120 EVOLUTIONISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 



world. In the present order of life there are no 

 successive acts of creation, as is generally believed 

 by those who attempt to adapt the discoveries of 

 Palaeontology to the Mosaic account. The Uni- 

 verse moves on by its own internal forces, and the 

 whole of organic life was contained preformed in 

 the germs of the first beings. Life thus forms a 

 scale of absolutely unbroken individuals ; the vari- 

 eties form links from species to species; the first 

 term of this chain is the atom, the last is the most 

 elevated of cherubim ; the chain is not broken by 

 death, for the individual is the bearer of all future 

 germs. Here we find an adumbration of the 

 * immortality or continuity of the germ-plasm ' in 

 relation to the death of the individual. 



Added to this law of Continuity, is an Aristote- 

 lian ' internal perfecting principle,' which causes 

 these germs to pass from the mineral to the plant, 

 from the plant to the animal, from the animal to 

 man. In these transformations, Bonnet does not 

 seem to have been deterred by his anatomical 

 knowledge, nor to have in the least degree em- 

 bodied the ideas of transformism which were then 

 being advanced by Buffon ; he* believes that the 

 appearance of higher forms is simply the unfolding 

 of pre-existing germs, and not due to evolution by 

 modification, nor to the appearance of new lower 

 forms by Abiogenesis. Why does not Evolution 

 produce animals wholly unfit for their environ- 

 ment ? This difficulty is met by Bonnet's assump- 



