I 1 8 EVOLUTIONISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 



CHARLES BONNET (1720-1793) was in no modern 

 sense an evolutionist, although he was long known 

 as such and was the author of the term. He derived 

 it from e-volvo to express his remarkable theory of 

 life, which was an adaptation of Leibnitz' philosophy 

 to embryology. The term became a nomen nudum 

 when the doctrine of 'Epigenesis' replaced that of 

 * Evolution,' and was finally taken up by, and applied 

 as appropriate to, our modern doctrine of develop- 

 ment. We recall, in passing, the great and prolonged 

 discussions during the eighteenth and the early part 

 of the nineteenth century, between the ' evolution- 

 ist ' and ' epigenetic ' school of embryonic develop- 

 ment, as absorbing an immense amount of time and 

 energy and diverting the attention of naturalists 

 from the greater problem of the genesis of species. 



When we examine Bonnet's ' Evolution or expan- 

 sion of the invisible into visibility ' and absence 

 of generation in the strict sense of the term, we find 

 it difficult to believe that Cuvier, and many other 

 eminent naturalists, were among Bonnet's support- 

 ers. Erasmus Darwin was among his opponents, 

 and we see in his Zoonomia a quaint criticism of 

 Bonnet's extravagant hypothesis : 



" Many ingenious philosophers have found so great difficulty in 

 conceiving the manner of reproduction in animals, that they have 

 supposed all the numerous progeny to have existed in miniature in 

 the animal originally created. This idea, besides its. being unsup- 

 ported by any analogy we are acquainted with, ascribes a greater 

 continuity to organized matter than we can readily admit, . . . 



