96 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



entertain a very kindly feeling towards him. Altliough they 

 lived for some time in the same neighbourhood, yet the 

 natures of these two men were so very different, that they 

 could not well be drawn towards each other. Oken's " Manual 

 of the Philosophy of Nature," which may be designated as the 

 most important production of the nature-philosophy school 

 then existing in Germany, appeared in 1809, the same year 

 in which Lamarck's fundamental work, the " Philosophic 

 Zoologique," was published. As early as 1802, Oken had 

 published an " Outline of the Philosophy of Nature." As we 

 have already intimated, in Oken's as in Goethe's works, a 

 number of valuable and profound thoughts are hidden 

 among a mass of erroneous, very eccentric, and fantastic con- 

 ceptions. Some of these ideas have only quite recently and 

 gradually become recognized in science, many years after 

 they were first expressed. I shall here quote only two 

 thoughts, which are almost prophetic, and which at the 

 same time stand in the closest relation to the theory of 

 development. 



One of the most important of Oken's theories, which was 

 formerly very much decried, and was most strongly com- 

 batted, especially by the so-called " exact experimentalists," 

 is the idea that the phenomena of life in all organisms pro- 

 ceed from a common chemical substance, so to say, from a 

 general simple vitcd-suhstance, which he designated by the 

 name Ursclileim, or original slime. By it he meant, as the 

 name indicates, a mucilaginous substance, an albuminous 

 combination, which exists in a semi-fluid condition of aggre- 

 gation, and possesses the power, by adaptation to different 

 conditions of existence in the outer world and by inter- 

 action with its material, of producing the most various forms 



