VOLUME XI NUMBER 3 JUNE, 1950

TREMBLEY'S POLYP, LA METTRIE, AND EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY FRENCH MATERIALISM

By ARAM VARTANIAN

In 1740, Abraham Trembley, a young Genevan engaged as preceptor in a noble house in Holland, while strolling in the coun- try, chanced upon a discovery that was shortly to make his name illustrious in the eighteenth century. Below the surface of a stag- nant pool, a type of water-plant attracted his attention. Upon ex- amination, the small reed-shaped creature appeared to be com- posed of a uniformly gelatinous substance, having, at one end of the hollow body, a mouth-like opening, and reproducing, normally, by a series of shoots. Such were the characteristics that had led Leeuwenhoeck to class this polyp as a plant in 1703. Many had seen it since, without perceiving anything out of the ordinary. But Trembley, observing closely, noticed that his freshwater " zoo- phyte" had the habits of an animal. Along with its powers of locomotion, contraction and extension, eight or ten arm-like pro- jections at its mouth-end could seize whatever prey came their way, which was then conveyed to the stomach and digested. Puz- zled by this apparent contradiction between the appearance of the polyp and its behavior, Trembley experimented further before be- ing convinced of its animality. He then communicated the facts to the great Reaumur, the authority of the age in such matters, who not only approved the young naturalist's conclusions, but became himself keenly interested in the polyp's singularity.

The most amazing fact concerning the polyp, however, first related in the usually reserved Memoires de l'Academie des Sci- ences, is typically worded: "The story of the Phoenix who is re- born from his ashes, as fabulous as it might be, offers nothing more marvelous. . . . From each portion of an animal cut in 2, 3, 4, 10, 20, 30, 40 parts, and, so to speak, chopped up, just as many com- plete animals are reborn, similar to the first. Each of these is ready to undergo the same division . . . without it being known yet at what point this astonishing multiplication will cease."1 The polyp's hydra-like regeneration, and its behavior with a type of

lMenm. de MlAcad. d. Sciences, 1741, (Ed. orig. in-40), pp. 33-34. All transla- tions in this article are by the author.

259

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sensibility peculiar to insects when it evidently lacked all the senses and most of the organs proper to animals, caused this "insecte sin- gulier et merveilleux," as the Encyclope'die later summed up its reputation,2 to be perhaps the most fascinating single curiosity of natural history in the 1740's.

Long before the publication in 1744 of Trembley's widely-cir- culated and classic account of the polyp,3 talk about the new dis- covery had stimulated thought on a variety of subjects. Trembley, Reaumur, Henry Baker, Martin Folkes, Buffon, Jussieu, to men- tion only the most important, were all very much preoccupied with the several problems raised by the polyp and affecting the orienta- tion of zoological science. What is particularly significant, how- ever, and all the more so because of its important implications for eighteenth-century materialism, is the fact that the polyp became involved in speculations on matters ranging from the nature of the soul to the teleology of organic forms. Oddly enough, this aspect of the polyp's role has hitherto not been made the subject of a single study.

Paralleling the purely scientific interest for a time, the philo- sophical concern with the polyp continued several decades longer. Charles Bonnet, discoverer of parthenogenesis and a foremost eighteenth-century biologist; Maupertuis, the French President of the Berlin Academy of Sciences; Lyonnet, the well-known natu- ralist-all were aware of the broader questions, philosophical in import, implicit in the peculiarities of the polyp. Even Rousseau, in 1750, listed its manner of multiplication among the six or seven leading problems of science and philosophy in his famous tour de force against the vanity of searching into the secrets of the uni- verse.4 Many years later, Voltaire, with much curiosity and a few prejudices, observed over and over again a vase full of polyps displayed on the mantelpiece of his friend du Fai's home and did not find sufficient reason to accept their animality. About the same time, the hero of Diderot's Reve de D'Alembert imagined "human polyps" inhabiting Jupiter and Saturn.

2 Encyclopedie, ou dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts et des metiers, 1751-65, XII, 945 ff. Article Polype.

3 Memoires pour servir a 'histoire d'un genre de polypes d'eau douce, a bras en forme de comes (Leiden, 1744). (Also, Paris, 1744).

4 G. R. Havens, ed., J-J. Rousseau, Discours sur les sciences et les arts, (1946), p. 131; also Commentary, pp. 215-16.

Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Jun., 1950), pp. 259-286

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But it was Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-51), one of the lesser materialists of the century, who had earlier understood and utilized with originality and consistency the speculative implica- tions of Trembley's discovery. This integration of the polyp into the stream of materialist ideas was to effect a major change in the direction of La Mettrie's thought, culminating in the appearance of L'Homme machine in 1748, a work clearly divergent from his previous writings in its new approach to materialism. In addi- tion to what an analysis of La Mettrie's works would reveal on this point, there exists other conclusive evidence of the firm ties established, at an early date, between the nature of the polyp and the tenets of materialist philosophy. Bonnet, who was thoroughly familiar with almost every phase of the polyp question, states this fact explicitly in the Contemplation de la Nature (1764).5 But he gives no names. Hence when he deplores the utilization of the polyp to bolster the doctrines of materialism, Bonnet might be referring to Buffon, Maupertuis or Diderot, as well as to La Met- trie. Be this as it may, for chronological reasons alone, La Met- trie's position must receive prior consideration in any study of French materialism during the period under scrutiny. For the record, however, it must be noted that those who were in many ways his immediate intellectual heirs were unwilling to admit any indebtedness to him. This was due, very likely, to La Mettrie's wholly unsavory reputation. Moreover, his untimely death in 1751, by removing him from the scene of discussion, made it all the more easy for his successors to refuse credit where credit was due. In recent years, an attempt has been made to restore the author of L'Homme machine to his merited place in the history of eighteenth-century thought.6 An examination, therefore, of the polyp's influence on La Mettrie and his contemporaries is most pertinent to the new revaluation.

The role the polyp had in the formation of La Mettrie's ideas 5 Contemplation de la nature (Amsterdam, 1764), I, xxix: "On sqait combien on

avoit deraisonne sur la nature de 1'Ame, a l'occasion de la Decouverte du Polype. Les Materialistes s'en etoient saisis avec avidite pour 6tayer leur dogme favori." Included with the abusers of Trembley's discovery are "sceptics," who attempted thereby to strengthen "leurs vaines declarations sur l'incertitude de nos Connais- sances."

6 Raymond Boissier, La Mettrie, medecin, pamphletaire et philosophe (Paris, 1931). Especially, pp. 163 ff.

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would seem far from apparent to the critic unless L'Homme ma- chine were studied against the background of Trembley's work and its various implications.7 The first point to be established, then, is that this radical biological phenomenon, prior to 1748, had a direct bearing on speculative matters. The impact of Trem- bley's findings, as indicated by the title of the present article, on both scientific and philosophical orientation in the 1740's was a very appreciable one. It is appropriate, therefore, to describe in some detail the nature and extent of that decade's interest in the subject.

As early as 1741, Reaumur spread and popularized the novel facts about the polyp by repeating Trembley's experiments before the French Academie des Sciences, at Court and in Paris.8 So great was the effect of this fresh-water hydra on popular curiosity at the time that Reaumur wrote to Trembley: "If people in Paris did not talk too much about war at present, they would be talking only about the insects which, being cut in two, become complete animals."9 The polyp very early crossed the Channel to Eng- land. Henry Baker mentions that Buffon, in a letter written in 1741, passed the information on to Martin Folkes, the President of the Royal Society, who in turn sought further particulars from Holland and France, which he made public.10 Baker himself, having made independent observations, published in 1743 An At- tempt towards a Natural History of the Polype, without contest- ing, however, Trembley's originality. Trembley himself satisfied the increasing impatience of the curious when, in 1744, the long-

7Boissier, for example, who fails to do this, quotes (p. 143) as part of a longer passage La Mettrie's most revealing reference to the polyp without, how- ever, suspecting the effect on his materialism of the polyp's nature and history.

8 Mem. de l'Acad. d. Sciences, 1741, p. 35. 9 Quoted in M. Caullery, French Science and its principal discoveries since the

seventeenth century (New York, 1934), p. 36. An account of the discovery of the polyp and the scientific fervor it prompted is to be found in Jean Torlais, Reaumur

(Paris, 1936), pp. 157-68. 10 Henry Baker, The Microscope Made Easy (2d ed.; London, 1743), pp. 96-98.

Folkes's interest lasted some time, as evidenced by a letter to him from Mme. Geoffrin (dated 16 Jan. 1743) in which, following his request, a description is given of the latest developments in Paris concerning the polyp; cf. Harcourt Brown, "Madame Geoffrin and Martin Folkes," Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. I (1940), pp. 225- 27. According to Professor Brown, moreover, the Folkes MSS examined by him include many letters from Trembley, Bonnet, Reaumur, and others, in which the

polyp is a subject of discussion.

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awaited results of his ingenious researches appeared and reached the great mass of intelligent readers." Meanwhile, Bonnet, hav- ing experimented similarly on various species of worms sharing some of the polyp's regenerative powers (although none to such a spectacular and decisive degree), published the fruits of his col- laboration in the Traite d'lnsectologie (1745).12 The pontifical Reaumur, unwilling to put the matter off until the proposed final volume of his unfinished monumental series, had prefaced Volume VI (1742) with a valuable summary of the state of interest and research concerning the polyp and kindred creatures.13 From it we learn that Bonnet's experiments had keenly aroused the curi- osity of Reaumur, Lyonnet, Jussieu and Guettard, who, whetting the interest of many others, went about France cutting up all man- ner of worms and sea-animals to see if they would multiply like polyps. It is important to add that the works of Reaumur and Bonnet in general, as well as the detailed studies of Trembley and Baker, had a definitely prominent place in eighteenth-century libraries, as far as scientific literature was concerned.14 For La Mettrie and his contemporaries the remarkable ways of the polyp were a subject of major interest.15

It did not take long for the nature of the polyp to give rise to speculation beyond the limits of zoology, for it was the genius of the century to make the transition very easily from the natural sciences to philosophy. The article already cited at the outset in the Memoires de l'Academie des Sciences, after introducing the new discovery, had impressed upon the literal-minded that the

11 See note 3. A summary and review of the contents of this work appeared in the Journal des Sgavants, 1745 (in-23?), pp. 86-114, 237-68. For the wide- spread interest aroused by Trembley's book, cf. the results of Daniel Mornet's study of 500 catalogues of 18th-century libraries: Les Sciences de la Nature en France, au XVIIIe siecle (Paris, 1911), p. 248.

12 Traite d'Insectologie, ou Observations sur les Pucerons & sur quelques Es- peces de Vers d'eau douce, qui coupes par morceaux, deviennent autant d'Animaux complets, (Paris, 1745).

13 Memoires pour servir d l'histoire des Insectes, (Paris, 1734-42), Vol. VI (1742), Pref., xlix ff.

14 For the very considerable diffusion of these writings, see Mornet's index figures, op. cit., p. 248.

15 La Mettrie considered that Trembley's discovery assured the passing of his name "de plein vol a l'immortalite." Oeuvres philosophiques (Berlin, 1796), III, 135.

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polyp had biological as well as supra-biological implications, "on the generation of animals, on their extreme resemblance to plants, and perhaps on still higher matters."6 As early as 1741, the mathematician Cramer,7 in a letter to Bonnet, argued that the polyp's manner of reproduction was a severe blow to those who defended the theory of animal-soul against the Cartesian defini- tion of beasts as pure machines.18 For the division of the polyp into many parts without loss of its vital principle served to prove that an animal's soul was divisible along with its body; that is, its soul was material and indistinct substantially from its physical organisation. On the same basis, Lyonnet, in the commentary ad- joining his translation of the Insecto-Theologia of the German, Friedrich Christian Lesser, inferred that the souls of certain ani- mals must be divisible indefinitely."9 Such a statement, if under- stood by some to mean that the animal-soul is merely a function of matter, could easily suggest a dangerous analogy applicable to the human soul. Accordingly, following a later edition of the Theologie des Insectes, the Journal de Trevoux, reviewing the book in 1747, scented heresy, complained that Lyonnet's discussion, while in itself not unorthodox, set a bad precedent for less pious minds by emphasizing the dependence of the soul's nature on facts of natural history, rather than on revelation and the authority of the Church.20 Not without cause were the sentinels of tradition here on guard. In their estimate of the problem raised by Lyon- net the point of departure for La Mettrie's materialism becomes in fact discernible. The same article in the Journal de Trevoux elsewhere went so far as to predict, very significantly, that theo-

16 Mem. de l'Acad. d. Sciences, 1741, p. 35. (Italics are my own.) 17 Gabriel Cramer (1704-52), friend of Jean and Jacques Bernouilli, appointed

to the chair of philosophy at Geneva in 1750, and author of several works on math- ematics. Cramer was in close contact with many of the great luminaries of the century, including Voltaire, D'Alembert, Buffon, and Maupertuis.

18 Quoted in V. A. de Caraman, Charles Bonnet, sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris, 1859), pp. 30-31.

19 Theologie des Insectes, trad. de l'allemand de Mr. Lesser avec des remarques de Mr. P. Lyonnet (La Haye, 1742), II, 86: "Voila done l'ame des Insectes, an moins de quelques-uns, divisible, quel etrange paradoxel Apres ces experiences, il semble qu'on aura de la peine a s'empecher de reconnoitre qu'il n'y ait des In- sectes dont l'ame, s'ils en ont, est divisible, & meme divisible en tres grand nombre de parties toutes suffisantes pour animer un corps tout entier. . ."

20 Journal de Trevoux, mai 1747, pp. 883-85.

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ries of "spontaneous" insect generation, by departing from the fixed pattern of ordinary animal procreation, might possibly be extended by "unscrupulous" minds to include man himself and thereby play into the hands of materialist philosophy.21 About the time of these prophetic words, L'Homme machine, which was to utilize the polyp's regeneration towards a decisively materialis- tic end, was actually being composed by La Mettrie. Many years after La Mettrie's achievement, the anti-materialist Bonnet, in- veighing against those who had unwittingly abetted materialist ideas, was to reflect bitterly: "The opponents of the immateriality of animal-soul . . . did not realize that they were thus striking a blow against the spirituality of man's soul.'"2

Philosophizing about the polyp contributed all the more to materialist aims by being a widespread tendency. Speculation concerning its implications was not confined to France and the Continent. Folkes, writing to Montesquieu from England in 1742, had stated: ". . we wish here passionately for some explanation of so extraordinary a fact."23 He himself, in the same letter, had theorized that the polyp might prove that plants and animals share the same essential nature and that discoveries such as Trembley's might eventually correct many erroneous foundations of meta- physical opinion.24

In 1745, Bonnet, who in his lifetime was never to cease reflect- ing on the subject, had arrived at one very important conclusion in the Traite d'Insectologie: namely, that the polyp represented the connecting link between the forms of vegetative and animal

21 Ibid., mars 1747, pp. 395-96: "II n'est pas douteux . . . que la generation reguliere des Insectes par voye de propagation ordinaire, des qu'elle est vraye, ne soit la plus conforme a l'Ecriture, & a la gloire de Dieu: & il est vrai que l'opinion contraire tient du hazard, & peut rendre equivoque pour bien des esprits licentieux, la g6enration des autres Animaux & de l'Homme meme. Rien n'est plus contraire a Spinoza, a Epicure & au systeme du Mechanisme pur des Modernes que la pre- formation necessaire des Plantes & des Animaux, qui ne peut alors venir que de Dieu."

22 Essai analytique sur les facultes de l'dme (Copenhague, 1760), p. 465. 23 Gebelin, F., and Morize, A., Correspondance de Montesquieu (Paris 1914),

I, 379-80. 24 Ibid. Unfortunately, part of the original manuscript is torn away at pre-

cisely the most valuable point of Folkes's statement. Nevertheless, there is, we believe, sufficient evidence in the remaining portions to justify our summary of Folkes's point of view.

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life.25 As a consequence of the continuity thus established be- tween two traditionally separate realms, Bonnet devised a tenta- tive "echelle des etres." Although the "scale of nature" had been advanced by Locke and, in particular, generalized by the Leibnizian "law of continuity," it was Bonnet who gave a con- crete content to the metaphysical idea by grounding it in experi- mental fact. Even though he himself was not to accept the evo- lutionary hypothesis, Bonnet nevertheless elaborated, on the basis of his interpretation of the polyp, a scientific attitude which sub- sequently, owing to the efforts of others, was to contribute directly to the development of transformism. Apart from this, Bonnet was very well aware of the several problems that the polyp's hydra-like regeneration created for the defenders of animal-soul, but refrained at the time from attempting a solution.26

The temptation to speculate broadly about the polyp's peculi- arities was not limited merely to the philosophical-minded. It was not easy, even for circumspect minds, to avoid thinking rad- ically about Trembley's famous insect. Reaumur, the astute lover of cold fact and the enemy of facile theorizing, discounted the chances of ever settling the metaphysical questions raised by mem- bers of his circle.27 Yet, unable to remain at ease about the polyp's properties, he conceded that the most accepted ideas con- cerning the nature of animals had become outmoded.28 Nor could any but fundamentally new ideas, it seems, have explained what Reaumur did not understand. "... when I saw for the first time two polyps form gradually from one that I had cut in two, I found

25 Oeuvres d'Histoire naturelle et de Philosophie (Neuchatel, 1779), I, xxx. Arthur 0. Lovejoy has stressed this aspect of the polyp's influence in his book, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), p. 233. From the standpoint of our study, the dating in 1745 of Bonnet's "echelle des etres" prompted by the polyp will have special meaning.

26 Oeuvres, I, 177. "Combien . . . [de] difficultes s'offrent tout-a-coup a l'esprit sur ce sujet! Ces Vers ne sont-ils que de pures machines, ou sont-ce des composes dont une ame fasse mouvoir les ressorts? Et s'ils ont en eux un tel principe, quelle est sa nature? . . . Admettra-t-on qu'il y a autant d'ames dans chaque individu, qu'il y a de portions de ce meme individu qui peuvent elles-memes devenir des Vers complets "

27 Reaumur, op. cit., VI, lxvii. 28 Ibid., li. Typical, also, of the polyp's impact is Reaumur's comment in a

letter to Bonnet, dated 30 Nov. 1741: "La plus etrange . .. & la plus embarrassante nouveaute qui se soit jamais offerte a ceux qui etudient la Nature, est assurement la reproduction des Animaux par boutures." Cited in Bonnet, Oeuvres, I, 182.

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it hard to believe my eyes; and this is a fact that I cannot accus- tom myself to seeing, after having seen and re-seen it hundreds of times.' "2

It is evident from the foregoing account that the singularity of the polyp brought into discussion certain basic notions of philoso- phy. The special conditions which further accentuated its im- portance at the time will be treated presently. Meanwhile, the 1740's would so far seem to reveal a fermentation of ideas con- cerning the polyp rather than any definite crystallization of thought. What was lacking, perhaps, was audacity, or simply the readiness to reason a problem through to its ultimate results. Nevertheless, the description just given of early speculation on the polyp will assume particular significance by its relationship to what was to follow. Without it, one would be ill-prepared to evaluate correctly the influence of Trembley's findings on the thought, materialistic in nature, of La Mettrie, Maupertuis, Buffon and Diderot.

Another important element in this general background should be borne in mind. The vogue of the polyp coincided with a major modification, early in the 1740's, of the pattern of teleology with which eighteenth-century France had been nourished through the pages of Pluche's Spectacle de la nature, Derham's Theologie physique and Nieuwentyt's L'Existence de Dieu. The shift of accent was, specifically, from cosmology to biology; or, more ex- plicitly, from the calculable laws of Newtonian mathematical sci- ence to the incalculable intricacies of organic nature. In this de- velopment, the part of natural history that dealt with insects (the word entomology was not yet established),30 enjoyed a very con-

29 Ibid., v. An impression of the polyp's effect on leading naturalists and thinkers of the day may be formed from a little book (published anonymously) by Reaumur's friend and disciple, Dr. Gilles Auguste Bazin: Lettre d'Eugene a Clarice au sujet des animaux appeles Polypes (Strasbourg, 1745). "Un chetif insecte vient de se montrer au monde et change ce que nous avions cru jusqu'a present etre l'ordre immuable de la nature. Les philosophes en ont ete effrayes . . . enfin la tete en tourne a ceux qui le voyent." Also: "le plus etonnant spectacle qui se soit jamais presente a l'oeil humain, une decouverte en un mot qui deconcerte toute la nation des raisonneurs." Quoted in Torlais, op. cit., p. 167.

30 Bonnet preferred the more easily understandable term, "insectologie." Fol- lowing the authority of the zoological system of Linnaeus, the class Insecta had at the time a much wider (and less precise) applicability than is the case in present-day usage. For Reaumur and his contemporaries, included among insects were coelen- terates (under which polyps are now grouped), as well as other "worms" and worm- like creatures.

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siderable share of influence. The convergence of several impor- tant works into a relatively short span of years corroborates this view: Reaumur's Memoires (1734-1742); Bazin's Histoire natu- relle des Abeilles (1744); Bonnet's Insectologie (1745). But the classic example of finalist interpretation in this sphere of natural science is provided by the title alone of Lesser's work: Theologie des Insectes, ou Demonstration des Perfections de Dieu dans tout ce qui concerne les Insectes.31 Its underlying point of view is that "the power and wisdom of the Creator seem to shine with the greatest degree of brilliance in the formation of the smallest insects."32 Diderot's Pensees philosophiques (1746), therefore, merely summed up a tendency that had manifested itself for some time when the philosopher, at the start of his career, feeling the insufficiency of all other arguments, finally rested the burden of his deism upon the "wing of a butterfly" and the "divinity im- printed in the eye of a mite."33 It will be seen that this position is related in a special way to the orientation of La Mettrie's mate- rialism.

It was owing to the force of this biological teleology that the polyp, by shattering the accepted patterns of "animal economy," could insinuate itself into questions of theology and metaphysics. According to Lesser, whose attitude was traditional and typical of the age, God had established the distinction of the three realms of nature and restrained their operations in such a manner that none could encroach upon the others.34 Moreover, it was a gen- eral law, having theological overtones, that reproduction resulted from the coupling of the sexes, to which insects were no excep- tion.35 Lesser classed with materialists all those who advanced explanations of generation which were outside these rules.36 It is

31 The original appeared in 1738. Lyonnet's translation attained high circula- tion in France; cf. Mornet, op. cit., p. 248. A translation into Italian was published in 1751.

32 F. C. Lesser, op. cit., I, 9. See also Henry Baker's rhapsodic exclamations on the same theme, op. cit., 297-300. La Mettrie himself, op. cit., III, 194, substi- tuting Nature for God, was to say: "Sa puissance eclate egalement, & dans la pro- duction du plus vil insecte, & dans celle de l'homme le plus superbe."

33 Assezat, Oeuvres completes de Diderot, I, 134-35. 34 F. C. Lesser, op. cit., I, 69. 35 Ibid., I, 136. 36 Ibid., I, 64. It is interesting to note how the Journal de Trevoux (see above,

note 21) developed Lesser's meaning in its review of the Theologie des Insectes by similarly attaching theological weight to the theory of reproduction exclusively by copulation.

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not surprising, then, that the very exceptional habits of the polyp, by challenging this entire scheme of things, should favor a "specu- lative" approach, inclined towards materialism, to questions sup- posedly settled centuries earlier.

Anyone wishing to expose with method the undisciplined ram- blings of La Mettrie's thought must be willing to chart one's own course. Thus, for the purpose of the present study, the starting- point of the argument of L'Homme machine, his succes de scan- dale, may well be identified with a critique of the type of biological teleology which Diderot elaborated and defended during the period of his adherence to deism. La Mettrie, impressed by Diderot's new finalistic approach, paused over his argument and even devel- oped it somewhat; finally he denied its validity. In doing so, he could expect little support from the tottering remains of the Epi- cureanism refuted by Diderot.37 A new materialism, which iron- ically was later to become Diderot's as well, was needed, a mate- rialism which would not rest upon the threadbare "atoms-and- Chance" hypothesis of Democritus, Lucretius, and their modern successors. The ancient philosophy was contradicted on all sides by the ever-swelling mass of evidence that the processes of nature, even the minutest, were according to fixed law and undeniable design.

Let us pick up the thread of the argument of L'Homme ma- chine. La Mettrie has asserted and illustrated at length the cor- relation of the states of the body and of the soul; a change in the former produces a change in the latter, and, conversely, a modifica- tion in the soul is accompanied invariably by a corresponding or- ganic manifestation. In the next step, by a reasoning more dex- terous than valid, man is assimilated to the Cartesian animal- machine; that is, he is denied a soul in any sense distinct from his material organization. If this is true of man, however, it must be true of all forms of life. In the whole realm of nature, there- fore, the principle of "immateriality" or "spirituality" is re- jected as either an efficient or a final cause. This brings La Met- trie up against the ineluctable problem: how can matter, by defini- tion devoid of intelligence, be responsible for the order in Nature without the agency of a supreme Intelligence distinct from it? In rejecting the deism of the Pensees philosophiques, therefore, La

37 The Pensees philosophiques in 1746 had concluded that the old materialism was no longer tenable. Diderot, op. cit., I, 132-33.

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Mettrie is led to show that matter possesses intrinsically the causes of its activity and organisation. It must be defined in a sense broader than both Cartesian " extension" and Aristotelian "poten- tiality." The ability of matter to determine its organic structure -the crux of La Mettrie's answer to Diderot-he explains in the following terms: We do not understand Nature: causes concealed within herself [cachees dans son sein] could have brought about everything. See . . . Trembley's polyp! Does it not contain within itself the causes which produce its re- generation? What absurdity would there be, consequently, in thinking that there are certain physical causes endowed with all that is necessary to them, and to which the whole chain of this vast universe is so necessarily bound and subjected that anything that occurs could not have not oc- curred ?38

This passage is of central importance in plotting the direction of La Mettrie's thinking. The intimate analogy established be- tween the polyp's regenerative powers and the "metaphysical" properties of matter is here indicative, not only of the decisive use made of Trembley's discovery, but also of the extent to which the author of L'Homme machine was willing to attribute self-de- termination and "design" to matter. This new point of view leads directly to a determinist doctrine the basis for which are the qualities inalterably inherent in material substance. The divorce between biology and theology is thereby complete. At the same time, La Mettrie's system avoids the difficulties of the bankrupt materialism of antiquity and Gassendism which attributed to "fate" the emergence of an ordered universe out of the primordial atomic chaos, and which D'Holbach with very little originality was to perpetuate in the latter part of the century. Generalizing from the example of the polyp, therefore, it was possible for La Mettrie to conclude the above passage with the assertion that "to destroy Chance is not equivalent to proving the existence of a Su- preme Being, since there could be something else that is neither Chance nor God: I mean Nature."

These words are perhaps not as atheistic as they appeared to their first readers. Whatever his personal belief might have been, it is true that La Mettrie did not take, from the vantage ground of this materialist conception, a definite stand regarding "le pour & le contre."39 But if the analogy of the polyp did not

38 La Mettrie, op. cit., III, 164. 39 Ibid., 161-62, 166.

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effectively apply to questions of theology and metaphysics, it did, through La Mettrie's interpretation, furnish an indispensable rationale for biological inquiry, the basis of a new non-Newtonian and non-theological philosophy of science much needed at the time, and which Diderot was later to work out in finer detail in the Pensees sur l'Interpretation de la nature (1754). Matter was en- visaged as endowed with the capacity to organise. This, in turn, justified any enterprise that scrutinized experimentally, rather than theologically, the causes of matter's endless modifications. Such, as will be seen, was part of the preparation necessary for the subsequent achievement of Maupertuis and Diderot, and in general for the inception of evolutionary biology.

Another and most remarkable feature of L'Homme machine is that it announced the essentials of the theory of "muscular ir- ritability" several years before its definitive exposition in 1752 by Albrecht von Haller, the great German physiologist. In La Met- trie's opinion, the ability of severed muscle-tissue to move in its functional manner when touched (independently of the nervous system) was evidence of the materiality of the soul or, at least, of the "vital principle" of organisms. The polyp was a crowning example, for La Mettrie, in support of this all-important phenome- non. But more than this, it not only lent itself to the theory of "irritability" but justified a fundamentally different approach to the unsolved question of generation and in a manner particularly useful to La Mettrie's thesis. The multiplication of the polyp had weakened the traditional notions of reproduction which, as has been seen, had served to maintain the distinction between soul and matter in the process by which a creature came to life. In L'Homme machine, the old position was completely discarded: "Polyps do more than move themselves after being cut up; they regenerate in eight days into as many animals as there are cut portions. This makes me sorry for the system of generation held by the naturalists, or rather, it pleases me very much; for how well this discovery teaches us never to conclude anything gen- eral . . !"40

Matter, granted motion, according to La Mettrie, is able to de- termine its organisation in such a manner that "animated bodies will have all that is necessary to them in order to move, feel, think,

40 Ibid., 171.

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have remorse and to conduct themselves ... in the realm of phys- ics as well as in that of morality which is dependent on it. "4 He then considers the difficulty presented by an argument such as that advanced by classical Epicureanism and, nearer his time, by Willis and Perrault, making soul generally co-extensive with body; scattered, as it were, throughout the organism instead of being centered in one place. La Mettrie is aware that the phenomenon of the polyp appears to favor, on first sight, such a view, since every portion of the polyp appears to possess as much soul or vital principle as any other part.42 But such a definition of soul is nothing more than a poor imitation of the doctrine that has at- tributed "thought" to matter; in other terms, an inaccurately ex- pressed materialism. For what would then remain in the sev- ered parts of an organism would be not the soul simply, but a " re- mainder of soul."43 The divisibility of the soul for La Mettrie, once again, is a proof of its materiality. Consequently, a notion derived from the polyp with which an earlier period of specula- tion was well familiar is here adroitly turned to the account of L'Homme machine.

In still another important sense the polyp is bound up with La Mettrie's thought. From the indistinctness of soul and body al- ready established, it resulted that La Mettrie could elaborate a broad, fundamental analogy embracing all living types, from the vegetable to the human. The various forms of life, differing among themselves only by their organisation, fell in perfectly with the "natural gradation" scheme of Bonnet. The "chain of be- ing" was thus interpreted in a materialist fashion. Behind the conception of a work such as La Mettrie's L'Homme plante (1748), was the assumption, consciously applied, that the whole of Nature presents a uniformity and continuity, a series of unbroken steps from the simplest organisms to the most complex. In all of this, La Mettrie not only marvelled at the "chain of being" in lan- guage reminiscent of Bonnet," but assigned to the polyp, in his own re-statement of the point, a role similar to that in the Traite d'Insectologie:

41 Ibhid., 169. 2I'bid., 182. 3 .Ibid., 182-83. 44 In L'Homme plante (1748) La Mettrie declares: "Rien de plus charmant que

cette contemplation, elle a pour object cette echelle si imperceptiblement graduee, qu'on voit la nature exactement passer par tous ses degres, sans jamais sauter en quelque sorte un seul echelon dans toutes ses productions diverses. Quel tableau nous offre le spectacle de l'univers !' etc. Op. cit., II, 69.

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Such is the uniformity of Nature that one begins to feel, and such the analogy between the animal and vegetable realms, from man to the plant! Perhaps there are even animal-plants . . . which while vegetating, either fight like polyps or have other functions proper to animals.45 After vegetables and minerals, unanimated bodies, come beings which be- gin to show life: such are the polyp and all the animal-plants unknown to this day which other fortunate Trembleys will discover in time.46

The analogy, as one might expect, is extended to include man, and in a manner that leaves no doubt about the place of the polyp in its formulation:

If man is not a vegetative product ... he is at least an insect who extends its roots into the womb in the same way that the fertilized seed of a plant does into its own womb. Moreover, there would be nothing surprising about this idea, since Needham observes that polyps, barnacles and other animals multiply by vegetative means.47

La Mettrie's use of the " scale of nature" hypothesis reveals his pivotal role in the progress of materialist philosophy in eight- eenth-century France. The scientific application of this theory has generally been associated with the pre-Lamarckian evolution- ism of Maupertuis, Diderot and Robinet in the third quarter of the century. But La Mettrie should properly be given precedence over them in a historical enumeration. Once this is done, the ori- gins of what occurred after 1750 become clearer. For not only did La Mettrie integrate into the framework of his "system" Bonnet's revitalized e'chelle des etres," but stated unmistakably, in his Systeme d'Epicure (1750), the fundamentals, however un- developed, of transformism.48 It is thus possible to find dispersed through L'Homme machine, L'Homme plante and Le Systeme d'Epicure, appearing coup sur coup in the brief but crucial period 1748-1750, the main elements of the century's evolutionary mate- rialism: "matter endowed with self-determining powers," "chain of being," and "transformism." The coalescence of these lead-

45 Ibid., III, 192. 46 Ibid., II, 67. 47 Ibid., 60. Joseph Needham, spurred by Trembley's investigations, had pub-

lished in 1745 an account of microscopic studies of sea-animals having some of the polyp's characteristics, which appeared in French translation in 1747 under the title: Nouvelles Observations microscopiques. The main purpose of the book is to de- termine the nature of the vital principle of organisms. It will be seen that Buffon's use of Needham's conclusions is related in a fundamental way to the polyp's role.

48R. Boissier, op. cit., pp. 45-64, was the first to appreciate this important aspect of La Mettrie's thinking.

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ing ideas in the thought of La Mettrie supplies, moreover, an ex- planation for the unexpected success of materialism from 1750 on. An excellent example of the force of this current is to be seen in the complete volte-face of Diderot, one of the century's keenest minds, in the relatively short period between the publication of his deistic Pensees philosophiques (1746) and that of his Pensees sur l'Interpretation de la nature (1754), oriented definitely towards materialism. Diderot had doubtless pondered well the reference to his Pensees philosophiques in L'Homme machine! The impetus of this materialist-transformist current was in large measure due to the effective fusing together of the "chain of being" with a new vitalistic conception of matter. The background for both of these, in turn, was a series of specific scientific discoveries during the 1740's, among which, as has been seen, the polyp had an influence that was very much felt in several directions. Because of the speculation it provoked and the broad analogies it suggested, its role should be of special interest to the historian of ideas. The polyp's sensational properties and wide popularity were partic- ularly well suited to affect deeply the scientific imagination of the time, and to emphasize the need of a radically new approach to the phenomena of life.

The last-mentioned component of La Mettrie's thought-evolu- tionism-requires a separate explanation. Raymond Boissier, in his fairly recent book on the French philosopher, admits that an enormous difficulty exists with respect to its evaluation.49 The background of sufficient scientific data to account for La Mettrie's evolutionist insights here is lacking. The wealth of evidence bear- ing on comparative anatomy that Buffon's Histoire naturelle was to make available in the following decade cannot be taken into con- sideration. To seek in La Mettrie's early statement of transform- ism, as does Boissier, terms and proofs that characterized the sub- sequent history of the doctrine is, perhaps, an anachronism. Its presence in La Mettrie's "system" was very probably the logical outcome of combining the scale of nature with a dynamic definition of matter; these two elements, likewise, were to comprise almost wholly Diderot's evolutionism in the Pensees sur l'Interpretation de la nature.50 As a result of this combination, the question in- evitably arose: how has matter, from a primitive, unorganised state, evolved into the complexity of forms exhibited by the grada-

49 Ibid., p. 55. 50 Diderot, op. cit., II, 15-16, 57-58.

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tion among the natural species ? To illustrate this, La Mettrie con- veniently seized upon transformist notions that were very much "in the air" since the publication of Benoit de Maillet's Telliamed in 1748, to which, however fantastic its arguments, the Systeme d'Epicure openly avowed its debt.51 La Mettrie's evolutionism, then, may be described as the combination of two things: of ideas such as Maillet's which were common property at the time, and the philosophical import of certain scientific discoveries, notably that of the polyp.

The assumption that shortly before the appearance of L'Homme machine in 1748 a major shift occurred in materialist philosophy, coinciding with the period of the polyp's broadest and maturest influence, is also borne out by purely chronological facts. A com- parison of the foregoing ideas of La Mettrie with the contents of an earlier work of his, L'Histoire naturelle de l'ame (1745), will re- veal that an important development had taken place in the philoso- pher's thinking within a relatively short time. This very signifi- cant point has been generally ignored by scholars. The earlier work differs, on the whole, in both purpose and method. L'His- toire naturelle de l'ame represents an attempt, confused and un- successful, to combine various elements of Gassendism with the empiricism of Locke newly popularized in France by Voltaire, this mixture then being unpalatably sprinkled over with notions and terminology proper to scholasticism. In this early work one finds matter defined in Cartesian and Aristotelian terms, side by side; as extension exhibiting certain passive mechanical and mathematical properties, and as a substance possessing motion and the potential- ity of acquiring sensation.52 In order to explain the process by which matter becomes organised, both the material forms and the substantial forms are resorted to.53 The fact that the relationship between matter and form is not specified, although the two are con- sidered in a manner suggesting their independence of each other, would seem to indicate the author's indecision on this essential point.54 Throughout the exposition of this part of the work, La

51 La Mettrie, op. cit., II, 17 f. 2 Ibid., I, 68-84, passim. 53 ibid., 77, 85 ff. 54 Ibid., 68-69, 71, 72-73, 77, 78, 84. The text reproduced in the Oeuvres (1796)

of La Mettrie is not completely reliable and omits a passage, of interest on this point, contained in the original, L'Histoire naturelle de l'dme (La Haye, 1745), p. 36: "I1 faut cependant convenir . . .que nous ignorons si la matiere a en soi la faeulte immediate de sentir on seulement la puissance de l'acqu6rir par les modifications ou par les formes dont elle est susceptible; car il est vrai que cette facult6 ne se montre que dans les corps organises."

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Mettrie follows closely and quotes continually classical and scholas- tic Aristotelian authorities for illustration and support of his doc- trine. What is especially significant is the total absence of ideas even approximating the "scale of nature." On the contrary, the traditional distinction is maintained, as one might expect, between vegetative and animal soul.55 Needless to say, nothing is men- tioned that could be interpreted as being even remotely "trans- formistic."5 It is not surprising, given all this, that the Histoire naturelle de l'ame contains no allusion to the polyp, whereas both L'Homme machine and L'Homme plante will later show a definite preoccupation with it. In the work of 1745, moreover, there is an unmistakable wavering as to its main purpose. La Mettrie does not explicitly assert the materiality of the soul, or, to be more exact, this capital problem is treated throughout in an equivocal and per- plexing fashion.57 The author appears content with demonstrating mainly the soul's dependence on the organs of the body. As an indication that this might be the principal object of the treatise, it concludes with a purely Lockean recapitulation to the effect that the senses are the source of all our ideas. L'Histoire naturelle de l'dme, carefully evaluated, may be classed as a close predecessor to Condillac's Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines which followed it a year later, in 1746.

La Mettrie himself, in L'Homme machine, gives evidence of change in his thinking by offering criticism of the earlier work. The new definition of matter as something intrinsically endowed with the causes of its organic developments renders completely useless the substantial forms. La Mettrie accordingly rejects, in L'Homme machine, this "ancient and unintelligible doctrine" of the "author of the Histoire de l'Ame."'8 In addition to this, the

55 La Mettrie, Oeuvres, I, 89 if. 56 Leonora Rosenfield, From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine (New York, 1940),

p. 151, sees evolutionism present in the Histoire naturelle de l'dme. Her view does not take into account the fact that there is an essential difference between the half- dozen commonplace similarities between humans and apes mentioned by La Mettrie in 1745 and his later attitude that the complex organisms in the scale of being have evolved by certain natural processes from simpler ones.

57 La Mettrie's intention, of course, is to deny the existence of an immaterial substance. But his method is faulty. The attempt to combine, in this early work, a materialist definition of soul with Aristotelian concepts of "vegetative," "sensi- tive," and "rational" soul results only in contradictions, obscurity, and continual "hedging."

58 La Mettrie, op. cit., III, 184-85.

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determinism which resulted inevitably from the materialism of L'Homme machine was not to be found in the Histoire naturelle de l'ame. In a footnote to the latter, the philosophy of Spinoza, for this and other reasons, had been treated harshly. But the atti- tudes of L'Homme machine created the need for revaluating Spin- oza's determinism. In the 1751 edition of the Oeuvres philoso- phiques, revised by La Mettrie, the Traite de l'ame (a new title for the slightly altered contents of the work of 1745) gives a strik- ingly sympathetic appreciation of Spinoza's determinism. "Ac- cording to Spinoza . . . man is a veritable automat, a machine subject to the most rigorous necessity, led by an impetuous fatal- ism, like a vessel by the current of the waters. The author of L'Homme machine seems to have written his book expressly in defense of this sad truth.""59

In keeping with this, a clarification of La Mettrie's attitude towards Cartesian automatism is manifested in L'Homme machine. Under the pseudonym of Mr. Charp, La Mettrie had accepted in 1745 the Lockean "animal-soul" theory, about which, of course, a controversy had long since been raging in France. But his judg- ment of Descartes at the time had been ambiguous. While at- tempting, rather too ingeniously, to interpret Descartes's dualism as a mask for materialism, La Mettrie had nevertheless formally condemned Cartesian automatism as absurd and had faithfully remouthed most of Voltaire's pointed sarcasms against the Car- tesian school and its founder. L'Homme machine, however, changed this: "Let the so-called Mr. Charp mock the philosophers who have regarded animals as machines. How differently I think!"60 Carrying out this view, La Mettrie in 1748 considers Descartes as the real precursor of L'Homme machine, arguing that his doctrine of animal automatism was simply an invitation to formulate human automatism and that the whole of Cartesian metaphysics was a subterfuge designed to hoodwink the religious

59 La Mettrie, Oeuvres philosophiques (Londres, 1751), p. 238. In the Oezures of 1796, the version of 1751 is followed; I, 262.

60 La Mettrie, Oeuvres (1796), III, 187. Leonora Rosenfield, op. cit., pp. 142 ff., is aware of the difference in La Mettrie's views between 1745 and 1748 with regard both to the general definition of soul and, in particular, to the problem of animal- soul. Her attempt to explain away these divergences by "looking beyond" the meaning of La Mettrie's words, however, becomes quite unnecessary if it is realised from the start that the philosopher's thinking actually underwent a major develop- ment in the period in question.

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authorities on the question of the soul's spirituality.6' This eleva- tion of Descartes in L'Homme machine is counterbalanced by a more critical attitude towards the school of Locke, to which La Mettrie had owed a goodly portion of the Histoire naturelle de l'ame: ". . It is no less just that I make here a real reparation to that great man for the sake of all those little philosophers, poor jesters and wretched apes of Locke, who, instead of laughing im- pudently in Descartes's face, would do better to realize that with- out him the field of philosophy . . . would perhaps still be lying fallow. '"6

It would be reasonable to assume, on the basis of all this evi- dence, that between 1745 and 1748 La Mettrie's thinking underwent a major transformation, favorable to the future of materialism in the eighteenth century and by no means unrelated to the implica- tions of Trembley's polyp.

In dealing with the history of the polyp in the period following La Mettrie, one can conveniently begin with Elie Luzac's refuta- tion of L'Homme machine. In L'Homme plus que machine (1748),63 after a point-by-point refutation of the new materialism, the fundamental concept of "Nature " as the intermediary between God and Chance and the immediate cause of the diversity of liv- ing forms, is rejected by Luzac. The passage in L'Homme ma- chine quoted above, which defined this materialism almost in terms of the polyp's relation to it,64 is taken by Luzac to be the final posi- tion resulting from La Mettrie's argument. This being so, the cause of the polyp's regeneration, instead of being accepted as inherent in its physical organisation, is attributed by Luzac to the Supreme Intelligence, in conformity with the teleological ideas of the age. La Mettrie is thus refuted as follows: ". . . This polyp of Trembley offers you the spectacle of a marvelous generation: but be careful, it does not offer you within itself the first cause of its existence. Even this sudden change which astonishes you proves that it is necessary to seek the reason for its existence in a cause that exists outside of it. ?"65

61 La Mettrie, op. cit., III, 188. 62 Ibid., 187-88. 63 The attribution of this book, published anonymously in 1748, has since 1900

been alternately made to La Mettrie and to Luzac. I have conclusively established, however, the authorship of Luzac in my article, "Elie Luzac's Refutation of La Mettrie," Modern Language Notes, LXIV (March, 1949), 159-161.

64 See note 37. 65 E. Luzac, L'Homme plus que machine (2d ed.; Goettingen, 1755), p. 136.

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A thinker who realized most clearly that the polyp favored materialist ideas was Charles Bonnet, now little remembered but who enjoyed an eminent and influential rank as "naturalist-philo- sopher" in the eighteenth century. His voluminous writings de- voted much space to the philosophical and biological implications of Trembley's discovery.66 Yet, due to religious scruples, he was to make little significant use of his own "echelle des etres" and other aspects, materialistic and evolutionist, of the polyp specula- tions. His intention, on the contrary, was to elaborate a theory of generation which would at once account for the polyp's hydra- like powers in accordance with principles acceptable to "la saine philosophie," and would deprive materialism of a dangerous weapon.67 To this end, between 1748 and 1750, when the materialist exploitation of the polyp was at its highest point, Bonnet worked out a theory of generation that was not to be published until much later, in the Considerations sur les corps organises (1762) and in the widely-read Contemplation de la nature (1764). This some- what fanciful explanation, which did not survive the period of its propagation, maintained that all living things had pre-existed in miniature as "eggs" and that their generation was consequently a simple development rather than the creation of something new. These eggs or "germes" were contained one within the other ad infinitum in the original members of each fixed species, so that the whole of natural history was consequently the gradual unfolding in time of numberless pre-formed creatures. The one advantage of so imaginative a theory was that it went to the root of the mate- rialist evil by ascribing to a single, simultaneous creation the total- ity of natural living forms, past, present, and future. The regen- erative powers of the polyp, according to this view, implied no teleological patterns inherent in matter. The eggs of the polyp, unlike those of other animals and similar to the reproductive power of plants, were scattered throughout its body, so that cutting a polyp in small pieces would permit a pre-existing polyp in each of

66 Bonnet's reflections concerning the polyp have been studied in Albert Lemoine, Charles Bonnet, philosophe et naturaliste (Paris, 1850), pp. 76 ff; and in Ed. Clap- arede, La Psychologie animale de Charles Bonnet (Geneve, 1909), pp. 74ff. Also, by Arthur O. Lovejoy; see note 25.

67 Bonnet, Oeuvres, I, 177. In the Considerations sur les corps organises (Am- sterdam, 1762), II, 76 ff., Bonnet, likewise, offers his own explanation of the polyp in opposition to the uses already made of it favoring Cartesian automatism, mate- rialism, and scepticism.

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the pieces to develop to maturity.68 This explanation likewise re- conciled natural facts with religious dogma regarding the question of the divisibility of animal-soul. In the Essai analytique sur les facultes de l'dme (1760), Bonnet argued that the multiplication of the polyp did not indicate a division of its soul or self (moi); the original polyp-soul remained; what came to life were merely sepa- rate pre-existing polyps which acquired a soul in the process.69

But Bonnet's speculations were pushed aside by the stream of materialism. The polyp, both before and after his ingenious efforts, proved to be an active ingredient in materialist thought, as an examination of writings of its leading exponents, in particu- lar Buffon, Maupertuis, and Diderot, will make clear.

Most interesting to observe is the manner in which Trembley's discovery furnished Buffon with an analogy fundamental to the exposition of his famous doctrine of "organic molecules." To- wards 1750, the interest in explaining how matter passed from an inorganic to an organic state had become a most intense one. Among others, Buffon's explanation, based upon the data of Need- ham's investigations of microscopic organisms, assumed that or- ganic matter existed primarily in the form of molecules distinct from those of inorganic or mineral substance. It was by the self- arrangement of these "organic molecules" into complex combina- tions, in which each particle surrendered a part of its autonomy in favor of the composite whole, that life, in the sense of a func- tioning organism, came into being. In formulating this, the polyp served Buffon as a decisive example in illustration of his belief that any organism, including the most highly evolved, was nothing other than the composite of countless, little molecular entities that went to make it up. The following lines bear out this fundamental nexus in Buffon's thinking: The animals and plants which are capable of multiplying and reproduc- ing by means of all their parts are organized bodies composed of other similar organic bodies, whose original constituant parts are similarly or- ganic, whose accumulated mass is discernible to the eye, but the original parts of which we are able to perceive only through reasoning and anal- ogy ... This leads us to believe that there is in nature an infinity of organic par- ticles, actually existing and living, and whose substance is the same as

68 Bonnet, Considerations sur les corps organises, I, 28 ff. 69 Essai analytique sur les facultes de 'dame, p. 488 ff.

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that of organised beings. ... In this way, it is necessary to have millions of organic parts similar to the whole, in order to form a single one of the germs that is contained in the individual elm or polyp.70 Underlying this scientific conception of Buffon, then, was the anal- ogy of the polyp, suggesting and exemplifying the nature of organ- isms: .... it is believed that the nature of a composite is to be judged only by means of what is simple, and that in order to know the organic constitution of a being, it is necessary to reduce it into simple and non-organic parts, with the result that it seems easier to conceive how a cube is necessarily com- posed of other cubes than to realize the possibility that a polyp is composed of other polyps.71

In the case of Maupertuis, the versatile, scientific authority of the age, the appraisal of the polyp's linkage with materialism is not easy. In his Systeme de la nature (1754), which was a transla- tion of a Latin work published pseudonymously in 1751,72 the cen- tral problem of the book is given in the sub-title: Essai sur la formation des corps organises. The author rejects from the start the forerunners of Bonnet's system of generation, since to assert that all generation is the result of a single original creation is to beg the question, which is, precisely, to know by what natural pro- cesses such a series of generations is accomplished. Along with the Newtonian physics of attraction, Maupertuis discards, as had La Mettrie, the obsolete Epicurean "atoms-and-Chance" hypothe- sis, inasmuch as both fail to account for the purposeful arrange- ments of matter into living forms.73 The only alternative was to attribute to matter, as had done the author of L'Homme machine, certain properties that would account for its self-determination. In the opinion of Maupertuis, the molecules of matter were en- dowed with intelligence, desire, aversion and memory, all in a primitive state, to be sure, and not comparable to their counter- parts in the constituted organism.74 But in all this, Maupertuis does not refer, as might be expected, explicitly to the supporting role of the polyp. It is true that the Systeme de la nature cites the polyp as corroborative evidence of its position.75 In the light of

70 Buffon, Histoire naturelle, generate et particuliere, II (1749), 20-21. (Italics are my own.) 71 Ibid.

72Baumann, Dissertatio inauguralis metaphysica, de universali naturae sys- temate, pro gradu doctoris habita (Erlangen, 1751).

73 Maupertuis, Oeuvres (Lyon, 1768), II, 146-47, 182-83. 74 Ibid., 147 f. 75 Ibid., 165.

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what is known of the matter, however, there is reason to suspect that Maupertuis, in thus closely following La Mettrie's lead, was indebted in a broader sense to Trembley's discovery. This be- comes more probable when one considers that in 1745, in the Venus physique, Maupertuis had expressed great wonderment and intel- lectual perplexity under the impact of the polyp's regenerative powers.76 He had no idea, however, what conclusions to draw at the time. But the conclusions of 1751 solved the dilemma of 1745 without referring to it in so many words. It is very likely that the entire problem had a much greater effect upon his imagi- nation as a scientist than the author of the Systeme de la nature admits. In addition to all this, it is important to note, for chrono- logical reasons, that the Venus physique of 1745 had contained neither Maupertuis' radical definition of matter, nor the "scale of nature" hypothesis, nor evolutionism,77 all three of which were present in the work of 1751. This tends to confirm the idea here advanced that the origins of evolutionary materialism, as it de- veloped in eighteenth-century France, are to be sought in the years 1748-1750. Furthermore, it lends weight to the surmise that La Mettrie was in the forefront of the movement.

In 1769, Diderot brought together the various elements of the century's evolutionism and materialism in the remarkably consis- tent and imaginative synthesis of the Reve de D'Alembert. The early part of the work, in elucidating the origin of organic life, follows Buffon. Individual molecules of matter, possessing "sen- sibility, " unite in a manner that is not merely contiguous, but con- tinuous, imparting to the whole thus formed an activity and char- acter of its own. Diderot gives, as a fundamental example of the constitution of an organism, the famous example of a "swarm of

76 Ibid., 62-63: "Parlerai-je de ce prodige? & le croira-t-on? . . . Que peut-on penser de cette etrange espece de g6neration; de ce principe de vie repandu dans chaque partie de l'animal?" etc. Maupertuis' speculative interest in the problem was not an ephemeral one. See Harcourt Brown, loc. cit., p. 226: concerning the polyp, Mme. Geoffrin had written to Folkes in 1743: "je parle de cela a Mr. de Maupertuis qui me parut fort enthousiasme de cette decouverte, il me dit qu'il regardait ces vers comme une espesse mitoienne entre les plantes, et les animaux."

77 Mrs. Rosenfield, op. cit., p. 151, accredits Maupertuis with evolutionism in the Venus physique. It is true that Maupertuis there talks about the "production of new species," but the remainder of the passage, op. cit., I, 108 if., makes amply clear that the author is concerned with problems of heredity merely and that the term "species" is used by him to mean "mutation."

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bees" in which each bee, instead of remaining separate, coalesces with those surrounding it. The resulting swarm, composed of minute living elements and forming an entity, is the new organ- ism.78 In order to illustrate and emphasize that this organism is actually a composite of lesser ones, Diderot, it is pertinent to note, has recourse, like Buffon before him, to the analogy of the polyp which, by offering visual proof that all its parts possessed a vital principle primarily independent of the whole, underlay this entire conception of the nature of organised beings. In the dialogue, Dr. Bordeu comments to this effect on D'Alembert's clairvoyant imaginings: "Suppose these bees so small that their organisation always escapes the dull cutting-edge of your scissors: you will be able to divide as much as you please without causing any one of them to die, and this composite, made up of imperceptible bees, will be a veritable polyp that you will destroy only by crushing it. The difference between the continuous and the contiguous swarm of bees is precisely that between ordinary animals such as our- selves and fish on the one hand, and worms, snakes and polyp-like animals on the other."" But Diderot goes on to imply that this definition of organism might be made to apply to all types, includ- ing the human, although the resemblance to polyps is lacking on the surface. D'Alembert's dream becomes bolder: "Well, philoso- pher, you then conceive of polyps of all types, even human polyps? But nature does not present us with any .... However, such a thing has either already existed or will occur in the future. Be- sides, who knows the state of things in the other planets? . . . On Jupiter and Saturn, human polyps! . . . Man composed of an in- finity of atom-like men. ... If man is somewhere constituted by an infinity of human animalcules, there must be less repugnance against death there; the loss of a man is so easily repaired in such a case. .. .,80 In interpreting this lucubration of the sleeping D'Alembert, Dr. Bordeu expresses significantly the connection in Diderot's mind between such a theory of organism based upon the polyp-like composite and one of the concepts fundamental to a transformistic view of nature: "This extravagant supposition is almost the actual history of all the animal species, surviving and to come. If man does not quite consist of an infinity of men, he is composed at least of an infinite number of animalcules, whose

78 Diderot, Oeuvres, II, 127. 79 Ibid., 128. 80 Ibid., 130.

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metamorphoses as well as future and final organisation it is im- possible to foresee. Who knows if this be not the breeding-ground of a second generation of beings, separated from the first by an incomprehensible interval of centuries and successive develop- ments "'81

It is patent, then, that the bond established in La Mettrie's thinking between the biological materialism of the eighteenth century and the nature of the polyp was something that recurred often enough, and with modifications, in the period following. It became, in the end, explicitly a part of transformistic thought. This development is corroborated by critics of the movement. In the estimation of some, the simplest manner of doing away with the polyp's materialist implications seemed to be to deny its ani- mality. As early as 1750, the Jesuit, Noel Regnault, in the Entre- tiens physiques d'Ariste et d'Eudoxe, did precisely this upon find- ing that both the divisibility of the animal-soul and its assimilation to the vegetative were embarrassing matters from a traditionalist standpoint.82 At about the time of the Reve de D'Alembert, Vol- taire, in 1768, followed the example of Regnault by doubting that the polyp was truly an animal.83 Shortly thereafter, the anti- evolutionist, anti-materialist satirist, in 1771, delightedly remarked that the loss of the polyp's role would greatly discomfit the oppos- ing side: "It is sad to lose an illusion. We know how nice it would be to have an animal reproducing from its own substance and by means of shoots, and which, by having all the appearances of a plant, would join together the animal and vegetable realms."84

81 Ibid. 82 Pere N. Regnault, Les Entretiens physiques d'Ariste et d'Eudoxe, V (1750),

228. 83 Voltaire, Oeuvres completes, ed. Moland, XXVII, 129-31. 84 Ibid., XX, 241. Voltaire was not alone in thus attempting to discredit the

polyp. The abbe Frangois Para du Phanjas, in his Theorie des etres sensibles ou cours complet de physique (Paris, 1772), I, 224-27, also doubted the polyp's animal nature. Elsewhere in the same work (II, 143-44), du Phanjas reveals the motive behind this attitude when he asserts that the vogue of the whole "zoophyte" class was due to its utility in advancing the scale of nature hypothesis, "un principe vrai pour le fond, mais qu'on pousse peut-etre au dela de ses limites naturelles." The abbe was doubtless deploring the progress of transformism, for he goes on to minimize the importance of zoophytes as the connecting link between the vegetative and ani- mal realms, in order to emphasize all the more the essential difference between man and the ape.

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Voltaire's preoccupation with the problem, however, is not without his customary flippancy. Elsewhere he had accepted the conclu- sions of Trembley's experiments: "Our incredulity should not de- prive these polyps of the dignity of animals."85 His confusion appears mainly to be the result of not having defined from the out- set just what constitutes "sensibility" and "perception" in the soul of an animal. Although he does not accredit the metaphysical implications of the polyp, Voltaire transfers the exact same prob- lem to the case of "snails" which, when beheaded, keep living un- til a new head has grown.86 Regarding this creature or colimagon, therefore, the sage of Ferney speculates in a manner perfectly reminiscent of the polyp's history: "What happens to its sensor- ium, its memory, its store of ideas, its soul, when its head has been cut off? How does all this come back? A soul that is reborn is an extremely curious phenomenon! But no, this is no stranger than a soul created, a soul that sleeps and that is awakened, a soul destroyed.""87 It would appear from this that Voltaire's inconse- quential treatment of the whole point was intended to suggest to the reader a prudent scepticism with regard to the general ques- tion of "soul.'"

In a recapitulation of the consequences of Trembley's findings, certain conclusions stand out. The discovery of the polyp, aside from being the object of popular curiosity and scientific interest for a good many years, early gave rise in France to a variety of speculations on the nature of animal-soul, on the mystery of gen- eration and on the chain-of-being hypothesis. The polyp, in this phase of its activity, although offering a good example of the intel- lectual ferment characteristic of the 1740's, did not, however, pro- duce tangible philosophical results. Its real impact began to make itself felt from about 1745 on when La Mettrie seized upon earlier data and speculations afforded by Trembley's discovery. These he utilized in elaborating and illustrating a new materialism which represented an original and crucial departure from the previous "epicurean empiricism of the Histoire naturelle de l'ame. Some of the basic ideas of L'Homme machine, L'Homme plante, and Le Systeme d'Epicure became, in turn, potential arsenals for

85 Voltaire, op. cit., XXVII, 130. 86 Ibid., 131, 213-26. 87 Ibid., XX, 242.

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several of the leading doctrines of the materialist school of the third quarter of the century, represented for a time by Buffon, and by Maupertuis, and Diderot. From La Mettrie to Diderot, the continuity of this particular body of thought is attested by a few facts. La Mettrie, Buffon, Diderot, all three appealed in turn to the polyp's nature in order to explain the origin of living things. On the other hand, and this too points to the vital role of the polyp, adversaries of evolutionary materialism, such as Bonnet and Vol- taire, attempted to delimit the implications of the polyp. Their efforts to deprive materialism of the support of a natural phenome- non highly useful to it were, however, for the most part in vain.

In the history of ideas, it is not always easy to define and trace the course of certain doctrines. It is even more difficult to deter- mine the elusive causes which bring about major shifts or re-orien- tations in scientific and philosophic thinking. Especially is this true when the thinkers themselves may not have been fully aware of the subtle influences which shook them out of "dogmatic slum- ber," stimulated their imaginations and thereby opened up new horizons for their speculative energies. Trembley's polyp is a case in point. The evolutionism of Maupertuis and Diderot, for example, have long appeared to some as springing altogether too miraculously out of a vacuum. But the origins of this develop- ment might fruitfully be sought in a number of impressive biologi- cal discoveries during the 1740's and especially in La Mettrie's materialist-transformist synthesis, inspired by the polyp. For more than any other biological phenomenon, the polyp exerted a powerful influence upon the genesis of French evolutionary mate- rialism in the eighteenth century.

University of Michigan.