GERM DOCTRINE OF BONNET. 253 



its dormant state, as a butterfly deserts its chrysalis and soars 

 to new life. 



But why does Bonnet call such evolution natural? Had he 

 in mind anything comparable with the modern idea of develop- 

 ment, as a natural course of progressive differentiation ? Most 

 certainly not, for this whole scheme of palingenesia was built 

 upon the same old negation, no generation. 



This strange conception of a "mixed being," consisting of 

 one soul and three bodies, strikes one as the most unnatural 

 exaggeration of the unnatural. What more stupendous mira- 

 cle could be imagined than this trinity of germs, each awaiting 

 the reduction of the earth to chaos or ashes for its turn to un- 

 fold, and each and all presided over by a single soul ! What 

 strange revolutions planned for this soul ; what fiery ordeals 

 for its intervals of slumber ; what grand metamorphoses to be 

 triumphantly concluded in perfection and eternity ! 



What is "natural" about all this.? Was not all "evolu- 

 tion" of preformed beings regarded as "natural".? What 

 exception could there be t Bonnet was thinking of the Mosaic 

 creation, which he was trying to explain, not as an immediate 

 act of the Creator, but as a fulfilment, in a purely mechanical 

 way, of events already arranged for by the creation completed 

 at the beginning of the pre-Adamic world. Bonnet was anx- 

 ious to keep his theory free from even a shadow of contamina- 

 tion with epigenesisi; hence he insisted that there had been 

 but one "creation." All the rest, Mosaic creation and resur- 

 rection, were "natural," i.e., parts of the machinery of nature 

 previously consummated. 



1 " It would be the greatest absurdity," says Bonnet, " to suppose that in the 

 first formation of animals, God commenced [after the manner of epigenesis] by 

 creating the heart, then the lungs, then the brain, etc. I do not think it would be 

 less absurd to suppose that in the formation of the universe, God began by creat- 

 ing a planet, then a sun, then another planet, etc. ... I will not affirm that at 

 the first instant of Creation all the heavenly bodies were arranged in relation to 

 one another precisely as they are to-day. That primitive arrangement may have 

 undergone many changes by a natttral series of the movements of those bodies 

 and of the combination of their forces. But Divine Wisdom foresaw and ap- 

 proved those changes, as it foresaw and approved an almost infinite number of 

 modifications which arise from the structure or primitive organization of the 

 beings belonging to each world." {Paling., pp. 1S0-181.) 



