Natural Catastrophe in Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle
33
by Buffon. Wild, primitive man is not the “maître du domaine de la
terre”; he is but a terrorized victim, at the mercy of the “injures [des]
éléments”. Only society, “plénière & puissante, telle qu’elle existe
parmi les peuples anciennement policés”, is able to gain a proper hold
over its natural environment.
44 It is equally no coincidence that Buffon
offers up European societies as models of civilization, as the only societies in the eighteenth century possessing institutions capable of
overseeing this sustained, rational drive to transform and domesticate
nature. His “Première vue” of nature is very explicit in this regard,
presenting man as a Prometheus using fire to create a “nature nouvelle”:
[M]ettons le feu à cette bourre superflue, à ces vieilles forêts déjà à demi
consommées; achevons de détruire avec le fer ce que le feu n’aura pu consumer:
bien-tôt au lieu du jonc, du nénuphar, dont le crapaud composoit son venin, nous
verrons paroître la renoncule, le treffle, les herbes douces et salutaires; des
troupeaux d’animaux bondissans fouleront cette terre jadis impraticable; ils y
trouveront une subsistance abondante, une pâture toujours renaissante; ils se
multiplieront pour se multiplier encore: servons-nous de ces nouveaux aides pour
achever notre ouvrage; que le bœuf soumis au joug, emploie ses forces et le
poids de sa masse à sillonner la terre, qu’elle rajeunisse par la culture; une Nature
nouvelle va sortir de nos mains.
45
Even so, Buffon is convinced that man’s domination is always provisional; if he is not vigilant, nature quickly regains the ground she has
temporarily ceded. Moreover, he believes that man’s dominion – the
dominion of fire – is slowly but inevitably heading towards its final
catastrophe. Indeed, let us remind ourselves at this point that Buffon
believes that our globe is constantly cooling down. As it cools, our
world is progressively buried beneath endless sheets of ice, and the
lifeforms it supports move inexorably towards extinction.
As we have seen, this idea subtends all the geological and biological reflections of the Époques de la nature. This vision persists in
Buffon’s later texts too, as in the following article of 1783 devoted to
penguins and auks. Here the description of the “Terre des États” (New
Zealand) and the Sandwich Islands provides him with the pretext for a
brief but effective evocation of a world soon to be overwhelmed by
___________________________
44 Buffon, “Le castor”, Histoire naturelle, VIII, p. 285.
45 Buffon, “De la nature: première vue”, Histoire naturelle, XII, p. xiii.
33
by Buffon. Wild, primitive man is not the “maître du domaine de la
terre”; he is but a terrorized victim, at the mercy of the “injures [des]
éléments”. Only society, “plénière & puissante, telle qu’elle existe
parmi les peuples anciennement policés”, is able to gain a proper hold
over its natural environment.
44 It is equally no coincidence that Buffon
offers up European societies as models of civilization, as the only societies in the eighteenth century possessing institutions capable of
overseeing this sustained, rational drive to transform and domesticate
nature. His “Première vue” of nature is very explicit in this regard,
presenting man as a Prometheus using fire to create a “nature nouvelle”:
[M]ettons le feu à cette bourre superflue, à ces vieilles forêts déjà à demi
consommées; achevons de détruire avec le fer ce que le feu n’aura pu consumer:
bien-tôt au lieu du jonc, du nénuphar, dont le crapaud composoit son venin, nous
verrons paroître la renoncule, le treffle, les herbes douces et salutaires; des
troupeaux d’animaux bondissans fouleront cette terre jadis impraticable; ils y
trouveront une subsistance abondante, une pâture toujours renaissante; ils se
multiplieront pour se multiplier encore: servons-nous de ces nouveaux aides pour
achever notre ouvrage; que le bœuf soumis au joug, emploie ses forces et le
poids de sa masse à sillonner la terre, qu’elle rajeunisse par la culture; une Nature
nouvelle va sortir de nos mains.
45
Even so, Buffon is convinced that man’s domination is always provisional; if he is not vigilant, nature quickly regains the ground she has
temporarily ceded. Moreover, he believes that man’s dominion – the
dominion of fire – is slowly but inevitably heading towards its final
catastrophe. Indeed, let us remind ourselves at this point that Buffon
believes that our globe is constantly cooling down. As it cools, our
world is progressively buried beneath endless sheets of ice, and the
lifeforms it supports move inexorably towards extinction.
As we have seen, this idea subtends all the geological and biological reflections of the Époques de la nature. This vision persists in
Buffon’s later texts too, as in the following article of 1783 devoted to
penguins and auks. Here the description of the “Terre des États” (New
Zealand) and the Sandwich Islands provides him with the pretext for a
brief but effective evocation of a world soon to be overwhelmed by
___________________________
44 Buffon, “Le castor”, Histoire naturelle, VIII, p. 285.
45 Buffon, “De la nature: première vue”, Histoire naturelle, XII, p. xiii.