Transcriber's Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Variations in hyphenation have been standardised, but other variations in spelling, accents and punctuation are as in the original.
There are several very wide tables in the book (e.g. Table A is 16 columns/380 characters wide). These have been divided into blocks of 3 or 4 columns. The row alignment has been preserved and, where appropriate. the 1st column repeated for each block.
Where the use of ditto (") has been intermittent in tables, it is been replaced by the word represented.
The Errata and Corrigenda have been implemented, except for the final item:
For the words evolution and evolved, read passim in the Botanical and Zoological parts, perfection and perfected, as the text may require.
THE
RAY SOCIETY.
INSTITUTED MDCCCXLIV.
LONDON.
MDCCCXLVII.
ELEMENTS
OF
PHYSIOPHILOSOPHY.
BY
LORENZ OKEN, M.D.
PROFESSOR OF NATURAL HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ZÜRICH; &c. &c.
FROM THE GERMAN
BY
ALFRED TULK,
MEMBER OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF ENGLAND.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR THE RAY SOCIETY.
MDCCCXLVII.
C. AND J. ADLARD, PRINTERS,
BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE.
"Of all truths relating to phenomena, the most valuable to us are those which relate to the order of their succession. On a knowledge of these is founded every reasonable anticipation of future facts, and whatever power we possess of influencing those facts to our advantage. Even the laws of geometry are chiefly of practical importance to us as being a portion of the premises from which the order of the succession of phenomena may be inferred."
John Stuart Mill.
Begun in the autumn of the year 1845, without the cognizance, or at the suggestion of a single human being, the present Translation is due to the fact of its original having encountered a somewhat kindred spirit, and aroused therein the desire to render others participant, if possible, in the large amount of instruction it is so well calculated to afford. And now that the work is done, what remains for the labourer at second-hand to say by way of preamble to his newly-dressed wares? Had the book been printed within the pale of a philosophical or physico-theological sect, the Translator's final duty would have been clearly enough prescribed. Already bound to the profession of "particular tenets," his main object would be to indulge in a laudatory but servile abstract of his author's doctrines, or, if having set out with the expressed intention of illustrating their bearings upon the state of science past, present, and to come, he would become so drunk beforehand with the large and unbridled potation of his creed, as to surprise the casual reader by informing him that such an intention is useless, for the two stand in direct antithesis to each other. Examples of this mode of procedure are not wanting at the present day, whether at home or abroad. They are the produce of that spirit, which, rife enough in the Middle Ages, has been so graphically described by Professor Whewell under the title of the "Commentatorial," and "whose professed object is to explain, to enforce, to illustrate doctrines assumed to be true, but not to obtain additional truths or new generalizations." While from dealings of this character, as being utterly opposed to the sacred cause of Truth, I turn away with feelings of repugnance, to which the lessons of some personal experience have lent their aid, it is not my business, upon the other hand, to enter the lists of controversy against those who, having neither the capacity, nor the desire of its cultivation, for the higher walks of science, delight to dismiss a work of the present kind with some idle anathema of mysticism or evasive outcry for more facts.
I refrain from essaying to give any condensed formula or outline[A] of Professor Oken's Physio-philosophy: first, because its leading points have been already noted in his own prefaces to the German work and its translation; secondly, because the book will, I trust, best speak for itself to those who shall come with minds unprejudiced and duly prepared, each one in his particular department, to its study; and, lastly, because any such attempt would necessarily involve an amount of historical and critical details, which must be here superficially treated and so misplaced. Suffice it to observe, that the present work stands alone in Germany, as being the most practical application upon a systematic scale of the principles advanced by Schelling, more especially in the Mathesis and Ontology; for the concluding part or Biology stands almost "per se." As such it will form, apart from other and higher considerations, a readily available introduction to the writings upon similar subjects of Carus, Steffens, Hegel and others, and may induce further attempts to render, by translation or history, the English student familiar with much of what at present is known only by scattered fragments in journals, or through the medium of reviews. From what has been said, the reader will be at no loss to discern in what light the Translator humbly desires to be viewed in reference to the present work. He rests content with the confident hope that its pages will be, at least, found eminently suggestive, that new thoughts will be awakened by facts and their relations being here cast in a fresh mould, that shall stimulate others in the field of inquiry, and open paths hitherto untrod. In this he is but expressing the sentiments of the author himself, and acknowledging what the present time with its accumulating mass of knowledge presses upon us more and more—the necessity of work, wherein abstract science and experience, theory and facts shall advance together, the Ideal in part receiving and reflecting back with increased lustre the light which it has derived from the Real or outward semblance of things.
Meanwhile, it is with no small amount of diffidence and hesitation that the present Translation will quit my hands. Hemmed in by a rigid dialectic terminology upon all sides, I have had difficulties of no ordinary kind to contend with in adapting a language, composed of such varied elements as our own, to meet the requisites of general clearness and conciseness that form so prominent a feature of the German work. If errors and obscurities exist, the blame, it will be observed, attaches to myself, not to the distinguished author. Ill-health has conflicted much with the calmness and repose of mind so indispensable to an undertaking, at once novel in kind and character to the English reader; or otherwise, these (my last labours unto any extent as a Translator) might have been rendered more worthy of the Ray Society and the objects it has in view.
To those who have kindly afforded me assistance in the progress of the work, and to the latter body for undertaking it, I here return many grateful thanks. The Author himself in a letter to the Translator, dated Jan. 12, 1847, acknowledges the acceptance of his work by the Society in the following words:—"The intelligence of my Physio-philosophy having been deemed worthy of translation by so goodly and enlightened a Society, cannot be otherwise unto me than a source of delight."[B]
ALFRED TULK.
[A] For this the reader may be referred to the 3d vol. of Prof. Blainville's Hist. des Sciences de l'Organisation; Par. 1845; or better still, to the sketch (preceded by a view of Schelling's philosophy), which is given by M. Saint-Agy in the Tome Complémentaire of Cuvier's Hist. des Sciences Naturelles, 1845. He there rightly observes of Oken's work, that "pendant les quarante dernières années il n'a presque paru en Allemagne d'ouvrages d'anatomie, de physiologie, de physique et de chimie auxquelles elle n'ait servi de base." For what a master-mind like Oken's is capable of creating, I would especially refer to his theory of the Cranial Homologies, which has been in our own country so beautifully carried out, modified, and proved by the extensive researches of Professor Owen.
[B] "Die Nachricht dass meine Naturphilosophie von einer sociferigen und erleuchteten Gesellschaft der Uebersetzung für würdig erachtet worden ist, konnte nicht anders als mir Freude gewähren."
[AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION.]
It is with no readiness or pleasure that I write introductions of any kind, and usually abstain from doing so, partly because they appear to me like a kind of apology or makeshift for the author, and partly because the contents of the book itself should indicate his status or position. With regard, however, to the history of the work, some few words are certainly requisite for its Translation.
I wrote the first Edition of 1810 in a kind of inspiration, and on that account it was not so well arranged as a systematic work ought to be. Now, although this may appear to have been amended in the second and third edition, yet still it was not possible for me to completely attain the object held in view. The book has therefore remained essentially the same as regards its fundamental principles, such as those concerning the formation of matter, the protoplasmic substance (Schleim-Substanz) and vesicular form of the organic mass, the signification and function of the organs, as also the principles of classification in Minerals, Plants and Animals, so that all this is consequently as old as the first edition. It is only the empirical arrangement into series of plants and animals, that has been modified from time to time in accordance with the scientific elevation of their several departments, or just as discoveries and anatomical investigations have increased and rendered some other position of the objects a matter of necessity. This susceptibility to change will of course be persistent in the future, although the principles themselves should continue wholly unchanged; ay, the very stability of the latter will tend the more to invite the naturalist to the pursuit of empirical inquiries, by determining beforehand in what direction he is to extend his point of view, and thus spare himself the trouble of blindly and laboriously groping about in the dense labyrinth of facts. Such a work therefore as the present can only approximate completion through the progress made in science, and each new edition will supply some defect of its predecessor in the distribution or parcelling out of things.
In the first edition the principle was raised of individual bodies being alone the object of Natural History, and that in the next place they are to be arranged according to the combination of their organs or component parts, and by no means after the division or mere form of a single organ; that, for example, a special organ or anatomical system lies as the basis of each Vegetable and Animal class, and that there must be therefore as many classes, and no more, as there are cardinal organs present upon which to found them. On that account it was absolutely necessary first of all to find out these cardinal organs, and determine their rank; and, in so doing, it was shown that organs and classes are at bottom of one kind, and that the development by stages or degrees of the embryo is the antetype of that of the classes; furthermore, that each class takes its starting-point from below, and consequently that the classes do not stand simply one above the other, but fall into a series of mutually parallel ranks. Now it is this which, along with the doctrine of the infusorio-vesicular form of the organic mass, and that touching the signification of parts, as to how e. g. the blossom is the repetition of the vegetable axis or trunk, the cephalic bones that of the vertebræ, the feet of the branchiæ, and the maxillæ in turn of the feet, appears to me the cardinal point attained in my Philosophy of Nature; more especially, because it was these very doctrines which were first of all, i. e. before all the others, comprehended and almost universally adopted. The inorganic matters and activities pass, however, parallel also to the anatomical formations and functions; and that this is the case too with the spiritual or psychical functions the philosophy of the future will probably be in the condition to point out.
The reader will not expect to find that the serial arrangement of Plants and Animals, with their parallelism, has been in every instance thoroughly attained. The present is but a sample of how we are to proceed in our desire of obtaining a Natural system. With such an attempt one has something to change every year, and I have in the present translation made some alterations in respect to the Mollusca and Fishes. In this sense then it is my wish that the book may be regarded, and accordingly received with its due amount of indulgence.
LORENZ OKEN.