CHAPTER XXIII 



EVOLUTION OF LIFE ORIGINAL MEANING HUX- 

 LEY'S DEFINITION PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 



THE phrase " Evolution of Life " had in the 

 18th Century a different meaning from that which it 

 bears in the latter half of the 19th. To Bonnet, 

 Malebranche, Leibnitz, as Philosophers, and to Mal- 

 peghi, and to many other naturalists, the question 

 thereby suggested was, whether or not the germs of a 

 new life contained within themselves the perfect plant 

 or animal in miniature, and which subsequently 

 evolved, or unfolded itself, into the growing life by 

 merely a process of augmentation. Malebranche said : 

 " God has formed in a single fly all those that will 

 ever come from it." Thus, they argued, the germs, 

 past, present and future, were shut up (" emboite's, ou 

 incases ") one within the other. 



To this conception of the nature of the germ, Bon- 

 net added another, which he thought equally plausible, 

 viz. : that the germs of all beings (animal or plant) 



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