ABRIDGMENT OF THE CONTEMPLATION OF NATURE
BY Mr. Bonnet, of GENEVA

CHAPTER II
OF THE RELATIVE PERFECTION OF BEINGS

I. TERRESTRIAL beings may naturally be ranged under four general classes.

1. Brute and organized beings.

II. Organized and inanimate beings.

Ill. Organized and animate beings.

IV. Organized, animate, and reasonable beings.

All beings are perfect, considered in themselves; they all answer one end. The determination or qualities proper for each being, are the means relative to this end. If these determinations should change they would no longer have a reference to their end, and there would be no more wisdom.

But those means which are of a more exalted nature, answer a nobler end. T he being appointed to fulfil this end, is enriched with proportionable faculties.

Beings whose relations to the whole are more varied, more multi plied and more copious, possess a higher degree of relative perfec­ts there are two general classes of substances, bodies and souls, there are likewise two general classes of perfection: the corporeal perfection or that which is peculiar to bodies ; and the spiritual per­fection, or that which is peculiar to souls.

These two perfections are reunited in every organized animated being, and they correspond with one another.

From their reunion proceeds that mixed perfection which answers to the rank every being holds in the system.

2. Of all the modifications of matter, the most excellent is organi­zation.

The most perfect organization is that which produces most effects, with an equal or smaller number of dissimilar parts. Such, amongst. terrestrial beings, is the human body.

An organ is a system of solids, whose structure, arrangement and action, have motion for their ultimate end, either intestine or loco­motive, or feeling.

A being, which is barely formed by a repetition of similar parts, enjoys the lowest degree of corporeal perfection. Such probably is the ‘atom or elementary particle.

The faculty of generalizing ideas, or abstracting from a subject what it has in common with others, and expressing it by arbitrary signs, constitutes the highest degree of spiritual perfection ; and therein consists the difference between the human soul and the soul of brutes.

The soul which is only endued with sense, occupies the lowest degree in the scale. This perhaps is the perfection of the soul of the muscle.

3, The reciprocal action of solids and fluids is the foundation of the terrestrial life.

To nourish ourselves, to grow by our food, to beget individuals of cur own species, are the principal ends of the terrestrial life.

 If the action of the organs is not accompanied with a sense of this action, the organized being enjoys only a vegetative life. Such is the case of the plant.

If the action of ‘the organs is joined with a sense of that action, the organized being enjoys a vegetative and sensitive life. This is the condition of the brute.

Finally, if reflection is joined to feeling, the being enjoys at the same time a vegetative, sensitive and reflective life. It is man alone upon earth, that unites these three kinds of life in himself.

The corporeal and intellectual faculties may be carried to so high a pitch of perfection, in the most exalted order of mixed beings, than we are able to form but faint ideas of them.

4. Between the lowest and highest degree of corporeal and spiritual perfection, there is an almost infinite number of intermediate degrees. The result of these degrees composes the universal chajul This unites all beings, connects all worlds, comprehends all the spheres. One Sole Being is out of this chain, and that is He till made it.

A thick cloud conceals from our sight the noblest parts of this immense chain, and admits us only to a slight view of some ill-connected links, which are broken, and greatly differing from the natural order.

We behold its winding course on the surface of our globe, see it pierce into its entrails, penetrate into the abyss of the sea, dart itself into the atmosphere, sink far into the celestial spaces, where we are: only able to descry it by the flashes of fire it emits hither and thither. But notwithstanding our knowledge of the chain of beings is so very imperfect, it is sufficient at least to inspire us with most exalted ideas of that amazing and noble progression and variety which reign in the universe.

5. There are no sudden changes in nature; all is gradual, and elegantly varied. There is no being which has not either above or beneath it some that resemble it in certain characters, and differ from it in others.

Amongst these characters which distinguish beings, we discovery some that are more or less general. Whence we derive our distributions into classes, genera, and species. But there are always” between two classes, and two like genera, mean productions, which seem not to belong more to one than to the other, but to connect them both.

The polypus links the vegetable to the animal. The flying squirrel unites the birds to the quadruped. The ape bears affinity to the-quadruped and the man..

But if there is nothing cut off in nature, it is evident that the distri­butions we make are mother’s. Those we form are purely nominal; relative to our necessities and the bounds of our knowledge. Those intelligences which are superior to us, discover perhaps more varie­ties between two individuals which we range under the same species,. than we do between two individuals of distant genera.

So that these intelligences see the scale of beings all composing one single consequence, which- has for its first term an atom, and, for its last the most exalted seraph.

We may then suppose in the scale of’ our globe as many steps as we know there’ are species. The eighteen or twenty thousand species of plants which compose our herbals, are therefore eighteen or twenty thousand steps of this celestial ladder.

And there is not a single plant amongst these, which does not per­haps nourish one or more species of animals. These animals labour or provide nourishment for others in their tarn. They are so many little worlds comprized in others that are still smaller.

 Simple produces compound. The molecule forms the fibre, the fibre the vessel, the vessel the organ, the organ the body.

 The scale of nature then is constructed by passing from that which composes it, to that which is composed by it, from the less perfect to the greater.

But while we ‘view it in this light, and in a very general manner, we are not to forget that our method of conception is not the rule of things. We are only to take a transient survey of the exterior parts of beings.

Chapter 3