"Now that the current is setting so strongly against everything 

 which recalls the German physiophilosophers and their doings, and 

 it has become fashionable to speak ill of them, it is an imperative 

 duty for the impartial reviewer of the history of science to show how 

 great and how beneficial the influence of Oken has been upon the 

 progress of science in general and of Zoology in particular. It is, 

 moreover, easier, while borrowing his ideas, to sneer at his style and 

 his nomenclature than to discover the true meaning of what is left 

 unexplained in his mostly paradoxical, sententious, or aphoristical 

 expressions; but the man who has changed the whole method of 

 illustrating comparative Osteology ; who has carefully investigated 

 the embryology of the higher animals, at a time when few physio- 

 logists were paying any attention to the subject; who has classified 

 the three kingdoms of nature upon principles wholly his own ; who 

 has perceived thousands of homologies and analogies among or- 

 ganized beings entirely overlooked before; who has published an 

 extensive treatise of natural history, containing a condensed account 

 of all that was known at the time of its publication : who has con- 

 ducted for twenty-five years the most extensive and most complete 

 periodical review of the natural sciences ever published, in which 

 every discovery made during a quarter of a century is faithfully re- 

 corded ; the man who inspired every student with an ardent love for 

 science, and with admiration for his teacher, that man will never 

 be forgotten, nor can the services he has rendered to science be over- 

 looked, so long as thinking is connected with investigation." 



AGASSIZ on OKEN. 



285 



