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First edition in the desirable large 4to issue of the Complete Works of one of the fathers of modern biology

BONNET, Charles.
Oeuvres d'histoire naturelle et de philosophie. Collection complette des oeuvres de Charles Bonnet.

With engraved vignettes on titles, many head- and end-pieces (some by Bradt), one folding and 55 full-page engraved plates, some signed by Billé and R.B...

Neuchatel, Samuel Fauche, 1779-83. 8 vols. 4to. Uniformly bound in full contemporary calf, richly gilt spines with two green morocco title-labels lettered in gold, gilt border along the edges, gilt binding edges and inner dentelles, blue endpapers, g.e. With engraved vignettes on titles, many head- and end-pieces (some by Bradt), one folding and 55 full-page engraved plates, some signed by Billé and R.B... (4), XXXII, (4), 1-114, (8), 115-574, (2); (4), II, 524, (2); (4), IV, VII-XVI, 579, 2; (4), XX, 396; (4), IV, 396; (6), XXIV, 422, 215/6, 425-428; (4), II, VIII, 698; (4), XIV, 509 pp.

First edition, in a very fine uniformly bound set of the highly desirable large 4to issue, of the collected scientific and philosophical writings of Charles Bonnet (1720-1793), who "is considered one of the fathers of modern biology. He is distinguished for both his experimental research and his philosophy, which exerted a profound influence upon the naturalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries" (DSB II, p. 286).

Charles Bonnet, a Swiss naturalist and philosophical writer, was born at Geneva, of a French family driven into Switzerland by the religious persecution in the 16th century. His first published work appeared in 1745, entitled Traité d'insectologie, in which were collected his various discoveries regarding insects, along with a preface on the development of germs and the scale of organized beings. Botany, particularly the leaves of plants, next attracted his attention. After several years of diligent study, rendered irksome by the increasing weakness of his eyesight, he published in 1754 one of the most original and interesting of his works, Recherches sur l'usage des feuilles dans les plantes; in which among other things he advances many considerations tending to show (as was later done by Francis Darwin that plants are endowed with powers of sensation and discernment. By its novelty and the spicyness of its details, the work also became popular with the general public. The author seemed to have caught nature in the act, clearly showing the relations of the plant with all surrounding elements, air, sun and soil, by which it as a living being was able to breath, to grow by nourishment, and to be fertile.
But Bonnet's eyesight, which threatened to fail altogether, caused him to turn to philosophy. In 1754 his Essai de psychologie was published anonymously in London. This was followed by the Essai analytique sur les facultés de l'âme (Copenhagen, 1760), in which he develops his views regarding the physiological conditions of mental activity. He returned to physical science, but to the speculative side of it, in his Considerations sur les corps organisées (Amsterdam, 1762), designed to refute the theory of epigenesis, and to explain and defend the doctrine of pre-existent germs. In his Contemplation de la nature (Amsterdam, 1764-1765; translated into Italian, German, English and Dutch), one of his most popular and delightful works, he sets forth, in eloquent language, the theory that all the beings in nature form a gradual scale rising from lowest to highest, without any break in its continuity. His last important work was the Palingénésie philosophique (Geneva, 1769-1770); in it he treats of the past and future of living beings, and supports the idea of the survival of all animals, and the perfecting of their faculties in a future state.
Bonnet's philosophical system may be outlined as follows. Man is a compound of two distinct substances, mind and body, the one immaterial and the other material. All knowledge originates in sensations; sensations follow (whether as physical effects or merely as sequents Bonnet will not say) vibrations in the nerves appropriate to each; and lastly, the nerves are made to vibrate by external physical stimulus. A nerve once set in motion by a particular object tends to reproduce that motion; so that when it a second time receives an impression from the same object it vibrates with less resistance. The sensation accompanying this increased flexibility in the nerve is, according to Bonnet, the condition of memory. When reflection--that is, the active element in mind--is applied to the acquisition and combination of sensations, those abstract ideas are formed which, though generally distinguished from, are thus merely sensations in combination only. That which puts the mind into activity is pleasure or pain; happiness is the end of human existence.
Bonnet had an influence on other philosophers and pre-evolutionary thinkers; James Burnett, Lord Monboddo is known to have studied his publications on insects and to have been influenced as he developed concepts on progression of species (evolution).
This edition of Bonnet's complete works appeared at Neuchâtel in 1779-1783, partly revised by himself, in an 8vo edition in 18 vols., and this much more attractive edition in 4to (sometimes bound in 10 vols.). An English translation of certain portions of the Palingénésie philosophique was published in 1787, under the title Philosophical and Critical Inquiries concerning Christianity

Contents:
Vol. 1: Traitè d'insectologie. Observations diveres sur les insectes (1779); vol. 2: Mémoires d'histoire naturelle. Recherches sur l'usage des feuilles (1779); vol. 3: Considérations sur les corps organisés (1779); vol. 4: Contemplation de la nature (1781); vol. 5: Ecrits d'histoire naturelle (1781); vol. 6: Essai analytique sur les facultés de l'ame (1782); vol. 7: La Palingénésie philosophique (1783); and vol. 8: Essai de psychologie et écrits divers (1783).

(Very good copy of a nicely and uniformly bound set.- (Some browning at places, wormhole in the last quires of vol. 5 (repaired), some pp. a bit soiled).

DSB II, p. 286-7; Garrison-Morton 308 & 472; cf. Collection Plesch, p. 149; A. Lemoine, Charles Bonnet (Paris, 1850); the Duc de Caraman, Charles Bonnet, philosophe et naturaliste (Paris, 1859); Max Offner, Die Psychologie C. B. (Leipzig, 1893); Joh. Speck, in: Arch. f. Gesch. d. Philos x. (1897), xi. (1897), pp. 58ff., xi. (1898) pp. 1-211; J Trembley, Vie privée et littéraire de C. B. (Bern, 1794).

Related Subjects: 18th Century Natural History Philosophy Switzerland Zoology

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