222 Biographical Memoir of Charles Bonnet. 



be the path to a much more profound art of determining the in- 

 timate nature of beings, by estabUsliing rational and constant re- 

 lations between them. 



At the present day, we find it difficult to conceive, how truths 

 so clear could have been misunderstood ; but, we must reflect, 

 that the principles of these truths were then presented in such a 

 defective manner, and in so absurd a style, as could not but dis- 

 gust men of literary attainments, accustomed, in their writings, 

 to please the imagination, in order to penetrate to the under- 

 standing of their readers. 



Bonnet belonged completely to this last order of writers, and 

 his Contemplation of Nature, in particular, is as remarkable for 

 the pleasing vivacity of its style, as for the accun\plation of facts 

 which he has brought together, and presented under the most 

 interesting relations. It is one of those books that may, with 

 most advantage, be put into the hands of the young, as calcu- 

 , lated at once to inspire them with a taste for study, and reve- 

 rence for divine providence. 



His Essai de Psychologies and his Essai analytiqne sur les 

 Facultes de FAme, with which he commenced the publication of 

 his speculative researches ; and his Palingenesie Philosophique, 

 with which he terminated them, are but little connected with 

 Natural History, properly so called ; and, for this reason, we shall 

 confine ourselves here to a very summary view of the principal 

 ideas contained in these works. 



The author investigates the moral and intellectual being in 

 the development of its faculties. He concurred with the Abbe 

 de Condillac, in the idea of determining, by a process of reason- 

 ing, what would happen to an adult and healthy man, who, like 

 a statue animated by degrees (or gradually endowed with the 

 senses and faculties of a rational being), should receive succes- 

 sively all the sensations in the order in which they would be 

 given him ; and thus he developes the history of the mind, lead- 

 ing it, in an ingenious manner, from the acquisition of the sim- 

 plest ideas of all, namely, those derived immediately from the 

 external world, up to |;he creation of those which are the most 

 abstract, and which, from their simplicity also, though of a dif- 

 ferent kind, were so long considered as, in their origin, entirely 

 independent of the senses. This was still following the path of 



