Domain of Physiology. 249 



plants and animals, and their relations to each other and to 

 the mineral kingdom, and concludes with an account of the 

 astronomical relations of our planet as a part of the solar 

 system. 



It was the conception of the essential unity of nature, with- 

 out which a true science is impossible, which inspired Hum- 

 boldt to attempt, in his Cosmos, a complete physiography, 

 which was to be " a physical description of the universe, em- 

 bracing all created things in the regions of space and in the 

 earth." Humboldt elsewhere speaks of " the idea of vitality 



.so intimately associated with that of the existence of 



the active, ever blending natural forces which animate the ter- 

 restrial sphere," and, recalling the fact that the inorganic 

 crust of the earth includes the same chemical elements that 

 enter into the structure of animal and vegetable organisms, 

 adds : — " A physical cosmography would therefore be incom- 

 plete if it were to omit a consideration of these forces (and of 

 the substances that enter into solid and liquid combinations in 

 organic tissues under certain conditions), which, from our 

 ignorance of their actual nature, we designate by the vague 

 term of vital forces. The natural tendency of the human mind 

 involuntarily prompts us to follow the physical phenomena of 

 the earth through all their varied series, until we reach the 

 final stage of the morphological evolution of vegetable forms, 

 and the self-determining powers of motion in animal orga- 

 nisms"*. 



§ 28. The necessary complement to a scientific physiography 

 is thus, as Humboldt has here pointed out, a philosophy of the 

 material universe, or, in other words, a general physiology. 

 The most complete attempt at thus systematizing nature is 

 that of Lorenz Oken, who divided all philosophy into Pneu- 

 matophilosophy and Physiophilosophy, corresponding respec- 

 tively to Spirit and to Nature. Physiophilosophy, as defined 

 by him, is the science of the conversion of spirit into nature, 

 and has for its object to show how, and in accordance with 

 what laws, the material universe has been formed ; to portray 

 the first periods of the world's development from naught ; to 

 show how the heavenly bodies and the chemical elements ori- 

 ginated ; in what manner, by self-evolution into higher and 

 manifold forms, these generated mineral species became at 

 length organic, and in man attained to self-consciousness. 



Physiophilosophy is therefore the generative history of the 

 world, or, in other words, the history of the process of crea- 



* Humboldt's Cosmos, Otte's translation, Harper's edit. 185 L, author's 

 preface, p. viii, and vol. i. pp. 339-341. 



Phil, Mag. 8. 5. Vol. 12. No. 75. Oct. 1881. U 



