“ His views about the origin of society and language and the faculties by which man is distinguished from the brutes have many curious points of contact with Darwinism and neo-Kantianism. His idea of studying man as one of the animals, and of collecting facts about savage tribes to throw light on the problems of civilization, bring him into contact with the one, and his intimate knowledge of Greek philosophy with the other. In both respects Monboddo was far in advance of his neighbours. ”

“ Boswell’s Life of Johnson gives an account of the lexicographer’s visit to Burnett at Monboddo, and is full of references to the natural contemporary view of a man who thought that the human race could be descended from monkeys. ”

“ His studied abstinence from fine writing—from “the rhetorical and poetical style fashionable among writers of the present day”—on such subjects as he handled confirmed the idea of his contemporaries that he was only an eccentric concocter of supremely absurd paradoxes. He died on the 26th of May 1799. ”