184 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



ers, but they must be redissolved into the Ur- 

 Schleim'' 



Oken also includes man and offers an hy- 

 pothesis of the origin of man entirely inconsist- 

 ent with any form of cell doctrine, when he says 

 that man also is the offspring of some warm and 

 gentle seashore, and probably rose in India, 

 where the first peaks appeared above the waters; 

 that a certain mingling of water, of blood 

 warmth, and of atmosphere, must have con- 

 joined for his production; and that this may have 

 happened only once and at one spot. 



When we consider that this absurd passage 

 was allowed to stand in a work translated in 

 1847, long after Buffon's, E. Darwin's, and La- 

 marck's speculations upon the origin of man had 

 been published, it shows that Oken as a thinker 

 was not only an early Greek survival, but that he 

 entirely ignored the contemporary progress of 

 natural philosophy in the works of Goethe and 

 the contemporary progress of zoology in France 

 and England. In another passage (p. 192) he 

 says, entirely oblivious as well of his Ur-ScJileim 

 as of his previous statements: "Man has not 

 been created, but developed. So the Bible itself 

 teaches us. God did not make man out of noth- 

 ing; but took an elemental body then existing, an 

 earth-clod or carbon; moulded it into form, thus 

 making use of water; and breathed into it life. 



