256 BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



" Perhaps there will be a continued progress, more or less 

 slow, of all species towards a higher perfection, such that all 

 degrees of the scale will be continually changing in a constant 

 and determined order : I mean that the mutability of each 

 degree will always have its reason in the degree that shall have 

 immediately preceded it." {Paling., pp. 149-150.) 



Of the animal, Bonnet says, — "Not only will its actual 

 senses be perfected, but possibly it may acquire new senses, 

 and with them new principles of life and action. Its percep- 

 tions and its operations will be multiplied and diversified to an 

 unknown degree {ibid., p. 146). 



Adopting the Leibnitzian idea of an ascending scale of 

 beings, and applying the theory of "natural evolution," Bon- 

 net conceived it possible for plants to rise to the state of 

 animals. 



" If the being of the plant has been attached to an incor- 

 ruptible germ, that germ may contain, like that of an animal, 

 the elements of new organs, which will perfect, develop, and 

 ennoble the faculties of that being. I cannot say to what 

 degree it will rise in the scale of animality ; it is enough for 

 me to perceive the possibility of such elevation, and through it 

 an increase of beauty in the organic realm " {ibid., p. 160). 



This great scale, extending below the lowest plant to the 

 simplest substance of the inorganic world, and above man to 

 celestial beings, terminating in Divinity itself, — this regular 

 gradation in the perfection of beings, presented with the talent 

 of Bonnet, formed, as Cuvier remarked, " an enchanting pic- 

 ture which was destined to win many minds and have many 

 partisans." 



The coincidences discoverable between Bonnet's ideas of 

 development and those of to-day are for the most part of a 

 deceptive nature. Likeness of subject and likeness of vocabu- 

 lary present many seductive parallels, but they vanish the 

 moment we go below the surface. His statements may be 

 positive, truthful, and beautiful in form, and yet negative, 

 false, and grotesque in the assumptions which they veil. Often 

 his words counterfeit the language of modern evolution ; but 

 what monstrous travesties they disclose on closer examination! 



