REVIEWS. 
35 
often stopped short in efficient causes, and has not comprehended them as 
all in the final cause ; content to recognise this as something unknown, and 
not as therefore to be sought to be known. As expositors of the teleolo¬ 
gical theory, Blumenbach, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Scheitlin, pass by in 
review. The discussion is acute, and a reader familiar with Whewell’s 
History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences need not feel utterly 
repelled by the peculiar logical forms of Hinrich’s criticism. Sometimes, 
indeed, we are tempted to recur to the “ inaccurate phrases” against which 
he has protested in the preface, as that “ the forms of the Hegelian dialectic 
eat one another up.” It would be difficult to give a fair representation of 
the argument by any extracts we could have room for, and we fear that 
what is good Hegelish might re-appear, through a translation, as bad English. 
The very terms of the definition which he adopts for life would need them¬ 
selves to be defined, and distinguished out of their common acceptation. 
We have used much liberty in the selection and compression of a few sen¬ 
tences taken here and there, to exemplify the author’s points of view in 
particular branches of the subject. The reader desiring to grasp the links 
of connection is invited to seek them in the original. 
Life then is considered in its development, that is faculty (Trieb,) which is 
fourfold; and the four remaining chapters are devoted to the illustration of these 
in order. As Hinrich recognises three kinds only of organisms—plant, animal, 
man—there is a difference of the divisions, though a corresponding order. 
The plastic faculty (nisus formativus) lies at the root of all organization. 
This is the principle of life as developed in the plant, self-preservation and 
reproduction, without the possibility of sensation. Animal life is the possi¬ 
bility of sensation ; in its first degrees not the reality of it. Sensation does 
not actually exist without distinction of organs. A sense that is all senses 
in one is none in particular. The simplest animal organisms—the infu- 
sories—appear totally insensible to impressions from without. But their 
motions originate in themselves—are spontaneous. The apparently volun¬ 
tary motions of the spores of algae are not so. They are motions commu¬ 
nicated through the forcible expulsion from cells and tubes. The exterior 
of the plant is rigid; if it yields, it yields to an impulse from without. 
Organic contractility is first developed in sarcode, the commencement of 
animal organization. Sarcode, cell, tissue, organ, are in succession. The 
infusories are the simplest forms of animal life; but the higher animals, 
and man, do not originate as infusoi’ies, are not an aggregate of infusories 
as Oken has held. In the lower animals the secretion becomes at last inor¬ 
ganic, incrustation. The higher the animal in the scale, the fewer the parts 
without sensation. Feathers, wool, hair, are external secretions, yet not 
