It is a bold man who takes the Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet as representative of the Enlightenment in his country after the publication of a work whose title translates as Charles Bonnet, Enemy of the Enlightenment. And what of the Bernese anatomist Albrecht von Haller, who congratulated the Genevese for condemning Rousseau's Emile and Du Contrat social, saying no less was due to restore the damaged reputation of the Genevese church? The same writer published his Thoughts on Reason, Superstition and Unbelief as early as 1729, attacking Catholics and freethinkers alike, and Bonnet and Haller both took up the defence of Christian Revelation against its attackers and notably against Voltaire and Rousseau. It may seem a little cavalier to suggest that these great symbols of the French Enlightenment are untypical of, even alien to the Enlightenment in another country and that in some mysterious way their opponents are more typical of it. Yet arguably something very similar also occurred in England where free critical enquiry by no means precipitated a break with the Christian church. It is the purpose of this brief survey of a largely unexplored field to look at the special conditions which produced this apparent paradox and to follow the ‘Darwinian’ process by which a difference in cultural environment resulted in a significant difference in plumage.

There is a regrettable lack of information and of synthetic studies on the Swiss Enlightenment.