OKEN. 105 
found ‘the 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 imponder- 
ables and non-organic bodies, their constructions neces- 
sarily 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, 
involves, 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 former, 
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 
animal 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 
