BUFFON— FULLER QUOTATIONS. 153 



A^s and Monkeys. 



The fourteenth volume is devoted to apes and mon- 

 keys, and to the chapter with which the volumes on 

 quadrupeds are brought to a conclusion — a chapter for 

 which perhaps the most important position in the whole 

 work is thus assigned. It is very long, and is headed 

 •' On Descent with Modification" ("De la Degeneration 

 des Animaux "). This is the chapter in which Buffon 

 enters more fully into the " causes or means " of the 

 transformation of species. 



At the opening of the chapter on the nomenclature 

 of monkeys, the theory is broached that there is a 

 certain fixed amount of life-substance as of matter in 

 nature ; and that neither can be either augmented 

 or diminished. Buffon maintains this organic and 

 living substance to be as real and durable as inanimate 

 matter ; as permanent in its state of life as the other in 

 that of death ; it is spread over the whole of nature, 

 and passes from vegetables to animals by way of nu- 

 trition, and from animals back to vegetables through 

 putrefaction, thus circulating incessantly to the anima- 

 tion of all that lives. 



As might be expected, Buffon is loud in his protest 

 against any real similarity between man and the apes — 

 man has had the spirit of the Deity breathed into his 

 nostrils, and the lowest creature with this is higher 

 than the highest without it. Having settled this point, 

 he makes it his business to show how little difference 

 in other respects there is between the apes and man. 



" One who OQuld view," he writes, " Nature in her 



