234 



BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



reverting to Bonnet's conception, into which the idea of genetic 

 arBnity did not and could not enter? The expression "cel- 

 lular tissue" also occurs in Bonnet's writings, but I have never 

 heard it intimated that Schleiden and Schwann were thus fore- 

 stalled. If further illustrations were needed to show that com- 

 munity of vocabulary does not always imply community of 

 ideas, an appropriate one is found in Kant's definition of epi- 

 genesis as "generic preformation"^ and another in Burdach's 

 " epigenetic preformation" 2 



Bonnet's Position. 



Having seen that preformation may stand for extremes as 

 wide apart as the doctrine of specific creation and that of 

 modern evolution, we will try to ascertain Bonnet's position. 

 That he began with the first extreme is undisputed ; that he 

 could have held both extremes at the same time is impossible ; 

 that he must have abandoned the first if he ever reached, or 

 approximated, the second, is self-evident. 



We are generally told that the germ, as first defined by Bon- 

 net, was supposed to be an exact image, or, to use Huxley's 

 words, "an actual miniature of tJie organism'' Although Bon- 

 net's language sometimes appears, at first sight, to indicate 

 such likeness of form, it is made clear from numerous state- 

 ments that it cannot bear that interpretation. In fact, exact 

 form-resemblance was positively denied. In those earlier med- 

 itations upon germs, recorded in the first eight chapters of the 

 Corps Organises, we find already the suggestion that the germ 

 state differs from the developed state, approaching the form 

 and nature of a liquid globule (Chap. IV, Art. 57). In 

 Chap. IX of the same work, but written about twelve years 

 later (1759), Bonnet points with evident pride to the fact that 



1 Since the power of reproduction is given in the organization of the race, it 

 may be said that in the first parents all future generations preexisted dynamically. 



2 Differing from syngenetic preformation in not being original. Called " epi- 

 genetic " to indicate that the germs arise in the parent organism, at different times, 

 but always before sexual concurrence. In the old theories of generation prae and 

 post generally related to the prime act of reproduction. Preformation was always 

 complete ; postformation, gradual. 



