238 BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



us it seems to be scepticism towards all nature, crystallized into 

 a colossal system of inflexible negations, each involving the 

 others, and all involved in one capital negation : No essential 



CHANGE IN THE ORGANIC UNIVERSE. 



The discovery of a single flaw in this all-embracing negative 

 would put the whole theory in the light of a "romance," as 

 Bonnet himself repeatedly declared. In one of the last of the 

 many supplementary notes to the final revision of the Corps 

 Organises (1779), Bonnet reaffirms this negative as a funda- 

 mental principle to which he had always firmly adhered. The 

 note begins with the following warning from Haller: "Ob- 

 serve that it is very dangerous to concede the formation of a 

 finger by accident. If a finger may thus form itself, then a 

 hand, an arm, a man, will do the same." To this Bonnet re- 

 plied : " You are right ; I have insisted upon that point a hun- 

 dred times. I came to that conclusion long before you, when 

 you supposed it possible for jine ghi sc figer et s' organiser, and 

 when epigenesis pleased you most. {Corps Organ., Art. 155.) 

 But observe, in your turn, that I have never attributed the 

 formation of the least thing to accident. I have always con- 

 ceded and maintained the preformation of everything that is 

 truly organic. M. de Mairan made the same remark to me as 

 yourself, and he received the same response. His objections 

 against the sixth finger relate only to the graft of Lemery. I 

 have not appealed to ingraftment ; I have merely questioned if 

 accidental causes might not have separated one or more fingers 

 while they were yet in a gelatinous or nearly fluid state. In a 

 word, — and can I repeat it too often? — I have never conceded 

 anything but simple modifications of preformed parts, except cer- 

 tain cases of grafts or accidental separations." {Corps Organ., 



P- 543-) 



Such was Bonnet's testimony in 1778, while engaged in the 



final revision of his works, over thirty years after putting his 

 first meditations on generation into manuscript (1747), and 

 about ten years after concluding his system of philosophy in 

 the first edition of the Palinghihie PJdlosophiqne (1769). It 

 was his testimony after a prolonged consideration of that great- 

 est of stumbling-blocks to the evolutionist, the propagation of 



