Buffon's American Degeneracy:
Part 2 - The American Reaction
Americans naturally took offense at the idea they were degenerate (1), and Thomas Jefferson was the most effective and forceful critic of this contention. Although some of the most offensive elements came from others, Jefferson understood that Comte de Buffon's discourse was the wellspring. While he was in Paris (1784-1789), the American went to considerable effort and expense to convince the French naturalist of his error. He arranged for Buffon to receive the skin and antlers of a moose as well as the antlers of deer, caribou and elk and the skin of a panther, all of which Jefferson hoped would prove that at least some American quadrupeds were comparable if not larger than their European counterparts. Jefferson also engaged in a friendly debate with Buffon over dinner.
However, Jefferson's most influential challenge to the theory of American Degeneracy appeared in his Notes on the State of Virginia. Initially conceived as a written response to a set of queries about his native Virginia, the book soon developed into a vehicle for the discussion of a wide range of philosophical, scientific and political ideas. Published while Jefferson was in Paris, Notes was widely praised in both Europe and the United States (2).
Jefferson's rebuttal to Buffon's theory of American Degeneracy occurs in a section of the book named "Animals". He starts with a discourse on the "mammoth" (American mastodon), which is both "the largest of all terrestrial beings" and found only in North America. He also provides extensive lists comparing the weights and varieties of American (North and South) quadrupeds (3) with those from Europe. These lists and their accompanying text effectively refuted Buffon's contention that New World quadrupeds were less diverse and smaller than those of the Old World. Indeed, so many of the American quadruped weights presented in Buffon's Histoire naturelle differed with Jefferson's data that he commented: "It does not appear that Messrs. de Buffon and D'Aubenton [Buffon's anatomist] have measured, weighed, or seen those of America"
In addition to challenging Buffon's contention that quadrupeds are smaller and less diverse in the New World, Jefferson confronts the theory behind this presumed inferiority of New World quadrupeds. He challenges the very idea that species are mutable (i.e., they could degenerate):
"The difference of increment depends on circumstances unsearchable to beings with our capacities. Every race of animals seems to have received from their Maker certain laws of extension at the time of their formation. Their elaborative organs were formed to produce this, while proper obstacles were opposed to its further progress. Below these limits they cannot fall, nor rise above them. What intermediate station they shall take may depend on soil, on climate, on food, on a careful choice of breeders. But all the manna of heaven would never raise the Mouse to the bulk of the Mammoth."
Jefferson then takes Buffon to task on his contention that Native Americans have degenerated. In lengthy passages he states that the Indian is not "defective in ardor" but subjected to harsh conditions and lacking the blessings of agriculture they are few in numbers. When conditions improve, however, Indian women "produce and raise as many children as the white women."
Essentially, Jefferson believes that Native Americans have the same potential as Europeans. He regards their shortcomings to be the results of cultural distortions and that indications of their "genius" can be found in two areas in which they excel: war and oratory.
"To judge of the truth of this, to form a just estimate of their genius and mental powers, more facts are wanting, and great allowance to be made for those circumstances of their situation which call for a display of particular talents only. This done, we shall probably find that they are formed in mind as well as in body, on the same module with the `Homo sapiens Europaeus.' The principles of their society forbidding all compulsion, they are to be led to duty and to enterprize by personal influence and persuasion. Hence eloquence in council, bravery and address in war, become the foundations of all consequence with them. To these acquirements all their faculties are directed. Of their bravery and address in war we have multiplied proofs, because we have been the subjects on which they were exercised. Of their eminence in oratory we have fewer examples, because it is displayed chiefly in their own councils. Some, however, we have of very superior lustre. I may challenge the whole orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, and of any more eminent orator, if Europe has furnished more eminent, to produce a single passage, superior to the speech of Logan, a Mingo chief, to Lord Dunmore, when governor of this state."
After addressing his rebuttal to Buffon, Jefferson next tackles the accusations of abbe Raynal that white Americans lack genius. He names George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and David Rittenhouse as three conspicuous examples of American genius. He also notes that America is a young country with a population much smaller than either Britain or France:
"As in philosophy and war, so in government, in oratory, in painting, in the plastic art, we might shew that America, though but a child of yesterday, has already given hopeful proofs of genius, as well of the nobler kinds, which arouse the best feelings of man, which call him into action, which substantiate his freedom, and conduct him to happiness, as of the subordinate, which serve to amuse him only. We therefore suppose, that this reproach is as unjust as it is unkind; and that, of the geniuses which adorn the present age, America contributes its full share."
Jefferson never received a response from Buffon to his Notes on the State of Virginia . Nor, apparently, was Jefferson aware of any public repudiation by the eminent French naturalist of the theory of American Degeneracy. And with Buffon's death in 1788, the Virginian concluded than none would be forthcoming. However, Buffon had substantially revised his ideas on American degeneration several years before Jefferson started writing Notes . In 1777, he reported, "In a country where Europeans multiply themselves so promptly, where the view of the natives of the country is broader than elsewhere, it is hardly possibly that men degenerate." (4) In his 1778 publication, Des époques de la nature (Epochs of Nature), Buffon would further de-emphasize the role of degeneracy in shaping the fauna of North America. (See Epochs of Nature.)
Although Buffon distanced himself from the idea of American Degeneracy, it was forcefully upheld by a number of other prominent Europeans, including the ábbe Raynal. Perhaps the best response to Raynal was provided by Benjamin Franklin, as enthusiastically related by Thomas Jefferson:
"The Doctor [Benjamin Franklin] ... had a party to dine with him one day at Passy, of whom one half were Americans, the other half French, and among the last was the Abbe [Raynal]. During the dinner he got on his favorite theory of the degeneracy of animals, and even of man, in America, and urged it with his usual eloquence. The Doctor at length noticed the accidental stature and position of his guest, at table, 'Come,' says he, 'M. l'Abbe. Let us try this question by the fact before us. We are here one half Americans, and one half French, and it happens that the Americans have placed themselves on one side of the table, and our French friends are on the other. Let both parties rise, and we will see on which side nature had degenerated.' It happened that his American guest were Carmichael Harmer, Humpreys, and others of the finest stature and form; while those of the other side were remarkably diminutive, and the Abbe himself particularly, was a mere shrimp. He parried the appeal, however, by a complimentary admission of exceptions, among which the Doctor himself was a conspicuous one." (5)
Next: Part 3, Modern Perspectives
Websites:
- Aston Michols' "Romantic Natural History" web page on Thomas Jefferson:
www.dickinson.edu/~nicholsa/Romnat/jefferson.htm - Monticello.org's web page on Jefferson's rebuttal to Buffon:
www.monticello.org/jefferson/dayinlife/entrance/fun.html
Print Resources:
- Buffon, Georges Louis LeClerc, Comte de. 1749-1788. Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière. Paris: Imprimeries royale.
- Gould, Stephen Jay. 2000. "Inventing Natural History in Style: Bufon's Style and Substance." pp. 75-90. In: The Lying Stones of Marrakech: Penultimate Reflections in Natural History. New York: Harmony Books.
- Mayr, E. 1982. The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press.
- Roger, J. 1997. Buffon: a Life in Natural History. Translated by S. Lucille. Edited by L.P. Williams. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Originally published as Buffon, un philosophe au Jardin du Roi. 1989. Librairie Artheme Fayard.
- Semonin, P. 2002. American Monster: How the nation's first prehistoric creature became a symbol of national identity. New York & London: New York University Press.
Notes:
- In his Historie naturelle (1766; Volume V in the William Smellie 1781 English edition), Buffon reported that quadrupeds in the New World were less diverse and smaller in stature than those from the Old World. He concluded that this was the result of an adverse climate. The New World wasn't conducive to the creation of large quadrupeds and those transplanted from the Old World degenerated. Buffon extended this degeneration to include Native Americans while other Europeans extended it to include White Americans. For more, see American Degeneracy - Old World vs. New. [go back]
- Notes on the State of Virginia , the only book Jefferson published, is featured in three other pages on this web site. To learn more about the role of this book in the story of the American mastodon see Discovering the Mastodon: Part 5 - Jefferson's Notes. Notes on the State of Virginia provides an overview and history of the book while A Sampling of Notes provides some annotated excerpts from the book. [go back]
- Quadruped is an archaic classification that includes most mammals, but excludes others such as bats, whales and manatees. The name literally means "four feet". [go back]
- Historie naturelle, supplement v . p. 511: from Semonin (2000): p. 231. [go back]
- This story is excerpted from an 1818 letter from Thomas Jefferson to Robert Walsh; from Boorstin (1993), pp. 101-102 [go back]