“The symbolical doctrine of the colors is correct according to the philosophy of nature. Red is fire, love—Father. Blue is air, truth, and belief—Son. Green is water, formation, hope—Ghost. These are the three cardinal virtues. Yellow is earth, the immovable, inexorable falsity, the only vice—Satan. There are three virtues, but only one vice. A result obtained by physio-philosophy, whereof pneumato-philosophy as yet augurs nothing.
“The primary mucus, out of which every thing organic has been created, is the sea mucus.
“The whole sea is alive. It is a fluctuating, ever self-elevating, and ever self-depressing organism.
“If the organic fundamental substance consist of infusoria, so must the whole organic world originate from infusoria. Plants and animals can be only metamorphoses of infusoria. No organism has consequently been created of larger size than an infusorial point; whatever is larger has not been created, but developed.
“The mind, just as the body, must be developed out of these animals, (infusoria.) The human body has been formed by an extreme separation of the neuro-protoplasmic or mucous mass; so must the human mind be a separation, a memberment of infusorial sensation. The highest mind is an anatomized or dismembered mesmerism, each member whereof has been constituted independent in itself.
“The liver is the soul in a state of sleep, the brain is the soul active and awakening.
“Circumspection and forethought appear to be the thoughts of the bivalve mollusca, and snails.
“Gazing upon a snail, one believes that he finds the prophesying goddess sitting upon the tripod. What majesty is in a creeping snail, what reflection, what earnestness, what timidity, and yet at the same time what firm confidence! Surely a snail is an exalted symbol of mind slumbering deeply within itself.”
It is difficult for an Anglo-Saxon mind to believe that a man who could write thus was not out of his senses. Yet Oken is an eminent physiologist, and has made, it is said, important discoveries in respect to the cranial homologies, which have been developed in Professor Owen’s work on the Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton. Nay, Oken declares himself to have written his Physio-philosophy “in a kind of inspiration”—from what world the religious man might be in doubt.
These extravagant notions show what is the natural tendency of the law hypothesis. Yet it does not necessarily convert a man into an atheist. And if any of its advocates declare themselves Theists, and even Christians, we need not regard them as hypocrites, though we may consider them as in an eminently dangerous position; and that, when they shall act consistently, they will swing off into utter irreligion. But my arguments against the hypothesis will be based on the position that it is not sustained by facts; and this is the second position of my lecture.