Nevertheless both rendered incalculable service to the science. Linnæus “found biology a chaos and left it a cosmos.” “L’anthropologie,” says Flourens, “surgit d’une grande pensée de Buffon; jusqu-là l’homme n’avait été étudié que comme individu, Buffon est le premier qui l’ait envisagé comme espèce.” But Buffon was no believer in the permanent stability of species. “Nature is far from subjecting herself to final causes in the formation of her creatures.” He went so far as to make a carefully veiled hint (the Sorbonne having eyes on him) of a possible common ancestor for horse and ass, and of ape and man. At least, he says, so one should infer from their general resemblance; but, since the Bible affirms the contrary, “of course the thing cannot be.”[15] In 1751 the old naturalist was constrained by the Sorbonne to recant his geological heresies in these words: “I declare that I had no intention to contradict the text of Scripture; that I believe most firmly all therein related about the Creation, both as to order of time and matter of fact.” Footnote 15: Quoted from Clodd’s _Pioneers of Evolution_, 1897, p. 101. [Illustration: J. F. BLUMENBACH ] [Sidenote: =Blumenbach.=] It was fortunate for the nascent science that the next great name on its roll was that of a man of very wide reading, endowed with remarkable reasoning powers, and with an exceptional perspicuity for sifting out the true from the false. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) was Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Göttingen, and early turned his attention to the special study of man. He was the first to place anthropology on a rational basis, and in his _De generis humani varietate nativa_ (1775-1795) laid the foundations of race classification based on measurement. He noted the variations in the shape of the skull and of the face, and may therefore be regarded as the founder of craniology (see below, p. 28). Besides the services rendered by Blumenbach to the science of anthropology in classification and in laying the foundations of craniology, there was a third field in which his work was perhaps even more valuable to his contemporaries. [Sidenote: =Monsters.=]