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. [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.