246 DARWINIANISM. 



from a creation completed at first. Bonnet, too, so far as 

 nerves are concerned, was materialistic in his tendencies. 

 Nevertheless, he still connected all with religious con- 

 viction. He even produced so admirable a demonstration 

 of the truth of Christianity, that when Lavater was bent 

 on converting the Jew Mendelssohn, it was his translation 

 of Bonnet's book he sent to him as irresistible. There 

 was Kobinet, too, 17351820. He was an evolutionist, 

 and believed in a gtntration uniforme des Mres. It is a 

 German who even says this of him : " In fact, in a certain 

 way this French writer is much more complete than 

 either his English or German successors; the marvels of 

 generative evolution he will not confine as they do to 

 vital tissue only ; he will extend it to all dead particles 

 as well, metals, water, the air," etc. To him the loveli- 

 ness of the female voice, its refinement, in connection 

 with the pleasure it gives us men, is but a Darwinian 

 result of woman's love of talk ! Yet to Eobinet also, 

 there is only one cause. There is a God, he exclaims, a 

 cause of the phenomena of that whole which we name 

 nature. 



But of remarkable anticipations of later evolution- 

 views, perhaps the most remarkable (see Zockler) is the 

 work, Conversations (Entretiens) of an Indian Philosopher 

 with a French Missionary, that was published, in 1748, 

 under the pseudonym Telliamed (an anagram for de 

 Maillet). " The present plants and animals," it is said 

 there, " under influence of external conditions combined 

 with co-operating efforts at perfection on the part of the 

 organisms themselves, have gradually developed them- 

 selves in the course of many thousand years." This 

 author seems to make the sea the original fount of life, 

 very much as did Dr. Erasmus Darwin after him. 

 Aquatic plants, perfecting themselves, are transferred to 

 the land; flying-fish become birds; marine animals, 



