BONNET. I ig 



these embryons . . . must possess a greater degree of minute- 

 ness than that which was ascribed to the devils who tempted St. 

 Anthony, of whom twenty thousand were said to have been able to 

 dance a saraband on the point of a needle without the least incom- 

 moding each other." 



We become more charitable in judging Bonnet as 

 a man of science when we learn that, befrinnin'r in 

 1740, while associated with Reaumur in the Univer- 

 sity of Geneva, he made a series of admirable obser- 

 vations and original discoveries, such as those upon 

 * parthenogenesis ' in the Aphides or Tree Lice, the 

 mode of reproduction in the Bryozoa, the respira- 

 tion of insects, and that it was the unfortunate fail- 

 ure of his eyesight in 1754 which turned him from 

 observation to speculation. His speculations were 

 as unsound as his observations had been sound and 

 valuable. 



Bonnet, in 1764, published his Contemplations de 

 la Nature, and in 1768 his Palingenesie PJiiloso- 

 phique, ou idees stir Vetat passe et snr Fetat dcs Etrcs 

 ^ivants. The latter work is dedicated "to tlie 

 friends of Truth and of Virtue, who are mine." 



Bonnet found his inspiration in the law of Conti- 

 nuity of Leibnitz,- and along different lines of rea- 

 soning he reached the same conclusion as the great 

 German philosopher, that no such thing as genera- 

 tion, in the strict sense of the term, occurs in 

 Nature. Leibnitz' law of Continuity he exj^ands 

 into the idea that all creation forms a continuous 

 chain from the mineral up to the top of the animal 



