122 EVOLUTIONISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 



essary to add that Robinet was a daring speculator. 

 He claimed that one's first steps should be guided 

 by facts, but that beyond this, man's reason and 

 intelligence should not be trammelled by observa- 

 tion or by experiment, but should advance free 

 from induction. 



Robinet sees in man the chef-d'oeuvre of Nature. 

 All the variations exhibited in the lower forms of 

 animals, from the original prototype upwards, are to 

 be regarded as so many trials which Nature medi- 

 tates upon ; not only the orang-outang, but the 

 horse, the dog, even minerals and fossils, are not 

 these experiments of Nature ? But man is for the 

 time only the last of the series, for beings more per- 

 fect may replace him at any time. Robinet departs 

 so early from observation to hypothesis, that he may 

 be placed as one of the most extreme and irrational 

 of this group. His work, De la Nature, is one of 

 the greatest curiosities of natural history literature ; 

 he gives a long and serious catalogue of stones and 

 other inorganic objects which bear accidental and 

 remote resemblances to the various bodily organs of 

 man and the lower animals. These are figured and 

 seriously described, together with monsters of vari- 

 ous kinds, and mermaids well authenticated, as some 

 of the early trials of Nature in the attempt to produce 

 man. 



In one of his general principles Robinet was 

 sound. Like Leibnitz and unlike Bonnet and De 

 Maillet, he was a uniformitarian. Nature, he says, 



