308 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



Bonnet. He now called on him to act as a confidential corre- 

 spondent by keeping him fully informed as to the position of parties 

 in Geneva, so that he might be able to bring a more effective 

 influence to bear on the Bernese Government, and encourage it in 

 its efforts at mediation. 



Many more of Haller's than of de Saussure's letters have come 

 down to us . Haller was very persistent in his demand for informa- 

 tion. In 1766 he addressed thirty-one letters, the bulk of them 

 on politics, to Geneva, and the stream ran on well into the next 

 year. However excellent as a companion, he must have been 

 somewhat exacting as a correspondent ! Indeed de Saussure 

 on one occasion entreats his illustrious friend not to agitate himself 

 so much. And Haller himself confesses, ' I rush, perhaps with 

 excessive vivacity, into everything I undertake. I am too keen 

 on my job. . . . Any disorder infuriates me, every resistance to 

 law, every individual who prefers the evil and the false raises 

 my wrath.' We learn, moreover, that his letters were not easy 

 to decipher ; in 1775 Bonnet complains : ' Your handwriting gets 

 worse and worse, the letters are often unfinished ; there are even 

 some which your pen skips. I have gone back five or six times 

 to the same word without being able to make it out. What makes 

 it more annoying for me is that I value highly the least thing that 

 comes from your pen.' Bonnet's letters have a frank spontaneous- 

 ness and reveal the amiable qualities of a man no one ever 

 quarrelled with, and everybody, even Voltaire, who laughed at his 

 psycho -physical theories, liked. 



The position of the writers in the correspondence, much of 

 which is preserved at Berne, is made fairly clear. De Saussure, 

 a member of the patriciate, the grandson of a Syndic, and the 

 son of a member of the Two Hundred, belonged by birth and 

 association to the ruling caste, and to a large extent accepted its 

 point of view. By temper a practical man and a cautious philo- 

 sopher, he was naturally averse to rash generalisations and sudden 

 changes. The constitution which had given Geneva two hundred 

 years of prosperity was in his judgment not a thing lightly to be 

 thrown aside or tampered with. To transfer the reins of govern- 

 ment from a body composed of men of experience and high 

 character to a popular assembly liable to be swayed by sudden 

 and ignorant impulses, seemed to him a dangerous experiment. 



