with the physics and chemistry of his time. "Before Laplace, he elaborated a hypothesis as to the origin of the solar system; before Hutton and Lyell, he realized the causes like those now at work had, in the long past, sculptured the earth; he had a special theory of heredity not unlike Darwin's, and a by no means narrow theory of evolution, in which he recognized the struggle for existence and the elimination of the unfit ('the survival of the fittest' of Herbert Spencer, and the 'natural selection' of Charles Darwin), the influence of isolation and of artificial selection, but especially the direct action of food, climate, and other surrounding influences upon the organism": and his writings paved the way for the doctrine of descent. Buffon saw, with a philosophic eye, the unity of nature; and no doubt he would have seen more, and written more, if orthodox creeds had not stood in his way. He had always to keep an eye on the Sorbonne!
Living in the renaissance of science, Buffon was no believer in the permanent stability of species. He says, e.g., "the pig does not appear to have been formed upon an original, special, and perfect plan, since it is a compound of other animals; it has evidently useless parts, or rather parts of which it cannot make any use—toes, all the bones of which are perfectly formed, and which, nevertheless, are of no service to it. Nature is far from subjecting herself to final causes in the formation of her
