See _Globus_, “Linné als Ethnologe,” xci., 1907. While Linnæus was living from hand to mouth, depending for his food on chance generosity, and mending his boots with folded paper, Buffon was living the gay life of the young men of his age and rank, and we hear of him being forced to flee to Paris to escape the results of wounding an Englishman in a gaming quarrel. (Linnæus was also guilty of drawing his sword in anger, but the provocation was different. During his absence from Upsala a rival had, by private influence, contrived to get a prohibition put on all private lecturing in the University, and he returned to find all his means of livelihood suddenly cut off.) Nevertheless Buffon’s life of pleasure did not occupy all his energies. He possessed, as Voltaire said, “_l’âme d’un sage dans le corps d’un athlête_,” and while in Paris he wrote and translated various scientific works, was elected a member of the Academy of Science, and in 1739 was appointed keeper of the _Jardin du Roi_ and of the Royal Museum. The permanent value to Anthropology of the work of these two men lies in the fact that they both “saw life steadily, and saw it whole.” But they produced results not only distinct, but, in some respects, antagonistic. Buffon, as Topinard says, did not classify, he described; and the value of his work has been very differently appraised. Cuvier had small opinion of it. Camper and Saint-Hilaire considered the author the greatest naturalist of modern times, the French Aristotle. Topinard (1885, p. 33) thus describes the opinion of the public: “Le public, lui, n’hésita pas; dans _l’Histoire naturelle des animaux_ il sentit un souffle nouveau, vit un pressentiment de l’avenir. La libre pensée était dans l’air, 89 approchait; l’œuvre de Buffon, comme l’Encyclopédie, Voltaire, Rousseau et Bougainville, contribua à la Révolution française.” The genius of Linnæus lay in classification. Order and method were with him a passion. In his _Systema Naturæ_ he fixed the place of Man in Nature, arranging _Homo sapiens_ as a distinct species in the order _Primates_,[14] together with the apes, the lemurs, and the bats. He went further and classified the varieties of man, distinguishing them by skin colour and other characters into four groups—a classification which holds an honourable place at the present day. Footnote 14: The tenth edition, 1758, is the first in which the order _Primates_ occurs. Earlier editions have the order _Anthropomorpha_. See Bendyshe, p. 424. All this was abominable in the eyes of Buffon. “Une vérité humiliante pour l’homme, c’est qu’il doit se ranger lui-même dans la classe des animaux”; and in another place he exclaims: “Les genres, les ordres, les classes, n’existent que dans notre imagination.... Ce ne sont que des idées de convention.... Il n’y a que des individus!” And again: “La nature ne connait pas nos definitions; elle n’a jamais rangé ses ouvrages par tas, ni les êtres par genres.”