8 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 



tion, its details are often far astray. His own words 

 are : " I am very well aware that there is many an 

 object which does not stand in its right place, but 

 where again is there a single system in which this 

 is not more strikingly the case ? We have here 

 dealt only with the restoration of the edifice, where- 

 in, after years of long and oft-repeated attempts, 

 the furniture may for the first time be properly dis- 

 tributed, without detriment to its general bearings 

 or ground plan/' * 



That which made Oken's writings a living power 

 was, that to him nature was in all its parts replete 

 with meaning, inspired with an inherent fitness, and 

 not the mere chance result of a concourse of atoms 

 unaccounted for. Laying the foundation of his 

 system in a mathematical conception, he seeks to 

 ally himself not to Epicurus but to Pythagoras. 

 " Every real," he says, "is absolutely nothing else 

 than a number. This must be the sense entertained 

 of numbers in the Pythagorean doctrine, namely, 

 that everything or the whole universe had arisen 

 from numbers. . . . The essence in numbers is 

 naught else than the Eternal. The Eternal only 

 is or exists, and nothing else is when a number 

 exists." 2 He lays claim to having advanced, so 



1 Elements of Physiophilosophy, translated for the Ray Society by 

 Alfred Tulk, p. xiv. 2 Op. cit. p. 13. 



