Is he to be taken at his word?
It is perhaps necessary to tell the reader that Buffon carried the
foregoing scheme into practice as nearly as he could in the first fifteen
volumes of his Natural History. He begins with man--and then goes on to
the horse, the ass, the cow, sheep, goat, pig, dog, &c. One would be
glad to know whether he found it always more easy to know in what order
of familiarity this or that animal would stand to the majority of his
readers than other classifiers have found it to know whether an
individual more resembles one species or another; probably he never gave
the matter a thought after he had gone through the first dozen most
familiar animals, but settled generally down into a classification which
becomes more and more specific--as when he treats of the apes and
monkeys--till he reaches the birds, when he openly abandons his original
idea, in deference, as he says, to the opinion of "le peuple des
naturalistes."
Perhaps the key to this piece of apparent extravagance is to be found in
the word "mysterieuse." {166c} Buffon wished to raise a standing protest
against mystery mongering. Or perhaps more probably, he wished at once
to turn to animals under domestication, so as to insist early on the main
object of his work--the plasticity of animal forms.
I am inclined to think that a vein of irony pervades the whole or much
the greater part of Buffon's work, and that he intended to convey one
meaning to one set of readers, and another to another; indeed, it is
often impossible to believe that he is not writing between his lines for
the discerning, what the undiscerning were not intended to see.
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