ESTIMATE OF OKEN s CLASSIFICATION. 167 



which, again divides into plants and animals. Biology, there 

 fore, divides into Organogeny, Phytosophy, Zoosopliy .&quot;) 



FIRST KINGDOM. MINERALS. Mineralogy, Geology. 

 Part III. BIOLOGY. Organosophy, Phytogeny, Phyto-physiology, 

 Phytology, Zoogcny, Physiology, Zoology, Psychology. 1 



A glance over this confused scheme shows that it is an 

 attempt to classify knowledge, not after the order in which 

 it has been, or may be, built up in the human conscious 

 ness ; but after an assumed order of creation. It is a 

 pseudo-scientific cosmogony, akin to those which men have 

 enunciated from the earliest times downwards ; and only a 

 little more respectable. As such it will not be thought 

 worthy of much consideration by those who, like ourselves, 

 hold that experience is the sole origin of knowledge. Oth 

 erwise, it might have been needful to dwell on the incon 

 gruities of the arrangements to ask how motion can be 

 treated of before space ? how there can be rotation with 

 out matter to rotate ? how polarity can be dealt with with 

 out involving points and lines ? But it will serve our pres 

 ent purpose just to point out a few of the extreme absurdi 

 ties resulting from the doctrine which Oken seems to hold 

 in common with Hegel, that &quot; to philosophize on Nature is 

 to re-think the great thought of Creation.&quot; Here is a sam 

 ple : 



&quot; Mathematics is the universal science ; so also is Phys 

 io-philosophy, although it is only a part, or rather but a 

 condition of the universe ; both are one, or mutually con 

 gruent. 



&quot; Mathematics i- , however, a science of mere forma 

 without substance. Physio-philosophy is, therefore, mathe 

 matics endowed with substance&quot; 



From the English point of view it is sufficiently amus 

 ing to find such a dogma not only gravely stated, but 

 stated as an unquestionable truth. Here we see the expe- 



