2o8 Address to the British Association 



admiring assailant, to point out that in the table of contents 

 in the final volume of his History of Mammals ^ (which table 

 gives the pith and gist of his several treatises), he distinctly 

 affirms the distinctions maintained in the body of his work. 



The following were Buffon's views. In his Discourse on 

 the Nature of Animals,'^ he says : ' Far from denying feehngs 

 to animals, I concede to them everything except thought and 



reflection They have sensations, but no faculty of 



comparing them one with another ; that is to say, they have 

 not the power which produces ideas.' He is full of scorn ^ 

 for that gratuitous admiration for the moral and intellectual 

 faculties of bees, which Sir John Lubbock's excellent obser- 

 vations and experiments have shown to be indeed gratuitous. 

 Speaking of the ape, most man-like (and so man-like) as to 

 brain, he says : * ' II ne pense pas : y a-t-il une preuve plus 

 evidente que la matiere seule, quoique parfaitement organisee, 

 ne pent produire ni la pensee, ni la parole qui en est le signe, 

 a moins qu'elle ne soit animee par un principe superieur ? ' ^ 

 Buflfon has been accused of vacillation with respect to his 

 doctrines concerning animal variation, but no one has accused 

 him of vacillation with respect to his views concerning reason 

 and instinct. 



I come now to the passage which I said has been so 

 strangely misunderstood. It is that in which he expresses 

 his conviction that ' animals have no knowledge of the past, 

 no idea of time, and consequently no memory.' But to quote 

 this passage without explanation, is gravely to misrepresent 



1 Op. cit., tome xv. 2 Qp ^.j^^ vol. iv. p. 41. 



3 Op. cit., tome iv. p. 91. ^ Op. cit., tome xiv. p. 61. 



5 Mr. Butler cites objections brought forward in a certain passage (from 

 pp. 30 and 31, vol. xiv.), as if they were ButFon's own. But they are the 

 objections of an imagined opponent whose views BufFon himself combats. It 

 is worthy of note that Buffon long anticipated our contemporaries with 

 respect to man's place in nature in so far as concerns his mere anatomy. For 

 he did not hesitate to affirm that the Orang differs less from us structurally 

 than it differs from some other ape. 



