fti 



270 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE 



free from honest doubts as to the real nature of such 



and on one of these occasions 



intangible wanderers, 



he frankly said ^ : — <■ Les infusoires tirent sans doute 

 leur premiere origine de principes pre'organises ; mais 

 ces principes sont ils des oeufs, des germes ou d'autres 

 semblable corpuscles? S'il faut offrir des faits pour 

 repondre a cette question, favoue ingenument que nous 

 n^avons sur ce sujet aucune certitude^ So far then we meet 



with nothing but the wildest hypothesis 2. This seems 



^ 'Opuscules de physique ammale et vegetale.' Pavie, 1787, torn. i. 

 p. 230. 



^ These doctrines of Bonnet and Spallanzani are perhaps mostly 

 due to the influence of the antecedent, though then all-powerful, 

 teachings of Leibnitz. The ' Monads ' of this celebrated philosopher 

 may be said to have replaced the ' atoms ' of the ancient Greeks. We 

 have no longer, however, to do with a universe composed of corporeal 

 and extended units, we have in their place unextended though dis- 

 similar centres of force, mere metaphysical points ; yet, nevertheless, 

 they are supposed to be living things, — even souls— endowed with 

 different degrees of perceptive power. Everything that existed was, 

 according to Leibnitz, replete with life — nay, actually a mass of living 

 individualities : the whole universe was spiritualized. "What similarities 

 there were between the conceptions of Bonnet, to which we have re- 

 ferred, and those of Leibnitz (which probably suggested them), may be 

 gathered from the following reference to the doctrines of the great 

 German philosopher : — ' As it is with the human soul, which sympa- 

 thizes with all the varying states of nature, which mirrors the universe, 

 so it is with the monads universally. Each — and they are infinitely 

 numerous — is also a mirror, a centre of the universe, a microcosm : 



F 



everything that is or happens is reflected in each, but by its own spon- 

 taneous power, through which it holds ideally in itself, as if in germ, 

 the totality of things. By him, then, who shall look near enough, all 

 that in the whole huge universe happens, has happened, or will 

 happen, may, in each individual monad, be, as it were, read.' 

 (' Schwegler's History of Philosophy,' translated by Stirling, p. 196.) 





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