" Buffon could not have done
anything like this.
Buffon never, then, "arraigned the Creator for what was wanting or
defective in His works;" on the contrary, whenever he was led up by an
irresistible chain of reasoning to conclusions which should make men
recast their ideas concerning the Deity, he invariably retreats under
cover of an appeal to revelation. Naturally enough, the Sorbonne
objected to an artifice which even Buffon could not conceal completely.
They did not like being undermined; like Buffon himself, they preferred
imposing upon the people, to seeing others do so. Buffon made his peace
with the Sorbonne immediately, and, perhaps, from that time forward,
contradicted himself a little more impudently than heretofore.
It is probably for the reasons above suggested that Buffon did not
propound a connected scheme of evolution or descent with modification,
but scattered his theory in fragments up and down his work in the
prefatory remarks with which he introduces the more striking animals or
classes of animals. He never wastes evolutionary matter in the preface
to an uninteresting animal; and the more interesting the animal, the more
evolution will there be commonly found. When he comes to describe the
animal more familiarly--and he generally begins a fresh chapter or half
chapter when he does so--he writes no more about evolution, but gives an
admirable description, which no one can fail to enjoy, and which I cannot
think is nearly so inaccurate as is commonly supposed.
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