comte de Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon

“ Friendship flows from reason alone. It is the mind of a friend which we love, and to love a mind it is necessary to have one, and to have made use of it in the attainment of intelligence, and in comparing the congeniality of different minds. By friendship, then, not only is implied the principle of knowledge, but also, from reflection, the actual exercise of that principle.
Thus, while friendship belongs solely to man, attachment may be possessed by animals; as sentiment alone is sufficient to attach them to persons whom they often see, and by whom they are fed and nourished. ”

“ Of all the operations of the animal machine imitation is the most admirable. It is its most delicate and most extensive mobile, and exhibits the truest copy of thought, and though the cause of it in animals is altogether material, yet by its effects our wonder is excited. Men never more admire an ape than when they see it imitate the actions of men. In fact it is not easy to distinguish some copies from some originals. Besides, there are so few who can distinctly perceive the difference between a reality and a counterfeit, that to the bulk of mankind an ape must always excite astonishment. ”

“ A passionate and ferocious temper, makes the wild dog dreaded by most animals, as much as the pacific disposition of the domestic dog renders him agreeable; to his master he flies with alacrity, and submissively lays at his feet all his courage, strength, and talents; he seems to consult, interrogate, and supplicate for orders, which he is solicitous to execute; a glance of the eye is sufficient, for he understands the smallest signs of his will. Without having like man, the faculty of thought, he has all the ardour of sentiment, with fidelity and constancy in his affections ”

“ Could we extinguish her light, far from regretting the loss, with pleasure should we embrace the lot of idiots. As we no longer reason but during intervals, and as these intervals are troublesome, and spent in secret reproaches, we wish to suppress them, and thus proceeding from one illusion to another, we at length endeavour to lose all knowledge and remembrance of ourselves.
A passion without intervals is madness; and a state of madness is the death of the soul. Violent passions with intervals are fits of folly, a malady of the mind, whose danger consists in its duration and frequency. ”

“ By an intelligence similar to that of man it is impossible that brutes can have any certain knowledge of futurity, since in that respect, his ideas are always imperfect, and full of doubt. Then why, on such slight grounds, invest them with a quality so sublime? Why, without necessity degrade the human species? Is it not unreasonable to attribute their source to mechanical laws, established, like all the other laws of Nature, by the will of the Creator? The certainty with which brutes are supposed to act, and be determined, might alone convince us, that every thing they do is merely mechanical. ”

“ With what eagerness does he solicit his caresses! With what docility does he obey him! With what patience does he suffer his bad humours, and his frequently unjust corrections! With what mildness and humility does he endeavour to be restored to favour! What emotion and anxiety does he express when his master is absent! and what joy when he returns!—From all these circumstances it is possible not to distinguish true marks of friendship? Even among the human species it is expressed in characters of superior energy. ”

“ For two individuals of different species, to produce other individuals which do not resemble the one or the other in no fixed particular, and can consequently produce nothing like themselves, there needs but a certain degree of conformity between the forms of their bodies, and their organs of generation. But what an immense number of combinations are even necessary, even to suppose that two animals, male and female, of a certain species, have so much degenerated as to form a new species, and are no longer able to produce with any of their own kind but themselves! ”

“ At this period we still run after the pleasures of youth, not from an absolute propensity but from habit. In proportion as we advance in years, our ability for the enjoyment of pleasure decreases, and so often are we humiliated by our own weakness, that we cannot help condemning our actions and desires.
Besides, it is at this age that the cares and solicitudes of life begin; we then, whether by accident or by choice, assume a certain character which it is alway disgraceful to abandon, and dangerous to support. Full of pain, we tread between contempt and hatred, two rocks alike formidable ”

“ In what does the morality of love consist? in vanity; vanity in the pleasure of conquest, an error which proceeds from our putting too high a value upon it; the vanity of desiring exclusive possession, of which jealousy, a passion so base that we are ashamed to own it, is the constant attendant; vanity in the very mode of enjoying, or even relinquishing the object of our desires, if the wish of separation originates with ourselves; but if, instead of forsaking, we are forsaken by the beloved object, the humiliation is dreadful! ”

“ It is not surprising, therefore, that we are more subjected than animals to infirmities; since we know not so well as them, what may contribute to preserve or destroy health, our experience being less certain than their perception; nay we abuse the very senses of the appetite, which they enjoy in such superior excellence, these being to them the means of preserving health, and to us causes of disease and of destruction. By intemperance alone more men sicken and die, than by all the scourges incident to human nature. ”

“ The external contradictions, and difficulties, seem to render the unity of the interior existence still more firm; they fortify the passion, and fill up the languid intervals; they call forth our pride, and direct all our views towards one object, all our powers towards effecting one end.
But this happiness passes away as a dream; the charm disappears, disgust ensues, and a horrid vacuity of sentiment succeeds. Hardly, on rousing from this lethargy, is the soul capable of distinguishing itself; by slavery it has lost its strength, and the habit of commanding ”

“ Every production, every renovation, or increase by generation, by nutrition, or by growth, implies a preceding destruction, a conversion of substance, a translation of these organic molecules which never multiply, but always subsisting in an equal number, render nature always equally alive, the earth equally peopled, and ever equally resplendent with the primitive glory of Him who created it.
To take beings in general, the total quantity of life is always then the same; and death, which seems to destroy all, destroys nothing of that primitive life which is common to all organized beings. ”

“ Having once enjoyed, they desire to enjoy again; and feeling their strength, they drive away all that would occupy their place. Their jealousy is without reflection, they turn it not against the object of their love: of their pleasures alone are they jealous.
But are animals confined merely to those passions we have described? Are fear, rage, horror, love, and jealousy, the only durable affections they are capable of experiencing? ”

“ Nature presents to us pleasures without number; she has provided for our wants, and fortified us against pain. In the physical world, there is infinitely more good than evil; and therefore it is not the realities but the chimeras which we have to dread: it is not pain of body, disease, nor death that are terrible; but the agitation of the soul, the conflict of the passions, the mental anxiety, are those only we need apprehend.
Animals have but one mode of enjoying pleasure; the satisfying their appetite by the exercise of their sensations. ”

“ A dog, for instance, who has been tutored, however violent his appetite, will not seize what might satisfy that appetite, although he will use every gesture to obtain it from the hand of its master. Does not this animal seem to reason between desire and fear, nearly as a man would do, who was inclined to seize upon the property of another, but was withheld by the dread of punishment? Though this analogy may be just; yet to render it in effect well-founded, should not animals be capable of performing the same actions that we perform? ”

“ The slavery or servitude of the horse is so universal, and so ancient, that we rarely see him in his natural state. They are always covered with harness when at work, and not wholly free from their bands even in time of rest. If they are sometimes [95] suffered to range in the fields, they always bear about them marks of servitude, and frequently the external impressions of labour and of pain: the mouth is deformed by the wrinkles occasioned by the bit, the sides scarred with wounds inflicted by the spur, and the hoofs are pierced with nails. ”

“ The inclination for hunting or war is common to us with animals. Man, in a savage state, knows only how to fight and to hunt. All carnivorous animals which have strength and weapons hunt naturally. The lion and the tiger, whose strength is so great that they are sure to conquer, hunt alone, and without art. Wolves, foxes, and wild dogs, hunt in packs, assist each other and divide the prey, and when education in the domestic dog has improved this natural talent, when he is taught to repress his ardour and to regulate his motions, he hunts with art and knowledge, and always with success. ”

“ The natural disposition of wild horses is not ferocious, they are only high-spirited and wild. Though superior in strength to the greatest part of animals, they yet never attack them; and if attacked by others, they either disdain them as foes, and fly out of their way, or give a fatal blow with their heels. They unite themselves in troops, merely for the pleasure of being together, for they have no fear of, but an attachment for each other. As grass and vegetables are sufficient for their nourishment, they have quite enough to satisfy their appetites ”

“ But how shall we comprehend the action of objects creating desire or aversion? How shall we obtain knowledge of that which operates beyond the senses, those being the intermediate between the action of objects, and the action of the animal; a power in which consists the principle of the determination of motion, since it modifies the action of the animal, and renders it sometimes null, notwithstanding the impression of objects?
This question, as it relates to man, is difficult to be resolved, being by nature so different from other animals. ”

“ If we also consider that this dog notwithstanding his ugliness, and his wild and melancholy look, is still superior in instinct to all others, that he has a decided character in which education has no share, that he is the only thing born perfectly trained, that guided by natural powers alone, he applies himself to the care of our flocks, which he executes with singular assiduity, vigilance, and fidelity, that he conducts them with an admirable intelligence which has not been communicated to him ”

“ But the great difficulty is to distinguish the passions which belong solely to man, from those which he possesses in common with the brutes. Is it certain, or probable, that the latter have passions? Is it not, on the contrary, allowed, that every passion is an emotion of the soul? Ought we, therefore, to search any where else, but in this spiritual principle, for the seeds of pride, envy, ambition, avarice, and of every other passion by which we are governed? ”

“ The injuries of the climate, always the same, and constantly eating the same food, produce, in wild animals, this uniformity. The care of man, the comforts of shelter, the variety of food, efface and vary the colour in domestic animals; as does also the mixture of foreign racers, when no care has been taken to assort the colours of the male and female, which sometimes produces beautiful singularities, as we see in pied horses, where the black and the white are so whimsically mixed that they sometimes do not seem the work of nature, but rather the fancy of a painter. ”