406 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



opinions. ' It is in this work,' Cuvier writes, ' that he paints best 

 the kindness of his soul. The evils of this world and the irregu- 

 larity of their distribution made another life too necessary a com- 

 plement of divine justice for him to admit of the existence of the 

 one without the other. He had seen too often in all moving things 

 pain as an accompaniment of sensation to be willing to deprive 

 any of them of this consolation. He admitted, therefore, for 

 animals the upward progress which seemed to him their due, and 

 for human beings a proportionate advance, which would be our 

 principal recompense. Thus every being would mount in the 

 scale of intelligence, and happiness would consist in increase of 

 knowledge. The works of God seemed to Bonnet so excellent 

 that he identified knowledge with love.' His attitude towards 

 science is perhaps best summarised in a single sentence addressed 

 to his nephew : ' The world was not made for observers so like 

 moles as we are. Let us console ourselves and profit gratefully 

 by the portion of the works of the Creator which it is permitted 

 us to examine, trusting that His goodness will one day introduce 

 us to the supreme light.' 



Yet Bonnet's fame did not long survive him, and his books 

 have fallen into complete oblivion. Bonstetten, the friend of 

 Gray, visiting Bonnet's old home at Thonex, twenty years after 

 his death, exclaims : ' How he is forgotten ; his name is as dead 

 as himself ! ' This neglect is largely due to his style. It was, it 

 is true, praised by de Saussure and Cuvier, but the judgment of 

 posterity has revised their partial verdict. Bonnet, we learn, 

 composed in his head and dictated ; the results inherent to this 

 method, in the lack of close revision, followed prolixity and repe- 

 tition. To these faults must be added an excess of the ornate 

 sensibility which was congenial to an age of which Rousseau was 

 the accredited mouthpiece, and Jean Antoine Deluc a warning 

 example. 



For sixteen years in his middle life (1752-68) Bonnet was a 

 member of the Council of Two Hundred ; in the latter year he 

 was elected a member of the Council of Sixty, which met occa- 

 sionally to discuss foreign affairs. But he never seems to have 

 taken any active part in politics. At the age of thirty-six, by his 

 marriage with Mile. Jeanne Marie de la Rive, de Saussure 's 

 maternal aunt, he became the fortunate inhabitant of a beautiful 



