
badges of its servitude to its descendants."[124]
Here is an example of Buffon's covert manner, in the way he maintains
that descent with modification may account not only for specific but for
generic differences.
"But after having taken a rapid survey of the varieties which indicate
to us the alterations that each species has undergone, there arises a
broader and more important question, how far, namely, species themselves
can change--how far there has been an older degeneration, immemorial
from all antiquity, which has taken place in every family, or, if the
term is preferred, _in all the genera_ under which those species are
comprehended which neighbour one another without presenting points of
any very profound dissimilarity? We have only a few isolated species,
such as man, which form at once the species and the whole genus; the
elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and the giraffe form genera,
or simple species, which go down in a single line, with no collateral
branches. All other races appear to form families, in which we may
perceive a common source or stock from which the different branches seem
to have sprung in greater or less numbers according as the individuals
of each species are smaller and more fecund."[125]
I can see no explanation of the introduction of this passage unless that
it is intended to raise the question whether modification may be not
only specific but generic, the point of the paragraph lying in the
words "dans chaque famille, _ou si l'on veut, dans chacun des genres_."
We are told in the next paragraph, that if we choose to look at the
matter in this light, well--in that case--we ought to see not only the
ass and the horse, but _the zebra too_, as members of the same family;
"the number of their points of resemblance being infinitely greater than
those in respect of which they differ."[126] Thus, at the close of his
work on the quadrupeds, he thinks it well, as at the commencement
seventeen years earlier, to emphasize--in his own quiet way--his
perception that the principles on which he has been insisting should be
carried much farther than he has chosen to carry them.
His conclusion is, that "after comparing all the animals and bringing
them each under their proper genus, we shall find the two hundred
species we have already described to be reducible into a sufficiently
small number of families or main stocks from which it is not impossible
that all the others may be derived."[127]
The chapter closes thus:--
"To account for the origin of these animals" (certain of those peculiar
to America), "we must go back to the time when the two continents were
not yet separated, and call to mind the earliest geological changes. At
the same time, we must consider the two hundred existing species of
quadrupeds as reduced to thirty-eight families. And though this is not
at all the state of Nature as she is in our time, and as she has been
represented in this volume, and though, in fact, it is a condition which
we can only arrive at by induction, and by analogies almost as
difficult to lay hold of as is the time which has effaced the greater
number of their traces, I shall, nevertheless, endeavour to ascend to
these first ages of Nature by the aid of facts and monuments which yet
remain to us, and to represent the epochs which these facts seem to
indicate."[128]
The fifteenth volume contains a description of a few more monkeys, as
also of some animals which Buffon had never actually seen, a great part
being devoted to indices.
_Supplement._
The first four volumes of the Supplement to Buffon's 'Natural History,'
1774-1789, contain little which throws additional light upon his
opinions concerning the mutability of species. At the beginning,
however, of the fifth volume I find the following:--
"On comparing these ancient records of the first ages of life [fossils]
with the productions of to-day, we see with sufficient clearness that
the essential form has been preserved without alteration in its
principal parts: there has been no change whatever in the general type
of each species; the plan of the inner parts has been preserved without
variation. However long a time we may imagine for the succession of
ages, whatever number of generations we may suppose, the individuals of
to-day present to us in each genus the same forms as they did in the
earliest ages; and this is more especially true of the greater species,
whose characters are more invariable and nature more fixed; for the
inferior species have, as we have said, experienced in a perceptible
manner all the effects of different causes of degeneration. Only it
should be remarked in regard to these greater species, such as the
elephant and hippopotamus, that in comparing their fossil remains with
the existing forms we find the earlier ones to have been larger. Nature
was then in the full vigour of her youth, and the interior heat of the
earth gave to her productions all the force and all the extent of which
they were capable ... if there have been lost species, that is to say
animals which existed once, but no longer do so, these can only have
been animals which required a heat greater than that of our present
torrid zone."[129]
The context proves Buffon to have been thinking of such huge creatures
as the megatherium and mastodon, but his words seem to limit the
extinction of species to the denizens of a hot climate which had turned
colder. It is not at all likely that Buffon meant this, as the passage
quoted at p. 146 of this work will suffice to show. The whole paragraph
is ironical.
I can see nothing to justify the conclusion drawn from this passage by
Isidore Geoffroy, that Buffon had modified his opinions, and was
inclined to believe in a more limited mutability than he had done a few
years earlier. His exoteric position is still identical with what it was
in the outset, and his esoteric may be seen from the spirit which is
hardly concealed under the following:--
"I shall be told that analogy points towards the belief that our own
race has followed the same path, and dates from the same period as
other species; that it has spread itself even more widely than they; and
that if man's creation has a later date than that of the other animals,
nothing shows that he has not been subjected to the same laws of nature,
the same alterations, and the same changes as they. We will grant that
the human species does not differ essentially from others in the matter
of bodily organs, and that, in respect of these, our lot has been much
the same as that of other animals."[130]
_Plants under Domestication._
"If more modern and even recent examples are required in order to prove
man's power over the vegetable kingdom, it is only necessary to compare
our vegetables, flowers, and fruits with the same species such as they
were a hundred and fifty years ago; this can be done with much ease and
certainty by running the eye over the great collection of coloured
drawings begun in the time of Gaston of Orleans, and continued to the
present day at the Jardin du Roi. We find with surprise that the finest
flowers of that date, as the ranunculuses, pinks, tulips, bear's ears,
&c., would be rejected now, I do not say by our florists, but by our
village gardeners. These flowers, though then already cultivated, were
still not far above their wild condition. They had a single row of
petals only, long pistils, colours hard and false; they had little
velvety texture, variety, or gradation of tints, and, in fact, presented
all the characteristics of untamed nature. Of herbs there was a single
kind of endive, and two of lettuce--both bad--while we can now reckon
more than fifty lettuces and endives, all excellent. We can even name
the very recent dates of our best pippins and kernel fruits--all of them
differing from those of our forefathers, which they resemble in name
only. In most cases things remain while names change; here, on the
contrary, it is the names that have been constant while the things have
varied.[131]
. . . . . .
"It is not that every one of these good varieties did not arise from the
same wild stock; but how many attempts has not man made on Nature before
he succeeded in getting them. How many millions of germs has he not
committed to the earth, before she has rewarded him by producing them?
It was only by sowing, tending, and bringing to maturity an almost
infinite number of plants of the same kind that he was able to recognize
some individuals with fruits sweeter and better than others; and this
first discovery, which itself involves so much care, would have remained
for ever fruitless if he had not made a second, which required as much
genius as the first required patience--I mean the art of grafting those
precious individuals, which, unfortunately, cannot continue a line as
noble as their own, nor themselves propagate their rare and admirable
qualities? And this alone proves that these qualities are purely
individual, and not specific, for the pips or stones of these excellent
fruits bring forth the original wild stock, so that they do not form
species essentially different from this. Man, however, by means of
grafting, produces what may be called secondary species, which he can
propagate at will; for the bud or small branch which he engrafts upon
the stock contains within itself the individual quality which cannot be
transmitted by seed, but which needs only to be developed in order to
bring forth the same fruits as the individual from which it was taken in
order to be grafted on to the wild stock. The wild stock imparts none of
its bad qualities to the bud, for it did not contribute to the forming
thereof, being, as it were, a wet nurse, and no true mother.
"In the case of animals, the greater number of those features which
appear individual, do not fail to be transmitted to offspring, in the
same way as specific characters. It was easier then for man to produce
an effect upon the natures of animals than of plants. The different
breeds in each animal species are variations that have become constant
and hereditary, while vegetable species on the other hand present no
variations that can be depended on to be transmitted with certainty.
"In the species of the fowl and the pigeon alone, a large number of
breeds have been formed quite recently, which are all constant, and in
other species we daily improve breeds by crossing them. From time to
time we acclimatize and domesticate some foreign and wild species. All
these examples of modern times prove that man has but tardily discovered
the extent of his own power, and that he is not even yet sufficiently
aware of it. It depends entirely upon the exercise of his intelligence;
the more, therefore, he observes and cultivates nature the more means he
will find of making her subservient to him, and of drawing new riches
from her bosom without diminishing the treasures of her inexhaustible
fecundity."[132]
_Birds._
In the preface to his volumes upon birds, Buffon says that these are not
only much more numerous than quadrupeds, but that they also exhibit a
far larger number of varieties, and individual variations.
"The diversities," he declares, "which arise from the effects of climate
and food, of domestication, captivity, transportation, voluntary and
compulsory migration--all the causes in fact of alteration and
degeneration--unite to throw difficulties in the way of the
ornithologist."[133]
He points out the infinitely keener vision of birds than that of man and
quadrupeds, and connects it with their habits and requirements.[134] He
does not appear to consider it as caused by those requirements, though
it is quite conceivable that he saw this, but thought he had already
said enough. He repeatedly refers to the effects of changed climate and
of domestication, but I find nothing in the first volume which modifies
the position already taken by him in regard to descent with
modification: it is needless, therefore, to repeat the few passages
which are to be found bearing at all upon the subject. The chapter on
the birds that cannot fly, contains a sentence which seems to be the
germ that has been developed, in the hands of Lamarck, into the
comparison between nature and a tree. Buffon says that the chain of
nature is not a single long chain, but is comparable rather to something
woven, "which at certain intervals throws out a branch sideways that
unites it with the strands of some other weft."[135] On the following
page there is a passage which has been quoted as an example of Buffon's
contempt for the men of science of his time. The writer maintains that
the most lucid arrangement of birds, would have been to begin with those
which most resembled quadrupeds. "The ostrich, which approaches the
camel in the shape of its legs, and the porcupine in the quills with
which its wings are armed, should have immediately followed the
quadrupeds, but philosophy is often obliged to make a show of yielding
to popular opinions, and _the tribe of naturalists_ is both numerous and
impatient of any disturbance of its methods. It would only, then, have
regarded this arrangement as an unreasonable innovation caused by a
desire to contradict and to be singular."[136]
It is, I believe, held not only by "_le peuple des naturalistes_," but
by most sensible persons, that the proposed arrangement would not have
been an improvement. I find, however, in the preface to the third volume
on birds that M. Gueneau de Montbeillard described all the birds from
the ostrich to the quail, so the foregoing passage is perhaps his and
not Buffon's. If so, the imitation is fair, but when we reflect upon it
we feel uncertain whether it is or is not beneath Buffon's dignity.
Here, as often with pictures and music, we cannot criticise justly
without taking more into consideration than is actually before us. We
feel almost inclined to say that if the passage is by Buffon it is
probably right, and if by M. Gueneau de Montbeillard, probably wrong. It
must also be remembered that, as we learn from the preface already
referred to, Buffon was seized at this point in his work with a long and
painful illness, which continued for two years; a single hasty passage
in so great a writer may well be pardoned under such circumstances.
Looking through the third and remaining volumes on birds, the greater
part of which was by Gueneau de Montbeillard, and bearing in mind that
in point of date they are synchronous with some of those upon quadrupeds
from which I have already extracted as much as my space will allow, and
not seeing anything on a rapid survey which promises to throw new light
upon the author's opinions, I forbear to quote further. I therefore
leave Buffon with the hope that I have seen him more justly than some
others have done, but with the certainty that the points I have caught
and understood are few in comparison with those that I have missed.
FOOTNOTES:
[65] 'Hist. Nat.,' tom. i. p. 13, 1749.
[66] Ibid.
[67] Ibid. p. 16.
[68] Tom. i. p. 21.
[69] Ibid. p. 23.
[70] Tom. ii. p. 9, 1749.
[71] Ibid. p. 10.
[72] Tom. iv. p. 31, 1753.
[73] Tom. iv. p. 55.
[74] Tom. iv. p. 98, 1753.
[75] Ibid.
[76] Tom. viii. p. 283, &c., 1760.
[77] Tom. iv. p. 102, 1760.
[78] Tom. iv. p. 103, 1753.
[79] Dr. Darwin, 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 183, 1796.
[80] Ibid. p. 184.
[81] Dr. Darwin,'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 186.
[82] Tom. v. p. 63, 1755.
[83] Ibid. p. 64.
[84] Tom. v. p. 103, 1755.
[85] Tom. v. p. 104, 1755.
[86] Tom. v. pp. 192-195, 1755.
[87] Tom. v. p. 195.
[88] Tom. v. pp. 196, 197.
[89] This passage would seem to be the one which has suggested the
following to the author of 'The Vestiges of Creation':--
"He [the Deity] has endowed the families which enjoy His bounty with an
almost infinite fecundity, ... but the limitation of the results of this
fecundity ... is accomplished in a befitting manner by His ordaining
that certain other animals shall have endowments sure so to act as to
bring the rest of animated beings to a proper balance" (p. 317, ed.
1853).
[90] Tom. vi. p. 252, 1756.
[91] 'Discours sur la Nature des Animaux,' vol. iv. and p. 113 of
this vol.
[92] Tom. vii. p. 9, 1758.
[93] Tom. vii. p. 10, 1758.
[94] Tom. vii. p. 12, 1758.
[95] Tom. vii. p. 14, 1758
[96] Tom. vii. p. 15, 1758.
[97] Tom. vii. p. 19, 1758.
[98] Tom. vii. p. 23, 1758. See Stenon's Discourse upon this subject.
[99] Tom. ix. p. 10, 1761.
[100] Tom. ix. p. 11, 1761.
[101] Tom. ix. p. 68, 1761.
[102] Ibid. p. 96, 1761.
[103] Tom. ix. p. 107 and following pages (during which he rails at the
new world generally), 1761.
[104] Tom. ix. p. 127, 1761.
[105] Tom. xi. p. 290, 1764 (misprinted on title-page 1754).
[106] Ibid. p. 296.
[107] Ibid. p. 363.
[108] Ibid. p. 363.
[109] Tom. xi. p. 370, 1764.
[110] Ibid. xii., preface, iv. 1764.
[111] Tom. xiii., preface, x. 1765.
[112] Tom. xiii., preface, iv. 1765.
[113] Ibid. xiii. p. 37.
[114] See p. 80 of this volume.
[115] Tom. xiv. p. 30, 1766.
[116] Tom. xiv. p. 31, 1766.
[117] Ibid. p. 32, 1766.
[118] Tom. xiv. p. 38, 1766.
[119] Ibid. p. 42, 1766.
[120] Tom. xiv. p. 316, 1766.
[121] Ibid. p. 317.
[122] Tom. xiv. p. 326, 1766.
[123] Ibid. p. 327.
[124] Tom. xiv. p. 333.
[125] Ibid. p. 335, 1766.
[126] See p. 80 of this volume.
[127] Tom. xiv. p. 358, 1766.
[128] Tom. xiv. p. 374, 1766.
[129] 'Hist. Nat.,' Sup. tom. v. p. 27, 1778.
[130] Sup. tom. v. p. 187, 1778.
[131] Sup. tom. v. p. 250, 1778.
[132] Sup. tom. v. p. 253, 1778.
[133] 'Oiseaux,' tom. i., preface, v. 1770.
[134] Ibid. pp. 9-11.
[135] 'Oiseaux,' tom. i. pp. 394, 395.
[136] Ibid. p. 396, 1771.