OKEN. 



lOS 



laws of the Mind without the study of the body, and in 

 its own fashion had proved the identity of the corporal 

 and spiritual world by means of imponderables and non- 

 organic bodies, their constructions necessarily extended 

 to organisms. 



This attempt to generalize the principles of Schelling 

 was made by Oken " when in his system he conceives 

 all Nature to be a process of evolution. In his opinion, 

 natural science is the science of the eternal modification 

 of God, that is of Mind, in the world, and is thus in the 

 widest sense, Cosmogony. Everything, when contem- 

 plated as part of the genetic process of the whole, in- 

 volves, besides the idea of existence, also that of non- 

 existence, or position and negation, as it rises into a 

 higher idea. These contrasts include the category of 

 polarity, which manifests itself in motion, the life of all 

 things. The simpler elementary bodies aggregate into 

 higher forms, which are mere higher powers of the for- 

 mer, as their causes. Hence the various classes of bodies 

 represent parallel series, each corresponding with and 

 modifying the order of the other; classes of which the 

 rational arrangement follows with inherent necessity from 

 their genetic coherence. But in individuals, these lower 

 series again become apparent during the period of de- 

 velopment. The antagonisms in the solar system of the 

 planets and the sun, repeat themselves in plants and 

 animals; and as light is the principle of motion, the ani- 

 mal has the advantage of independent motion, above 

 the vegetal organism which pre-eminently belongs to the 

 earth. Embryology receives its due in a general propo- 

 sition. " Animals perfect themselves gradually, adding 

 organ to organ in the self-same manner as the individual 



