comte de Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon

“ In short, the quantities of pumice-stones which travellers affirm are met with in many parts of the ocean, and the Mediterranean, prove there are volcanos at the bottom of the sea, similar to those we are acquainted with, and which differ not in the least from them, neither by the matters they cast out, nor by the violence of the explosion, but solely by the rarity and shortness of the duration of their effects. From hence we may fairly infer that the bottom of the sea in every respect resembles the surface of the earth. ”

“ Can a triangular harmony form the substance of the elements? Is fire, as Plato affirms, an acute triangle, and light and heat properties of this triangle? Air and water, are they rectangular and equilateral triangles? Is the form of the terrestrial element a square, because, being the least perfect of all the four elements, it recedes as much as possible from a triangle without losing its essence? Do the male and female embrace only to complete the triangle of generation? These platonic ideas have two very different [334] aspects. ”

“ Man, to consider him by his material form alone, is only superior to the brute creation by possessing some few peculiar properties, such as those given to him by his tongue and hands; and although the works of the Creator are in themselves equally perfect, the animal, according to our mode of perception, is the most complete, and man the most perfect animal.
What variety of springs, what forces, and what mechanical motions are enclosed in this small part of matter which composes the body of an animal? ”

“ This notion is just with relation to us, but we know not, in reality, whether the animal, vegetable, or mineral, is the most simple or complex; and we are ignorant whether a globule, or a cube, is more indebted for an exertion of nature, than a seed or an organic particle. If we would form conjectures on this subject, we might suppose that the most common and numerous things are the most simple but then animals would be the most simple, since the number of their kind far exceeds that of plants or minerals. ”

“ This philosopher is a painter only of ideas; disengaged from matter he elevates into the [331] regions of abstraction, and, losing sight of sensible objects, perceives and contemplates the intellectual alone. One cause, one end, and one sole mode, form the whole of his perceptions. God is the cause, perfection the end, and harmonic representations the modes. What can be a more sublime idea! ”

“ And as we are now convinced by facts, and the multitude of constant and uniform observations, that there exists in nature powers which do not act by the mode of impulsion, why should we not make use of those powers as mechanical principles? Why should we exclude them from the explanations of effects, which we are convinced they produce? Why should we be confined to employ only the power of impulsion? Is not this like judging of a picture by the touch, and explaining the phenomena of the mass by those of the surface, and the penetrating power by superficial action? ”

“ A volcano is an immense cannon, whose orifice is often more than half a league: from this wide mouth are vomited forth torrents of smoke and flames, rivers of bitumen, sulphur, and melted metals, clouds of cinders and stones, and sometimes it ejects enormous rocks to many leagues distance, which human powers united could not move ”

“ The first seed, in that case, must have contained every plant of its kind which have existed or ever will exist; and the first man must actually and individually have contained in his loins every man which has or will appear on the face of the earth. Each seed, and each animal, agreeable to this opinion, must have possessed within an infinite posterity. But the more we suffer ourselves to wander into these kind of reasonings, the more we lose the sight of truth in the labyrinth of infinity ”

“ Are we better acquainted with the effects of Nature, from being told that nothing is made without a reason, or that all is made in view of perfection? What is this sufficient reason? what is this perfection? are they not moral beings created by intellects purely human? ”

“ Let us then content ourselves with a more humble and more material philosophy; and by keeping within the sphere Nature has allotted us, let us examine the rash steps and the rapid flight of those who attempt to soar beyond it. ”

“ At eleven o'clock in the morning, the air being filled with clouds, we perceived about our vessel, at a quarter of a mile distant, six water-spouts, which made a noise similar to that of water flowing in subterraneous canals, and increased until it resembled the whistling which an impetuous wind makes among the cordage of a ship. We at first observed the water to boil up about a foot and a half above the surface. Above this boiling there appeared a mixed or rather a thick smoke, which formed a kind of canal, that ascended to the clouds. ”

“ But I will go farther; the general division which we ought to make of matter seems to me to be in living and dead matter, instead of organized and brute; the brute is only that matter produced by the death of animals or vegetables; I could prove it by that enormous quantity of shells, and other cast-off matters of living animals, which compose the principal part of stones, marble, chalk, marle, earth, turf, and other substances, which we call brute matter, and which are only the ruins of dead animals or vegetables ”

“ The lakes differ from the mediterraneans; the first do not receive any water from the ocean; on the contrary, if they have communication with the seas, they furnish them with water. Thus the Black Sea, which some geographers have regarded as an arm of the Mediterranean, and consequently as an appendix of the ocean, is only a lake, because, in place of receiving water from the Mediterranean, [39] it supplies it with some, and flows with rapidity through the Bosphorus into the lake called the Sea of Marmora, and from thence through the Strait of the Dardanelles into the Grecian Sea. ”

“ The world is the most perfect being, and to have a complete perfection it was necessary that it contained every other animal, every possible representation, and every imaginable form, of the creative faculty. The essence of all generation consists in the unity and harmony of the number Three, or of the triangle, viz. that which generates, that in which generation is performed, and that which is engendered. The succession of individuals in the species is only a fugitive image of the immutable eternity of this triangular harmony, the universal prototype of every existence and every generation ”

“ A second analogy is, that nutrition and reproduction are both not only produced by the same efficient, but also by the same material cause, the organic particles of the nutriment. And a proof that it is the superfluity of those particles which serves for reproduction, is the body not being in a condition to propagate before they have done growing; and we daily see in dogs, and other animals, who more exactly follow the laws of nature than we, that they nearly attain their full growth before they attempt to copulate, and by which we may know whether a dog will increase any more or not ”

“ To regard numbers, geometrical lines, and metaphysical abstractions, as efficient and real physical causes, on which the formation of the elements, the generation of animals and plants, and all the phenomena of Nature depend, seems to me to be the most absurd abuse of reason, and the greatest obstacle that can be put against the advancement of our knowledge. ”

“ It is not inequalities at the bottom of the sea alone which form currents, but the coasts themselves have a similar effect, as the water is repelled at greater or lesser distances: this repulsion of the waters is a kind of current which circumstances can render continual and violent; the oblique position of a coast, the vicinity of a bay, or of some great river, a promontory; in one word, every particular obstacle which opposes the general motion, will always produce a current. ”

“ We are not purely spiritual beings, nor have we the power to give a real existence to our ideas. Confined to matter, our rather dependent on what causes our sensations, the real substance can never be produced by the abstracted. I answer Plato in his own language, "The Creator realizes every thing he conceives; his perceptions engender existence: the created being, on the contrary, conceives nothing by retrenching them but from reality, and the production of his ideas do not amount to any thing." ”

“ It is, says our philosopher, a spirit, whose substance is like that of the starry region. The heart is the first work of this soul; it contains in itself the principle of its own growth; and it has the power to arrange the other members. The menstrual blood contains every other principle of all the parts of the fœtus: the soul, or spirit, of the male seed, makes the heart begin to act, and that communicates the power of bringing the other viscera to action; and thus, successively, is every part of the animal unfolded and brought into motion. ”

“ The water of the Black Sea appears to be less clear and less saline than that of the ocean. There are no islands in it, and its tempests are more violent and more dangerous than in the ocean, because the whole body of its waters being contained in a bason, which has but a small outlet, when they are agitated, they have a kind of whirling motion which strikes the vessels on every side with an insupportable violence.
Next to the Black Sea the greatest lake in the universe is the Caspian Sea, whose extent in length from north to south is about 300 leagues, and scarcely more than fifty broad. ”

“ The human species, therefore, may be said to hold the first rank in the order of nature, the brute creation the second, vegetables the third, and minerals the last; for although we cannot clearly distinguish between our animal and spiritual qualities, and although the brute creation are endowed with the same senses, possess the same principles of life and motion, and perform a number of actions like man, yet they have not the relation with external objects in the same extensive manner we have, and consequently the resemblance must fail in various respects. ”

“ We will shew that there exists an infinity of living organic particles in Nature; that their production is of little expence to Nature, since their existence is constant and invariable, and that the causes of death only separate without destroying them. Therefore the matter which the animal or vegetable assimilates is an organic matter of the same nature as the animal or vegetable itself, and which consequently can augment the size without changing the form or quality of the matter of the mould, since it is in fact of the same form and quality as that which it is constituted with. ”

“ It is not at the same moment or hour that an earthquake is felt in two distant places. Neither fire nor eruption attend those earthquakes which are heard at a distance, and the noise always marks the progressive motion of this subterraneous wind. This theory is confirmed by two other facts; it is well known that mines exhale unhealthy air and suffocating vapours, independent of the wind produced by the current of water: it is also known that there are holes, abysses and deep lakes in the earth, which produce winds, as the lake Boleslaw, in Bohemia, which we have already spoken of. ”

“ Fire, for example, turns into its own substance almost every species of matter, and is the greatest means of destruction known to us. Animals seem to participate of the qualities of flame; their internal heat is a kind of fire; therefore, after fire, animals are the greatest destroyers, and they assimilate and convert into their own substance every matter which may serve them for food: but although these two causes of destruction are very considerable, and their effects perpetually incline to the annihilation of organized beings, the cause of reproduction is infinitely more powerful and active ”

“ The nearer we approach towards the sea, adds he, the more it becomes perceptible, the bar has scarcely any water in most of the small outlets which the river has opened, and which have multiplied so greatly from the trees that are carried along with the currents, one of which stopt in a part where it is shallow, will entangle hundreds. I have seen, continues he, 200 leagues from New Orleans, collections of trees, one of which would have filled all the timber-yards of Paris. Nothing can set them free; the mud which the river brings down serves to cement, and, by degrees, covers them. ”

“ The ideas of infinity can only spring from an idea of that which is limited, for it is in that manner we have an idea of an infinity of succession, a geometrical infinity: each individual is an unit, many individuals compose a finite number, and the whole species is the infinite multitude. Thus in the same manner as a geometrical infinity may be demonstrated not to exist, so we may be [283] assured that an infinite progression or expansion does not exist; that it is only an abstract idea, a retrenchment of the idea of finity, of which we take away the limits that necessarily terminate all size ”