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.”’ He lays claim to having advanced, so 
1Elements of Physiophilosophy, translated for the Ray Society by 
Alfred Tulk, p. xiv. 2 Op. cit. p. 13. 
