BOA T NET'S THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 



2 35 



he has nothing to change in his earlier views, and again dwells 

 on the contrasts between the earlier and the later stages in 

 respect to form and consistency (Arts. 143, 146, 154), cau- 

 tioning the reader, however, against supposing that the germ 

 ever represents a fluid in the strict sense of the word. 1 In the 

 last chapter of the work, which deals with the formation of 

 monsters, Bonnet says that the germ of the chick differs from 

 the foetus so greatly in form, proportions, and arrangement of 

 parts that, if we could see it enlarged just as it is, we should 

 not be able to recognize it as a chick. 2 



It is thus made quite certain that Bonnet did not regard the 

 germ as an exact photographic image of the adult form, and that 

 idea must be put entirely aside if we would see just what is 

 strictly essential in his conception of preformation. 



The essential thing, as we shall see, was the preexistence of 

 the organism with all its parts completely formed, though not 

 definitively shaped. Development could not form anything 

 new, but it could modify shape and proportions very consider- 

 ably. The ears, for example, in the germ of the horse, were 

 supposed to preexist as actual ears, but in what shape and pro- 

 portions Bonnet never undertook to say. All his theory required 

 was that tJiey should be present as perfect original creations, ad- 

 mitting of no differentiation or modification in their essential 

 nature. They must have shape, but not the particular shape 

 presented in the adult state. The Creator had so designed 



1 " On se tromperait si Ton pensait que le germe est originairement un veritable 

 fluide. Les fluides ne sont pas organises ; le germe Test, et 1'a etc des le com- 

 mencement. Lorsqu'il s'offre a nous sous 1'apparence trompeuse d'un fluide, il a 

 des vaisseaux, et ces vaisseaux s'acquittent de leurs fonctions essentielles. Us 

 sont done solides ; mais leur delicatesse extreme parait les rapprocher de la flui- 

 dite " (Art. 154). 



* Tandis que le poulet est encore dans 1'etat de germe, toutes ses parties ont 

 des formes, des proportions, des situations qui different extremement de celles 

 que 1'evolution leur fera revetir. Cela va au point, que si nous pouvions voir ce 

 germe en grand, tel qu'il est en petit, il nous serait impossible de la reconnaitre 

 pour un poulet. On n'a pour s'en convaincre, qu'a relire 1'Art. 146. Le 

 poulet etendu alors en ligne droite, ne presente, comme le ver spermatique, qu'une 

 grosse tete et une queue effilee, qui renferme les ebauches du tronc et des extre- 

 mites. . . . Enfin, toutes les parties du germe ne se developpent pas 4 la fois et 

 uniformement." (Part II, Chap. VIII, Art. 351, p. 508. Tableau prefixed to 

 Palingenesie, Art. 15, pp. 67, 68.) 



