Biographical Memoir of Charles Bonnet. 223 



observation ; but he soon diverged, as was his custom, into that 

 of hypothesis. 



The undeniable facts., that external images arrive at the mind 

 only through the medium of the senses, and that the senses act 

 upon the mind only through the medium of the brain, led him 

 to suppose, that the brain alone is the depository of these images, 

 and that it reproduces them for reminiscence, and consequently 

 also for reflection ; from which he inferred the necessity of a cor- 

 poreal organ to the intelligent being. But, accustomed as he 

 was from his system of germs, to imagine organs so inconceiva- 

 bly small as to belong to the thousandth order in organisation, 

 it was not difficult for him to make this organ survive the visible 

 and terrestrial body. He accounted for the phenomena of asso- 

 ciation in the manner of Hartley, by supposing a mutual excite- 

 ment among the molecules of the brain, analogous to the power 

 which cords, when stretched in unison, possess of making one 

 another vibrate. He admits, on the part of the mind, no action 

 without a motive, as, says he, we see in nature no effect without a 

 cause ; and hberty, according to his view, is only the power of 

 following, without restraint, the motives whose impulse we expe- 

 rience. By this definition he easily defends, as may be imagined, 

 moral liberty against the objections derived from the Divine 

 Prescience. But, would not the term liberty be thus changed 

 from its natural acceptation ? 



It must be allowed, in fact, that Bonnefs ideas regarding the 

 organs necessary for intelligence, and the motives requisite for 

 action, singularly coincide with those maintained by Priestley, 

 in support of what he, without hesitation or reserve, denomi- 

 nates materialism and necessity ; and yet Bonnet and Priestley 

 were both animated with a very lively feeling of religion ; so 

 true is it, that certain minds may connect opinions apparently 

 the most opposite. Bonnet, in particular, had, in the course of 

 his researches in Natural History, found too many proofs of the 

 agency of an overruling Wisdom, not to be conscious of this idea 

 predominating with him over every other. * His peculiar man- 

 ner of conceiving organic phenomena, the pre-existing germs 

 which he placed everywhere, rendered this agency still more ne- 

 cessary in his eyes, and the tendencies of his mind in this respect 

 were always powerfully seconded by those of his heart. 



