80 EVOLUTION, SOCIAL AND ORGANIC 



volume of Buffon's "Natural History." "If 

 we once admit'' says he, "that the ass belongs 

 to the horse family, and that it only differs 

 from it because it has been modified, we may 

 likewise say that the monkey is of the same 

 family as man, that it is a modified man, that 

 man and the monkey have had a common 

 origin like the horse and ass, that each family 

 has had but a single source, and even that all 

 the animals have come from a single animal, 

 which in the succession of ages has produced, 

 while perfecting and modifying itself, all the 



races of other animals If it were 



known that in the animals there had been, I 

 do not say several species, but a single one 

 which had been produced by modification from 

 another species ; if it were true that the ass is 

 only a modified horse, there would be no limit 

 to the power of nature, and we would not be 

 wrong in supposing that from a single being 

 she has known how to derive, with time, all 

 the other organized beings." 



There is no such clear statement of the 

 evolutionary theory in the "System of Nature'* 

 of Linnaeus, and if Buffon had proclaimed 

 these views as his own and courageously de- 

 fended them, he would have made his name 

 the greatest of the i8th century, and clothed 

 himself with immortality. But the stuff of 



