HISTORICAL OR COMPARATIVE METHOD 63 



was impossible, and it was assumed that early history 

 of every kind must be miraculous. 1 



Montesquieu (Esprit des Lots, 1748) was the first to 

 exhibit on an impressive scale the power of the his- 

 torical method. Natural development, determined by 

 unalterable conditions, was with him the key to the 

 right understanding of the past. It is well known that 

 here and there a great thinker had before Montesquieu 

 framed something like the same conception. The 

 Politics of Aristotle 2 and Vico's study of the historical 

 evolution of the Roman law (1725) are memorable 

 anticipations. By 1748, the date of the Esprit des Lois, 

 or 1749, the date of Buffon's first volumes, which come 

 next before us, Newton's Principia had made students 

 of physics and astronomy practically familiar with the 

 notion of universal causation. 



Buffon's place in the history of science is that of one 

 who accomplished great things in spite of weaknesses 

 peculiarly alien to the scientific spirit. It was mainly 

 he who, by strenuous exertions and largely at his own 

 cost, transformed the gardens from which the king's 

 physicians used to procure their drugs into what we 

 now know as the Jardin des Plantes. By the untiring 

 labours of fifty years he produced a Natural History in 



1 In circles untouched by general European thought such beliefs 

 lasted much later. Sir Francis Galton {Memories of My Life, 

 p. 67) says : "The horizon of the antiquarians was so narrow at 

 about the date (1840) of my Cambridge days that the whole history 

 of the early world was literally believed, by many of the best- 

 informed men, to be contained in the Pentateuch. It was also 

 practically supposed that nothing more of importance could be 

 learnt of the origin of civilisation during classical times than was 

 to be found definitely stated in classical authors." 



2 " If anything could disentitle Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois to 

 the proud motto, Prolem sine matre creatam, it would be its close 

 relationship to the Politics." (A. W. Benn's Greek Philosophers. 

 Vol. II., p. 429.) 



