200 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



as too plain speaking in the days he wrote often led 

 to persecution and personal hazard* 



His cosmological ideas were based on those of Bur- 

 net and Leibnitz. His geological notions were founded 

 on the labors of Palissy, Steno, Woodward, and 

 Whiston. He depended upon his friend Daubenton 

 for anatomical facts, and on Gueneau de Montb^liard 

 and the Abb6 Bexon for his zoological data. As 

 Flourens says, ''^ Buffon was not exactly an observer : 

 others observed and discovered for him. He discov- 

 ered, himself, the observations of others ; he sought 

 for ideas, others sought facts for him."" How fulsome 

 his eulogists were is seen in the case of Flourens, 

 who capped the climax in exclaiming, " Buffon is 

 Leibnitz with the eloquence of Plato ; ''and he adds, 

 " He did not write for savants : he wrote for all man- 

 kind." ''' No one now reads Buffon, while the works of 

 Reaumur, who preceded him, are nearly as valuable 

 as ever, since they are packed with careful observa- 

 tions. 



The experiments of Redi, of Swammerdam, and of 

 Vallisneri, and the observations of Reaumur, had no 



* Mr. Morley, in his Rousseau, gives a startling picture of the 

 hostility of the parliament at the period (1762) when Buffon's works 

 appeared. Not only was Rousseau hunted out of P" ranee, and his books 

 burnt by the public executioner, but there was " hardly a single man of 

 letters of that time who escaped arbitrary imprisonment " (p. 270) ; 

 among others thus imprisoned was Diderot. At this time (1750-1765) 

 Malesherbes (born 1721, guillotined 1794), one of the " best instructed 

 and most enlightened men of the century," was Directeur de laLibraire. 

 " The process was this : a book was submitted to him ; he named a cen- 

 sor for it; on the censor's report the director gave or refused permission 

 to print or required alterations. Even after these formalities were com- 

 plied with, the book was liable to a decree of the royal council, a 

 decree of the parliament, or else a lettre-de-cachet might send the 

 author to the Bastille " (Morley's Rousseau, p. 266). 



