KANT AND EVOLUTION 37 



" Elucidation of the Conception of a Race of Men." 23 These two essays 

 do not significantly differ in doctrine., and they may most conveniently 

 be dealt with here as slightly variant expressions of the same arguments 

 and conclusions. They are among the most important documents for 

 the determination of Kant's position with respect to the theory of evo- 

 lution. 



Kant derived not only most of his zoological facts, but also some of 

 his ideas of scientific method, from Buffon. The latter, like Mau- 

 pertuis, had ridiculed the " systems " and " methods " of the great 

 systematists, Linnaeus and Tournefort, and had looked with a good 

 deal of contempt upon their absorption in purely descriptive and classi- 

 ficatory science. Schemes of classification were convenient, no doubt, 

 and accurate description essential; but there was a higher stage of 

 scientific inquiry to which these were merely vestibulary. Buffon 

 wrote : 24 



We ought to try to rise to something greater and still more worthy of 

 occupying us — that is to say, to combine observations, to generalize the facts, 

 to link them together by the force of analogy, and to endeavor to arrive at that 

 high degree of knowledge in which one can recognize particular effects as de- 

 pendent upon more general effects, can compare nature with herself in her larger 

 processes. 



This spirit Kant had in some degree caught ; and in the " Physical 

 Geography" he proposes a modification in the nomenclature of the 

 sciences which should express the distinction between two types of 

 scientific inquiry. He observes : 



We are accustomed to use the words " Natursbeschreibung " (description 

 of nature) and " Naturgeschichte" 2 * (natural history) as synonymous. But it 

 is manifest that the knowledge of the things of nature as they now are still 

 leaves to be desired a knowledge of what they previously have been, and of the 

 changes through which they have passed in order to arrive at their present con- 

 dition. A " history of nature " — such as is still almost completely lacking — 

 would make known to us the alterations of the form of the earth and those 

 which the terrestrial creatures (plants and animals) have undergone in the 

 course of their natural migrations, and their consequent divergences from the 

 primitive type of their ancestral species (Stammgattung) . Such a science 

 would probably reduce a great number of seemingly distinct species (Arten) to 

 mere races of a single genus (Gattung) , and would transform the now current 

 artificial system (Schulsystem) of nature-description into a physical system for 

 the understanding. 



In this, manifestly, Kant shows a lively sense of the nature and im- 

 portance of genetic problems in the investigations of the naturalist. It 

 is true that he somewhat naively makes the distinction between the 



23 " Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace," here referred to as the 

 " Conception of Race." V. Hartenstein edition, IV., 215. 



24 " Discours de la maniere d'etudier et de traiter l'histoire naturelle." In 

 " CEuvres," Lanessan ed., Vol. I., p. 6. 



20 Later (in the " Use of Teleological Principles ") Kant proposed to express 

 this distinction by the words " physiography " and " physiogony." 



