Page:Biographies of Scientific Men.djvu/183

 "Evolution tends to elevate and not to depress the Gospel."

Buffon was a thinker—a true philosopher, with advanced views—and the best ideas of the Encyclopædists (Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot) were realized in his Histoire Naturelle and Époques de la Nature. He was undoubtedly the centre of a powerful and energetic group of naturalists which characterized a great part of the eighteenth century. He was the father of the modern evolutionist.

His great work, Histoire Naturelle, in fifteen volumes, appeared between 1749 and 1767; and his literary style was unapproached by any of his scientific contemporaries. Mirabeau said of Buffon that he was "le plus grand homme de son siècle et de bien d'autres"; and Rousseau said that he was "la plus belle plume du siècle." His style was also praised by Diderot, Voltaire, and others.

Buffon was a handsome man, with courtly and diplomatic manners, wide culture, and a splendid genius, which he himself called "a supreme capacity of taking pains." His stateliness and polished courtesy, his ready wit and graceful bearing, his erudition and ideas, not without a certain grandeur, raised Buffon on so high a pedestal, that we cannot wonder if France and Europe generally worshipped him.

He translated Newton's Fluxions, and was familiar