Biographkal Memoir of Charles Bonnet. 221 



pher, to successive events, having the relation of causes and ef- 

 fects, or at least to the mutual action and reaction of simulta- 

 neous beings, he also extended it to the forms of these beings, 

 and to the gradations of their physical and moral nature. 



That immense series, commencing with the ruder and more 

 simple substances, rising by infinite degrees to the regular mi- 

 nerals, to plants, to zoophites, to insects, to the higher animals, 

 to man himself, and through him to the celestial intelligences, 

 and terminating in the bosom of the divinity ; that regular gra- 

 dation in the development of beings, unfolded by the talent of 

 Bonnet, formed an enchanting picture, which could not fail to 

 gain many admirers. 



For a long period naturalists busied themselves in filling up 

 the vacuities which the want of observations, according to their 

 view, still l^ft in this scale ; and the discovery of an additional 

 link, in this immense series, appeared to them an object of the 

 greatest interest. 



But, however agreeable this idea might appear to be to the 

 imagination, it must be acknowledged, that, taken in this accep- 

 tation, and to this extent, it has no real existence. Without 

 doubt, the beings which constitute certain famihes have more or 

 less resemblance to each other ; and, in some of these families, 

 there are, undoubtedly, beings possessing certain properties in 

 common with members of other families. The bat flies like 

 birds, the swan swiiras like fi«hes ; but it is neither to the last 

 quadruped of the series, nor to the first bird, that the bat has 

 most resemblance. The dolphin would connect quadrupeds 

 and fishes still better than the swan would connect fishes and 

 birds. Thus there are multiplied relations, but no one continued 

 line ; each being is a part which exercises a determinate in- 

 fluence upon the whole, but not a link that would fill a fixed 

 place in it. 



Bonnet would probably have avoided this illusion, had he ap- 

 plied himself more to the detailed examination of species ; but, 

 with other men of merit in his day, he participated in their un- 

 just contempt for that ingenious art of distinguishing beings by- 

 certain marks, which was then proscribed, under the name of 

 Nomenclature. He was not aware that this art is in Natural His- 

 tory the basis of all further inquiry ; nor did he conceive it to 



