OKEN. 125 



independently outlined their theories of Biology and 

 Evolution. Oken's work is certainly not to be men- 

 tioned in the same breath with theirs, from the 

 modern standpoint. His work upon Generation — 

 Die Zeugung — appeared in 1805, containing his Ur- 

 Schltim ( t protoplasm) and vesicular cell theory. His 

 " Manual of the Philosophy of Nature " appeared in 

 1809, in the same year with Lamarck's PJiilosophie 

 Zoologique ; again Oken suffers severely by com- 

 parison. Lamarck's is a work of science, Oken's is 

 a tissue of speculation. In estimating Oken further, 

 we must remember that he is a follower of the school 

 of Schelling, and that Schelling's method was to 

 rapidly abandon scientific induction for deduction, 

 and to pass to the interpretation of Nature from a 

 subjective standpoint. Oken's writings show that 

 he was consistent in this method, and Erdmann re- 

 calls that Oken's conversion of the whole of philos- 

 ophy into the philosophy of Nature is a carrying 

 out of what Schelling merely touched upon. 



It is the famous Ur-Sclileim doctrine, in which 

 Oken's admirers read notions of the original proto- 

 plasmic and cellular basis of all life, and in which 

 it is said he saw the fundamental substance out of 

 which by differentiation life has arisen.^ " Every 

 organic thing has arisen out of slime, and is noth- 

 ing but slime in different forms. This primitive 

 slime originated in the sea, from inorganic matter, 



1 These quotations are from Tulk's translation, the Elements of Physio- 

 philosophy, published in 1847. 



