SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES ^19 



especially beyond the borders of France, as a talented dilettante, a witty 

 popular scientist and writer, this is mainly due to the relations in which he 

 stood, both in his lifetime and long afterwards, to the representatives of the 

 Linnnsan system of classification; these latter, who for a long time felt that 

 they were the sole upholders of a truly exact natural science, looked compas- 

 sionately down upon BufTon's unsystematic descriptions and imaginative 

 speculations. When, then, the dominion of Linnasanism fell, the comparative 

 and speculative lines of research which succeeded it already possessed entirely 

 different intellectual material to build upon, and Buffon's theories thereafter 

 necessarily appeared vague and childish. His services, however, must in all 

 fairness be duly acknowledged; in the purely theoretical sphere he was the 

 foremost biologist of the eighteenth century, the one who possessed the 

 greatest wealth of ideas, of real benefit to subsequent ages and exerting an 

 influence stretching far into the future. 



