Mémoires autobiographiques de Charles Bonnet de Genève by Charles Bonnet; Raymond Savioz;La philosophie de Charles Bonnet de Genève by Raymond SaviozReview by: George SartonIsis, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Sep., 1952), pp. 277-280Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/227482 .

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Reviews 2 77

it unnecessary to say again what had been said already and so well. This procedure of writing little, save about the books themselves and their composition and physical aspect, is also in line with John Ray's own literary admonition, "He that useth many words for the explaining of any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink." Together, Keynes's bibliography and Canon Raven's biog- raphy give us a working picture of Ray and it were greatly to be wished that we could say the same of many other interesting men of science of seventeenth-century England.

LeFanu's book is a bio-bibliography in the true sense; since he did not have a Canon Raven to fall back on, he had to provide considerable ordinary biographical information. It was es- pecially his intention to attack the "legend [that] had taken root that he [Jenner] was an undis- tinguished country doctor, who by lucky chance made known the preventive of smallpox for which the world was seeking." On the contrary, Jenner emerges from LeFanu's pages as "a naturalist and physician of outstanding acu- men."

As a sample of LeFanu's method, we may look at the story of the cuckoo; incidentally, it is shown that there is no evidence for the old story that the paper was "referred back to him by the Royal Society." LeFanu begins his ac- count by quoting extensively from the corre- spondence between Jenner and Hunter, then describes the holograph draft of Jenner's paper, presently in the possession of the Royal Society, and then discusses the relation of the final draft to the rough one. The first draft had been ac- cepted for publication, but was "Cancelled at the desire of the author," as stated on the manuscript. LeFanu next presents a biblio- graphical description of the paper as published in the Philosophical Transactions, and then a similar description of the separate issue. This is followed by an able three-page summary of the contents, then bibliographical descriptions of the French and Italian translations, and finally some account of the rejection in the nineteenth century of Jenner's observations and their final vindication by photography in the twentieth. In other words, the whole story of Jenner's acute observations of the extraordinarily strange habits of the cuckoo are presented in full.

In addition to discussions of Jenner's pub- lished writings, a separate section is devoted to listing Jenner letters and to describing various Jenner collections. LeFanu not only provides an account of the Jenner publications, therefore, but all of the materials for a biography. Having done so much, and having indicated his super- lative knowledge of Jenner and his times, one can hope that LeFanu will find it possible to write a general biography of Jenner, based on the information he has already collected.

Both of these works have been prepared with scrupulous care. Both are indexed and both contain locations of copies of the works de-

scribed. The pains required to produce such works are enormous and their use to librarians, collectors, and scholars is great. We are fortu- nate that this gratitude has been expressed for all of us by one who is both an historian and a bibliographer .

I. BERNARD COHEN

CHARLES BONNET: Mtmoires autobiogra- phiques de Charles Bonnet de GenAve, &dit6s par Raymond Savioz. 4I4 P., frontispiece. Paris: Vrin, I948.

RAYMOND SAVIOZ: La philosophie de Charles Bonnet de Gengve. 393 p. (Bibliotheque d'Histoire de la Philosophie). Paris: Vrin, 1948. The history of biology in the eighteenth

century is a fascinating subject. Our readers have been given many glimpses of it, e.g., apro- pos of Abraham Trembley (Isis 37, 87-89) and

TR A I T S'

D'INSECTOLOG IE; o U

OBSERVATIONS SUR LES

PUCERONS Pr JI CH ALIS >X"=T, kt &4 Swiea RV&

dLXui*r " , ' C.bro ui ' r;nddim. Rtoyde Its Saqurns I Pais.

PREMIEiRE PARTIF.

A P A R I ST

2h,ez DuIaND, Libraire mc SinJaccs J S. Landry & au Grifon'.

AL D CC. X L V. A-'cc A4pprobasiei & rivikejdu Re,.

FIG. i. TraitA d'insectologie. Vol. I, Paris 1745. (Courtesy of Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, Mass.)

of Spallanzani (Isis 43, 146). M. Savioz's two books concern a younger contemporary, com- patriot, and friend of Trembley (I710-84), Charles Bonnet (I720-93). Both were alumni of the famous Academy of Geneva, both incubated

'John F. Fulton, The great medical bibliog- raphers: A study in humanism (Univ. of Penn. Press, I95I; cf. Isis 43: 90-9g).

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278 Reviews

TR A IT El

D'INSECTOLOGIE; o U

OBSERVATIONS SUR QUELQUES ESPECES

DE VERS D'EAU DOUCE,

Quw coupds par morceaux, devienme autant d'Animaux complets.

?,W M CIRLKS BoxmT, & f4 Seaiii Royde dt Lomi,et, & C.rrnfj,xai de rka tde

Royde des Scicsces de Pait.

SECONDE P'ART

A PA4R ISt COez DuND, J,Lbmire, rue Saint Jacqus,

S. Landry & au Grffon.

AL DCCC XLV. c .

AvucA4proeate,n & Privlk,du JRt.

FIG. 2. Traite d'insectologie. Vol. 2, Paris 1745. (Courtesy of Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, Mass.)

in its Calvinistic and Cartesian atmosphere. They had the same teachers, Calandrini, Cramer, de la Rive, etc. Bonnet's ancestors had left France after the St Bartholomew purge of 1572, but he was thoroughly Genevese, and never left Geneva and Genthod. In this, he was more Genevese than Trembley, who did his main scientific work in Holland.

The teaching which Bonnet received at the Academy awakened his philosophic interest, but his best work was done in his youth when that interest was overshadowed by a passion for zoo- logical observation. He has told us himself in his autobiography that he owed his curiosity of natural history to the Spectacle de la Nature of the abbe Pluche; he was a born observer and be- came a scientific one under Reaumur's influence. Happy the men who find their vocations early in life! Bonnet enjoyed that happiness, and the M.moires pour servir a l'histoire des insectes (6 vols., Paris 1734-42) were for him a revela- tion. Reaumur gave meaning and purpose to his life. Bonnet made his main discovery, the par- thenogenesis of aphids, at the age of i9, and communicated it at once to his distant mentor, Reaumur, who was then 57 and at the height of his glory. R6aumur encouraged the young man whose work was soon published, Traite d'in- sectologie ou Observations sur les pucerons (Paris I745), the second part of that treatise explained the multiplication of worms by section (Remem-

CONSIDERATIONS SUR LES

CORPS ORGANISES O'u !'on traite dc leur Origine, de leur Diveloppement,

de leur Rdprodu&ion, &c. & ou l'on a rafIembI6 en abrWg# tout ce que 1'Hifloire Naturelle ofre de plus certain & de plus int6reffant fur ce fujet.

PA R C. B O N N E T, des fcademie: d'4mgletkrre, de Suede , de I'Ix/liAst

de Bolognr, Correfpondant de I'Aad. Royale des Scie;eces, &C.

TOME PREMIER.

Vla

A XMS7E R D1M,

Chez MARC-MICHEL REY, M D C C L X I I.

FIG. 3. Considerations sur les corps organises. 2 vols., Amsterdam 1762. (Courtesy of Harvard Library.)

ber that Trembley's book on polyps appeared almost at the same time, Paris I744; Isis 37, 87).

Trembley's scientific career was but a short episode in his long life; it was already over by I747 (aet. 37), Bonnet's continued much longer but took a different form. Eye troubles began to handicap him soon after the publication of his first book, and he became almost blind. Observa- tions being less and less possible, he devoted him- self to philosophical meditations. He was deeply influenced not only by Descartes but also by Locke, Malebranche and above all by Leibniz. He was a natural philosopher but on the biolog- ical side, trying always to explain the mysteries of life, generation, sexuality, regeneration. The embryologists of his time were lost in contro- versies which seem pretty nebulous to us and developed more heat than light. There was the fight between the ovists and the animalculists; there was another between the partisans of epi- genesis (following Harvey i651) and those of

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Reviews 279

CONTEMPLATION DE LA

N A T U R E.

PAR C. B O N N E T,

des .cadlmies Impriales idll,empne & de Rkf4e; det dcadbmies Royales d'd#Jkterre, de Sutde & de Liox s de I.cadlmie Eleftorak de Baavire & de celk de Pl7- fiit#t de Bokgne; Corre/pondant de I%dcad6mie Roya- k des Sciences & de; Soci6ds Royales de MentrUift & d GoiingSu.

T a M z P it x M i s r.

.? ALSED M

id JMS 7- E R D 4 M2

Chez MARC-MICHEL REY, M D C C L X I V.

FIG. 4. Contemplation de la nature. 2 vols., Am- sterdam I764. (Courtesy of Harvard Library.)

preformation (following Aromatari i625).' The theory of preformation was the favorite one; it had been accepted and amplified by Swammer- dam, Malpighi, Haller, by philosophers like Malebranche and Leibniz,2 by popular writers like the abbe Pluche. There were two different theories of "preformation": the one was that of "emboitement" (encasing) of the germs, from that point of view the whole of mankind was al- ready included in Eve's womb!; the other, that the germs are disseminated everywhere (pan-

' Giuseppe degli Aromatari (Assisi 1586-Ven- ice I66o): Epistola de generatione plantarum ex seminibus (Venice I625). Not available to me. Harvey was influenced by this book but rejected its conclusions.

2 Malebranche (I638-I7I5) and Leibniz (I646-I7I6) were close contemporaries. Though they had died before Bonnet's birth, they were very much alive throughout the eighteenth cen- tury.

L A

PAUINGENIESII PHILOSOPHIQUE,

o U I D t1 E S

S UR

LTETAT PASSE ET Sur, L'ETAT FIJTUR

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deriiiers Ecrits de I'Auteur, Et lii contient prinicipakelnnt

LE P.R ECIS DE SES RECTIEIkCHES SUR LE CHRISTIANISME.

Par C. BONNET, de diverfis Acadimies.

T 0 1X1 E P R E MILR 1 t.

A GENE VEs

c CLAUDE PflILIBERT; Chez 3r

t BARTHI-LEMI CHIROI.

X,. Dcc. L XIX.

FIG. 5. Palingine'sie, 2 vols., Geneve I769. (Cour- tesy of Harvard Library.)

spermy). The second form was favored by Leibniz and adopted by Bonnet, who did not completely reject the first, however. One can readily imagine the philosophical elucubrations to which those fantastic theories lent themselves. Nor were the theologians immune. I may recall here a curious fact to which M. Savioz does not refer. John Wesley (I703-9I), the founder of Methodism, annexed to his own work a part of the English translation of Bonnet's dealing with the scale of creation. It is for that very reason that Wesley was accused justly and unjustly of having been an evolutionist. Wesley was an evolutionist as Bonnet was and as were all the preformationists, but their evolutionism was but an extreme form of creationism.3 Poor Bonnet

3This was very well explained by Edwin Ten- ney Brewster: Creation, a history of non-evolu- tionary theories (Indianapolis I927; Isis 9, 462- 65).

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280 Reviews

spent the best part of his life trying to elucidate those dark matters, without realizing that to discuss them without a sufficient experimental basis was futile.

To return to M. Savioz's interesting volumes, the first and most important is his edition of the Memoires, hitherto unpublished, preserved with the rest of Bonnet's MSS in the Public Library of Geneva. These Mimoires are autobiographical reminiscences dictated by Bonnet between 1775

and 1791; the story which they tell stops at I782.

They were begun at the request of Albrecht Haller, after Haller's death (I777) their con- tinuation was addressed to Trembley, and after the latter's death (1784) to Bonnet's nephew and disciple, Horace Benedict de Saussure.' The lat- ter did not bother to publish them, and we are not surprised, because they are very prolix and generally dull. Bonnet's idea of an autobiog- raphy was very different from ours; we expect one to be lively; he made his as ponderous as he could, adding to it (filing, for the record, as we would say) all kinds of documents, such as letters he had written, or discourses which he had delivered (like Trembley, he took a consid- erable part in Genevese politics and administra- tion). Some of these letters are very interesting, e.g., his correspondence with Euler which throws new light upon the latter's universal genius.' They do not suffice to redeem the book and are lost in it. We are, nevertheless, very grateful to M. Savioz for having published them so carefully with all the necessary annotations.

The other book is a discussion of Bonnet's philosophy divided into six parts: i. Sources, 2. Natural philosophy, 3, Metaphysics, 4. Psy- chology, 5. Ethics, logic, pedagogics, 6. The in- fluence of Bonnet's writings (in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, Holland and England). Historians of science will be in- terested chiefly in part 2 which is, unfortunately, very short (56 p.) and in the final one. Bonnet's fate is curious. His discovery of parthenogenesis made a sensation and soon after the publication of his Traits d'insectologie he found himself fa- mous. His many books were often reprinted (in separate and collected editions) and some were translated into German, Italian and English. His age was more patient than ours and found pleas- ure in elucubrations which have become unbear- able today. Who would wish to read Bonnet's discussion of "the metaphysical reason of bisex-

4 Charles Bonnet and his wife (nee De la Rive), being childless, had adopted her nephew, H. B. de Saussure (I740-99), who became fa- mous as a geologist, meteorologist, scientific ex- plorer of the high Alps. Douglas W. Freshfield: The life of H. B. de Saussure (London 1920; Isis 6, 64-71).

5Buffon did not wish to discuss Bonnet's Palingenesie (Geneva 1769), but Euler was ready to do so. Upon receipt of the book, he wrote to Bonnet "J'ai et6 penetr6 au plus vif de la maniere dont vous demontrez la verit de la Revelation et qui surpasse tout ce que j'ai lu de plus excel- lent sur ce sujet."

uality" ' and other dull fantasies of the same kind? His fame is immortal but restricted to the astonishing discoveries of his early youth; the voluminous writings of his maturity should not be held against him. A fresh exploration of them by a historian of science, with a good biological training, might be useful. M. Savioz did not go deep enough in such matters, but his books will facilitate further investigations.

GEORGE SARTON

ERNST CASSIRER: The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. Translated from the German by Fritz C. A. Koelln and James P. Pettegrove. xiii + 366 pp. Princeton: Princeton Univer- sity Press, 1951. $6.oo. This is an excellent, and most welcome, trans-

lation of Cassirer's important Die Philosophie der Aufkliirung, originally published in Germany in 1932. The title may be misleading, if the reader thinks first of the word "philosophy" in the sense of the highly specialized professional philosophy of modern universities. Cassirer was indeed a distinguished professional philosopher, one of the leaders of the neo-Kantian school. But in this book, though he is concerned with metaphysics, epistemology and ethics - and, in- cidentally, quite willing to admit that the philo- sophes deserve to be ranked formally as philos- ophers - he is also concerned with natural science, history, political ideas, and art and liter- ature. He is really writing about the place of the Enlightenment in the history of ideas in Western civilization.

The book is an admirable capping of the work of a whole generation of writers in many different fields, all concerned with the rehabilita- tion of the eighteenth century from the many misunderstandings the nineteenth-century ro- mantics -and positivists too -had heaped up about the work of their predecessors. Even as late as the beginning of the twentieth century, the conventional view of the Enlightenment was still substantially that held by Wordsworth, the French and German romantics, the Victorians, the view that the Enlightenment was shallow, narrowly rationalistic, "atomistic," the "Age of Prose and Reason," that above all it lacked syn- thetic power and even emotional drive.

Cassirer does not make the naive mistake so common to historical revisionists of asserting that the Enlightenment was all that its denigra- tors maintained it was not. He grants that, cer- tainly in the hands of those who popularized them, the ideas of the Enlightenment were often excessively simplified, that they tended to neglect the mystical side of human emotional striving, that like many other systems of thought, they froze readily into dogmatism. But his cen- tral point is a complete denial of the reproach that the "reason" of the Enlightenment was a

6Should you wish to read it, however, you will find it in his Contemplation de la Nature (XIe partie, ch. IV, vol. 2, 85, I764).

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