SUPPOSED FL UCTUA TIONS OF OPINION. IO$ 



He may be said to have attributed variation to the 

 direct and specific action of changed conditions of life, 

 and to have had but little conception of the view which 

 he was himself to suggest to Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and 

 through him to Lamarck. 



Isidore Geoffroy, writing of Lamarck, and comparing 

 his position with that taken by Buftbn, says, on the 

 whole truly, that " what Buffon ascribes to the general 

 effects of climate, Lamarck maintains to be caused, 

 especially in the case of animals, by the force of 

 habits ; so tliat, according to him, they are not, properly 

 speaking, modified by the conditions of their existence, but 

 are only induced ly these conditions to set about modi- 

 fying themselves" * But it is very hard to say how 

 much Buffon saw and how much he did not see. He 

 may be trusted to have seen that if he once allowed 

 the thin end of this wedge into his system, he could no 

 more assign limits to the effect which living forms might 

 produce upon their own organisms by effort and inge- 

 nuity in the course of long time, than he could set 

 limits to what he had called the power of Nature if he 

 was once to admit that an ass and a horse might, through 

 that power, have been descended from a common an- 

 cestor. Nevertheless, he shows no unwillingness or 

 recalcitrancy about letting the wedge enter, for he speaks 

 of domestication as inducing modifications " sufficiently 

 profound to become constant and hereditary in successive 

 generations. . . . by its action on bodily habits it influences 

 also their natures, instincts, and most inivard qualities" t 



* 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' torn. it. p. 411, 1859. 



t Tom. xi. p. 290, 1764 (misprinted on title-page 1754). 



