GERM DOCTRINE OF BONNET. 



247 



primitive organization of the germs determines the arrange- 

 ment which the nourishing atoms must take in order to be- 

 come parts of the organic whole. 



"An inorganic solid is a piece of mosaic or unconnected 

 parts. An organic solid is a fabric formed by the interweaving 

 of various threads. The elementary fibres with their meshes 

 are the warp of the stuff ; the nourishing atoms which insinu- 

 ate themselves into these meshes are the woof. These com- 

 parisons, however, should not be carried too far. 



" On these principles, which seemed to me more philosoph- 

 ical than those that had been held before me, I came to regard 

 death as a sort of envelopment, and the resurrection as a second 

 development incomparably more rapid than the first. 



" This is the simple and clear way in which I conceived the 

 thing : I considered the organic whole, attained to its full 

 growth, as a composite of original or elementary parts and of 

 foreign substances which nutrition had associated with them 

 during the entire course of life. 



" I imagined that decomposition, which follows death, ex- 

 tracted, so to speak, from the organic whole those foreign sub- 

 stances which nutrition had associated with the constituent, 

 primitive, and indestructible parts of this whole ; that during 

 this extraction these parts tended to approach one another 

 more and more, and to take new forms, new relative positions, 

 new arrangements ; in a word, to return to the primitive state 

 of the germ and thus concentrate themselves in a point. 



" On this little hypothesis, which seemed wholly my own 

 [the similar "envelopment" hypothesis of Leibnitz was un- 

 known to Bonnet at first], I explained quite felicitously, as it 

 then appeared, and in a purely physical way, the so consoling 

 and philosophical dogma of the resurrection. It sufficed me for 

 this to suppose that there were natural causes, arranged origi- 

 nally by the benevolent Author of our being, and designed to 

 effect the rapid development of this organic whole concealed 

 under the invisible form of a germ, and thus preserved by In- 

 finite Wisdom for the day of this great manifestation." 



Thus according to Bonnet's earlier notions, death simply 

 reverses the process of evolution marks the end of de-velop- 



