EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 9 



early as 1805, the doctrine that all organic beings 

 originate in and consist of cells, which constitute the 

 protoplasm from which all larger organisms are 

 evolved ; 1 and he is more generally recognized as 

 having been the first to perceive that the skull con- 

 sists of segments in serial continuity with those of 

 the vertebral column. But principally it concerns 

 us to notice that while Oken appreciated the cor- 

 respondence between the ovum, the beginning of 

 life in the complex^ animal, and the "oozoa" or 

 simplest forms of animals, he saw in the animal 

 world an unity completed in man ; or, to use 

 his own words, the animal kingdom is only a 

 dismemberment of the highest animal, i.e.,. of 



The plan sketched by Oken was, so far as the 

 animal kingdom was concerned, modified and 

 elaborated by C. G. Carus. Guided, like Oken, by 

 the aphorism that the whole is repeated in every 

 part, Carus published with his beautiful work on 

 Comparative Anatomy a volume of "Researches 

 on Philosophic or Transcendental Anatomy," as 

 perplexing a puzzle as could well be conceived for 

 a plain observer of Nature. But it is to be noted 

 among the much that is good which we owe to him, 

 that he recognized as a cardinal fact the central 



1 Op. cit. p. xi. 2 Op. cit. p. 494. 



