220 Biographical Memoir of Charles Bonnet. 



We shall now give an account of these writings, not in the 

 order in which he published them, but in that in which we may 

 suppose him to have conceived them ; and, on reading them, it 

 is obvious that a single principle must have predominated in the 

 conception of all, and that the author detached its various parts 

 in proportion as he judged them sufficiently perfect to be pub- 

 lished. 



Although these works are not connected with our ordinary 

 studies, yet they all belong to the individual whose character 

 it is our object to delineate; and we should present but muti- 

 lated portraits of celebrated men, did we not trace, in its de- 

 tails, and even in its aberrations, the progress of their ideas. 



In Bonnefs youth, a great deal had been written on Genera- 

 tion; and this subject would, therefore, naturally occur among 

 the first to engage his attention. It was impossible for one who 

 had seen nine generations of pucerons succeed each other, with- 

 out males, not to be, like Malebranche, an advocate for the pre- 

 existence of germs, and not to place them in the females. His 

 Cmiside rations sur les Corps organises are almost entirely con- 

 secrated to the defence of this system, and especially to an expla- 

 nation, by partial hypotheses, of the phenomena which were at 

 variance with it, such as those of hybrids and of certain mon- 

 sters. 



There is much talent in this work, in which all the objections 

 are either solved or evaded with more or less ingenuity. Desti- 

 tute, however, as it was of all proper observations, it would 

 scarcely have prevailed against the directly opposite hypothesis, 

 which the eloquence of Buffon had rendered popular. But the 

 indefatigable Spallanzani brought facts to the support of Bon- 

 net's views, by shewing the young tadpole already existing in 

 the egg of its mother before the male had fecundated it. Haller, 

 who had long supported the idea of the formation of organised 

 beings, by the action of organic powers, returned to the opinion 

 of germs, when he had seen that the chick is attached by innu- 

 merable vessels to parts of the e^g, which undoubtedly existed 

 before impregnation. 



In another general work, entitled Contemplation de la Nature^ 

 Bonnet supported the proposition of Leibnitz, that every thing is 

 connected in the universe, and that nature makes no leap ; but, 

 instead of confining its application, like the German philoso- 



