 Herder departed markedly from Buffon, however, in developing his own historical theory of the cosmos and the development of life, and eventually of human culture, on a framework of teleological progress based on a “vital” theory of matter. For Herder, not only the individual organism, but nature as a whole develops under the causation of an internal organic force that leads it to develop higher and higher stages of life, eventually resulting in the ultimate development of humankind in history.