simple concrete handling of scientific problems. The interest
in such questions, noticeable in England at the Restoration
and radiating thence, is seen widely diffused in France after
the publication of Fontenelle's Entretiens, and thenceforward it
rapidly strengthens. Barren theological disputations set men not
merely against theology, but upon the study of Nature, where real
knowledge was visibly possible. To a certain extent the study took
openly heretical lines. The Abbé Lenglet du Fresnoy, who was four
times imprisoned in the Bastille, supplied material of which D'Argens
made much use, tending to overthrow the Biblical chronology and to
discredit the story of the Flood. [1074] Benoît de Maillet (1656-1738),
who had been for fifteen years inspector of the French establishments
in Egypt and Barbary, left for posthumous publication (1748) a work
of which the first title was an anagram of his name, Telliamed, ou
Entretiens d'un philosophe indien avec un missionaire français. Of
this treatise the thesis is that the shell deposits in the Alps and
elsewhere showed the sea to have been where land now was; and that the
rocks were gradually deposited in their different kinds in the fashion
in which even now are being formed mud, sand, and shingle. De Maillet
had thus anticipated the central conception of modern geology, albeit
retaining many traditional delusions. His abstention from publication
during his lifetime testifies to his sense of the danger he underwent,
the treatise having been printed by him only in 1735, at the age of
seventy-nine; and not till ten years after his death was it given to
the world, with "a preface and dedication so worded as, in case of
necessity, to give the printer a fair chance of falling back on the
excuse that the work was intended for a mere jeu d'esprit." [1075]
The thesis was adopted, indeed plagiarized, [1076] by Mirabaud in
his Le Monde, son origine et son antiquité (1751). Strangely enough,
Voltaire refused to be convinced, and offered amazing suggestions
as to the possible deposit of shells by pilgrims. [1077] It is not
unlikely that it was Voltaire's opposition rather than any orthodox
argumentation that retarded in France the acceptance of an evolutionary
view of the origin of the earth and of life. It probably had a more
practical effect on scientific thought in England [1078]--at least
as regards geology: its speculations on the modification of species,
which loosely but noticeably anticipate some of the inferences of
Darwin, found no acceptance anywhere till Lamarck. In the opinion
of Huxley, the speculations of Robinet, in the next generation, "are
rather behind than in advance of those of De Maillet"; [1079] and it
may be added that the former, with his pet theory that all Nature
is "animated," and that the stars and planets have the faculty of
reproducing themselves like animals, wandered as far from sound bases
as De Maillet ever did. The very form of De Maillet's work, indeed,
was not favourable to its serious acceptance; and in his case, as in
those of so many pioneers of new ideas, errors and extravagances and
oversights in regard to matters of detail went to justify "practical"
men in dismissing novel speculations. Needless to say, the common run
of scientific men remained largely under the influence of religious
presuppositions in science even when they had turned their backs
on the Church. Nonetheless, on all sides the study of natural fact
began to play its part in breaking down the dominion of creed. Even
in hidebound Protestant Switzerland, the sheer ennui of Puritanism is
seen driving the descendants of the Huguenot refugees to the physical
sciences for an interest and an occupation, before any freethinking
can safely be avowed; and in France, as Buckle has shown in abundant
detail, the study of the physical sciences became for many years
before the Revolution almost a fashionable mania. And at the start
the Church had contrived that such study should rank as unbelief,
and so make unbelievers.
When Buffon [1080] in 1749-50 published his Histoire Naturelle,
the delight which was given to most readers by its finished style
was paralleled by the wrath which its Théorie de la Terre aroused
among the clergy. After much discussion Buffon received early in 1751
from the Sorbonne an official letter specifying as reprehensible in
his book fourteen propositions which he was invited to retract. He
stoically obeyed in a declaration to the effect that he had "no
intention to contradict the text of Scripture," and that he believed
"most firmly all there related about the creation," adding: "I abandon
everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth." [1081]
Still he was attacked as an unbeliever by the Bishop of Auxerre in that
prelate's pastoral against the thesis of de Prades. [1082] During the
rest of his life he outwardly conformed to religious usage, but all
men knew that in his heart he believed what he had written; and the
memory of the affront that the Church had thus put upon so honoured
a student helped to identify her cause no less with ignorance than
with insolence and oppression. For all such insults, and for the long
roll of her cruelties, the Church was soon to pay a tremendous penalty.