±1.2. THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



natural phenomena; its forms and manifestations imperceptibly merge into 

 one another, wherefore vegetable systems in particular, such as those set up 

 by Tournefort and Linnaeus, are utterly unnatural. Buffon is very keenly op- 

 posed to Linnasus; he asks ironically what is the use of the sexual system 

 when the plants have ceased to flower. In fact, the whole of the Linnasan 

 system of species classification was intrinsically repugnant to Buffon; it 

 seemed to him to be an arbitrary decimation of unified nature into little bits; 

 Linnasus's efforts to create a natural system and his emphasis upon the in- 

 completeness of the classification system, in which he did not vary very 

 much from Buffon's own ideas, were simply neglected by him; apparently 

 they appeared to him merely as slight inconsistencies in a falsely founded 

 view. He criticizes Linn^eus's animal classification with similar asperity and 

 undeniably touches its weakest point when he rejects the two great classes, 

 insects and worms; no one, he says, can imagine that crayfish are insects, 

 and shells worms. Instead of six Linnasus should have set up twelve classes, 

 or even still more, for the more groups there are the nearer we arrive at the 

 truth. In fact, in nature there are only individuals; genera, orders, and classes 

 exist only in our imagination. In this Buffon is undoubtedly right in theory, 

 but he overlooks the practical advantage of the "imagined" categories, 

 without which the various life -forms could not possibly be dealt with by 

 science. Instead of the artificial classification-system which he thus rejects, 

 Buffon presents an introduction to the study of nature that, to some extent, 

 is reminiscent of the modern intuitive method of instruction; the description 

 of nature should follow the course which a man ought to pursue if, after 

 having forgotten all that he ever knew, he were put in a place surrounded 

 by natural objects; he would first learn to differentiate between animals, 

 plants, and stones, and then, as regards animals, he would observe the most 

 essential features in their habitat and mode of life and would group the in- 

 dividual animals accordingly in his mind and finally would learn to compare 

 the different animals with one another in greater detail, first distinguishing 

 the tame animals from the wild, then among the wild those who lead the 

 same mode of life and resemble one another in their structure. He glorifies 

 the ancient biologists Aristotle and Pliny, just because they followed a 

 similar natural plan of dealing with living creatures. In his opinion, how- 

 ever, modern research should in no way confine itself merely to observing 

 and describing; the scientist should rather confirm his observations by means 

 of experiment; he should know how to combine observations and to gen- 

 eralize facts, to make individual phenomena obedient to general laws, and, 

 finally, to compare the most comprehensive phenomena of nature with one 

 another. The ultimate aim is to bring all phenomena under the general laws 

 of physics, those laws whose causes remain incomprehensible to man, while 

 only their effects are perceptible. Here Buffon has undoubtedly learnt from 



