The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

Life, Buffon also held, abides in organic molecules. "Living beings are made up of these molecules, which exist in countless numbers, which may be separated but cannot be destroyed, which pierce into brute matter, and, working there, develop, it may be animals, it may be plants, according to the nature of the matter in which they are lodged. These indestructible molecules circulate throughout the universe, pass from one being to another, minister to the continuance of life, provide for nutrition and the growth of the individual, and determine the reproduction of the species."

Buffon further taught that the quantity and quality of life pass from lower to higher stages—in Tennysonian phrase, men "rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things"—and showed the unity and structure of all beings, of whom man is the most perfect type.

It has been claimed that Buffon in a measure anticipated Lamarck and Darwin. He had already foreseen the mutability of species, but had not succeeded in proving it for varieties and races. If he asserted that the species of dog, jackal, wolf and fox were derived from a single one of these species, that the horse came from the zebra, and so on, this was far from being tantamount to a demonstration of the doctrine. In fact, he put forward the mutability of species rather as probable theory than as established truth, deeming it the corollary of his views on the succession and connection of beings in a continuous series.

Some case may be made out for regarding Buffon as the founder of zoogeography; at all events he was the earliest to determine the natural habitat of each species. He believed that species changed with climate, but that no kind was found throughout all the globe. Man alone has the privilege of being everywhere and always the same, because the human race is one. The white man (European or Caucasian), the black man (Ethiopian), the yellow man (Mongol), and the red man (American) are only varieties of the human species. As the Scots express it with wonted pith, "We're a' Jock Tamson's bairns."

As to his geological works, Buffon expounded two theories of the formation of the globe. In his "Théorie de la Terre" he supported the Neptunists, who attributed the phenomena of the earth to the action of water. In his "Epoques de la Nature" he amplified the doctrines of Leibniz, and laid down the following propositions: (1) The earth is elevated at the equator and depressed at the poles in accordance with the laws of gravitation and centrifugal force; (2) it possesses an internal heat, apart from that received from the sun; (3) its own heat is insufficient to maintain life; (4) the substances of which the earth is composed are of the nature of glass, or can be converted into glass as the result of heat and fusion—that is, are verifiable; (5) everywhere on the surface, including mountains, exist enormous quantities of shells and other maritime remains.