"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.
The nebular hypothesis is a part of the foundation on which the doctrine of creation by law rests. And the high scientific reputation of its author, as well as its apparent coincidence with some of the deductions of geology respecting the earliest condition of the earth, have made philosophers look upon it with considerable favor. Yet very few have been ready to give it implicit credence. And of late the most plausible evidence in its favor seems to be fast vanishing away. The ablest mechanicians are unable to see how a rotary motion should be produced in nebulous matter by refrigeration; or, if this be assumed, how the successive portions, detached by superior centrifugal force, should form spherical masses. But a still more formidable objection lies in the fact that, as improvements are made in telescopes, one and another of the nebulæ, on which the hypothesis rests, have been resolved into stars; and the presumption hence arising is very strong that all are resolvable. In the present aspect of the subject, no sagacious philosopher would dare to rest even an hypothesis upon the unresolved nebulæ. If, however, the nebular hypothesis were shown to be true, it would prove nothing in regard to the production of animals and plants by mere law, without the special agency of the Deity.