SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 143 

 had not several of its champions, like La Mettrie, based their philosophy 

 upon arguments derived from natural science, which contributed to bring 

 the latter into double discredit — both as hostile to revealed religion and 

 as promoting all kinds of flippancy and social disorganization. In this the 

 contempt shown for natural science in the age of romanticism, at least in 

 part, finds its explanation. And yet even La Mettrie possessed one feature 

 that is reminiscent of romanticism, or rather of the " Stunn und Drang' 

 period: he has left us a characteristic description of himself, in which he 

 talks of his kindly, innocent heart, which never committed any sin, even 

 though his thoughts did so, and he counsels us not to judge his morals by 

 his writings. There are, however, reasons for supposing that his life and 

 his teachings were not inconsistent with one another. He was certainly no 

 paragon of virtue, but he was a child of his age and he had ideas that were 

 in advance of those of that period. 



On the whole, we find during the eighteenth century a great number of 

 philosophical speculations widely differing from one another; certain of 

 them broke boldly away from all the old traditional ideas, while others 

 sought to reconcile the old and the new. To the latter type belong in a 

 marked degree those attempts to explain the nature and development of 

 living organisms that were published by Bonnet, who in a remarkable way 

 combines ideas of value for the future with conceptions based on a cosmic 

 theory which had already been abandoned by most thinkers. 



Charles Bonnet was born at Geneva of wealthy parents in 1710. The 

 family had emigrated from France at the time of the persecution of the Hu- 

 guenots. He studied law and was elected to the council of his native town, 

 but at the same time he evinced a lively interest in natural science and even- 

 tually devoted himself entirely to that pursuit. As a pupil of Reaumur he 

 applied himself chiefly to insect biology and in this field carried out work 

 of lasting value. A serious ophthalmic disease, however, soon compelled 

 him to give up making direct observations and all practical work of any 

 kind, so that, being a man of independent means, he spent the rest of his 

 days engaged in purely theoretical speculations in natural science and phi- 

 losophy. He died in 1793 on his estate in the neighbourhood of Geneva. 



Even in his earliest works Bonnet shows himself, apart from his ac- 

 counts of actual observations, a natural philosopher, and in his last works 

 speculation alone predominates. As a thinker Bonnet is entirely in accord 

 with the Christian point of view, and his writings, by contrast to the free- 

 thinking that was so prevalent in his time, acquire a sharply polemical 

 and religiously fervent tone, with the result that sometimes even his purely 

 practical declarations are made in a form that sounds more like those of a 

 lay preacher than a scientist. His writings are extremely difficult for a modern 

 reader to appreciate; one has to search through scores or even hundreds of 



