THE
RAY SOCIETY.
INSTITUTED MDCCCXLIV.
Portraitof a man
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 outlineA 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.
