SECT. 3] AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 207 



idea of the organism as a whole that he could not fit in with epigenesis. 

 Needham and Wolff were undoubtedly epigenesist-vitalists, and 

 Bonnet was undoubtedly a preformationist-vitalist, but Maupertuis 

 was equally clearly an epigenesist-mechanist. 



G. L. Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, the most independent figure in 

 the controversy, stood alone as much because of his erroneous experi- 

 ments as because of his originality of mind. As has so often been 

 observed, Buffon was not really an experimentalist at all: he was a 

 writer, and preferred other people to do his experiments for him. 

 The volume on generation in his Histoire Naturelle begins with a very 

 long historical account of the work that had been done in the previous 

 centuries on embryology. At the beginning of the section on repro- 

 duction in general he said, "The first and most simple manner of 

 reproduction is to assemble in one body an infinite number of similar 

 organic bodies and to compose the substance in such a manner that 

 every part shall contain a germ or embryo of the same species and 

 which might become a whole of the same kind with that of which 

 it constitutes a part". Such an idea resembles the ancient atomistic 

 speculations, and is explicated by W. Smellie, the obstetrician, who 

 translated Buffon into English, as follows: "The intelligent reader 

 will perceive that this sentence, though not very obvious, contains 

 the principle upon which the whole theory of generation adopted 

 by the author is founded. It means no more than that the bodies 

 of animals and of vegetables are composed of an infinite number 

 of organic particles, perfectly similar, both in figure and substance, 

 to the whole animal or plant of which they are the constituent parts ". 

 This conception explains Buffon's curious attitude to the preformation 

 question. An embryo was preformed in its germ because all the parts 

 of the germ were each a model of the animal as a whole, but it was 

 also formed by epigenesis because, the sexual organs being first 

 formed, all the rest arose entirely by a succession of new origins. 

 Buffon's "organic, living, particles" bear some resemblance to the 

 "biogen molecules" which later generations were to discuss, and he 

 says that an exactly similar but simpler structure is present in dead 

 matter. 



In his discussion of former theories he resolutely rejects the em- 

 boitement aspect of preformationism, giving various calculations to 

 show its impossibility and maintaining that "every hypothesis which 

 admits an infinite progression ought to be rejected not only as false 



