VI 



hand, to enter the lists of controversy against those who, having 

 neither the capacity, nor the desire of its cultivation, for the higher 

 walks of science, delight to dismiss a work of the present kind 

 with some idle anathema of mysticism or evasive outcry for more 

 facts. 



I refrain from essaying to give any condensed formula or outline* 

 of Professor Oken's Physiophilosophy : first, because its leading 

 points have been already noted in his own prefaces to the German 

 work and its translation ; secondly, because the book will, I trust, 

 best speak for itself to those who shall come with minds unprejudiced 

 and duly prepared, each one in his particular department, to its 

 study; and, lastly, because any such attempt would necessarily involve 

 an amount of historical and critical details, which must be here super- 

 ficially treated and so misplaced. Suffice it to observe, that the 

 present work stands alone in Germany, as being the most practical 

 application upon a systematic scale of the principles advanced by 

 Schelling, more especially in the Mathesis and Ontology ; for the 

 concluding part or Biology stands almost " per se." As such it will 

 form, apart from other and higher considerations, a readily available 

 introduction to the writings upon similar subjects of Carus, Steffens, 

 Hegel and others, and may induce further attempts to render, by 

 translation or history, the English student familiar with much 

 of what at present is known only by scattered fragments in journals, 

 or through the medium of reviews. From what has been said, the 

 reader will be at no loss to discern in what light the Translator 

 humbly desires to be viewed in reference to the present work. He 

 rests content with the confident hope that its pages will be, at least, 

 found eminently suggestive, that new thoughts will be awakened 

 by facts and their relations being here cast in a fresh mould, that 

 shall stimulate others in the field of inquiry, and open paths 

 hitherto untrod. In this he is but expressing the sentiments of 



* For this the reader may be referred to the 3d vol. of Prof. Blainville's Hist, 

 des Sciences de 1' Organisation ; Par. 1845; or better still, to the sketch (preceded 

 by a view of Schelling's philosophy), which is given by M. Saint- Agy in the Tome 

 Complementaire of Cuvier's Hist, des Sciences Naturelles, 1845. He there rightly 

 observes of Oken's work, that " pendant les quarante dernieres annees il n'a 

 presque paru en Allemagne d'ouvrages d'anatomie, de physiologic, de physique et 

 de chimie auxquelles elle n'ait servi de base." For what a master-mind like Oken's 

 is capable of creating, I would especially refer to his theory of the Cranial Homo- 

 logies, which has been in our own country so beautifully carried out, modified, 

 and proved by the extensive researches of Professor Owen. 



