It is certain from revelation that all animals have alike been favored with the grace of an act of direct creation, and that the first pair of every species issued fully formed from the hands of the Creator" (tome iv., p.

383).
In which of these views did Buffon really believe?
Yet they appear in the same volume, and not at different periods of his life.
He actually does say in the same volume (iv., p.

358): "It is not impossible that all species may be derivations (_issues_)." In the same volume also (p.

215) he remarks: "There is in nature a general prototype in each species on which each individual is modelled, but which seems, in being realized, to change or become perfected by circumstances; so that, relatively to certain qualities, there is a singular (_bizarre_) variation in appearance in the succession of individuals, and at the same time a constancy in the entire species which appears to be admirable." And yet we find him saying at the same period of his life, in the previous volume, that species "are the only beings in nature, beings perpetual, as ancient, as permanent as she."[144] A few pages farther on in the same volume of the same work, apparently written at the same time, he is strongly and stoutly anti-evolutional, affirming: "The imprint of each species is a type whose principal features are graven in characters forever ineffaceable and permanent."[145] In this volume (iv., p.

55) he remarks that the senses, whether in man or in animals, may be greatly developed by exercise.
The impression left on the mind, after reading Buffon, is that even if he threw out these suggestions and then retracted them, from fear of annoyance or even persecution from the bigots of his time, he did not himself always take them seriously, but rather jotted them down as passing thoughts.