sert him even "in age and feebleness extreme." We are assured by one of his followers that he " went down to the grave satisfied with the past, and ()eaceful and trusting with respect to the future." His stormy and eventful life closed Oct. 16, 1820. Dr. Stevens "says, "O'Kelly was an Irishman of fiery temperament, and, as usual with such temperaments, his conscience was weak, easily swayed by his prejudices ; weak to yield to them, though strong to defend them." Of the O'Kelly schismatics, Lee, their historian, writing in 1806, says : " They have been divided and subdivided till at present it is hard to find two of them that are of one opinion. There are now but few of them in that part of Virginia where they were formerly the most numerous, and in most places they are declining." See Stevens, Hist. Methodist Epis- copal Church, iii, 16-37 ; Lednum, Rise of Methodism in A merica, ch. xxxiii ; Bennett, Memorials oj" Methodism ill Virf/inia (^IJichmond, 1871, 12mo), ch. ix. (J. H. W.)
O'Kelly Methodists. See O'Kelly, James.
Okely, Fkaxcis, a learned English theologian, was born in 1718. His adherence to the Moravians pre- vented his being ordained a minister in the Anglican Church. He died at Bedford May 9, 179-1. He wrote, The Nature and Xecessiti/ of the Neiv Creature in Christ (1772, 8vo), translated from the German: — The divine Visions of John Englehrecht (1781, 2 vols. 8vo) ; the works of this German visionarj^ had been published in German in 1658, some years after his death : — A faith- ful Narrative of God's gracious Dealings with Iliel (1781, 8vo) : — Dawnings of the everlasting Gospel Light, glimmering out of a p?-ivate Heart's epistolary Corre- spondence (Northampton, 1775, 8vo). — Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Generals, xxxviii, 577 ; Darling, Cycl, Bibliog, ii, 2232. (J. N. P.)
Oken, LoKENZ, a celebrated Swiss naturalist, was born at Oflfenberg Aug. 2, 1779. He studied medicine and natural history at Gottingen, and held the position of privat-docent in that university. In 1807 he became extraordinary professor of medicine in the University of Jena ; thence he removed to Zurich, where he held the post of professor of natural historv' till his death, which occurred in August, 1847. At the time when Oken began to study natural science, the writings of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling were producing a deep impression on the minds of the students of natural history. Schel- ling, who had studied medicine, ha(i applied the princi- ples of the transcendental philosophy to the facts of the natural world, and had by a process of thought endeav- ored to give an explanation of the phenomena of nature. It was in this school that Oken studied, and the princi- ples of the transcendental philosophy more or less guided his researches as a naturalist throughout his long life. His first work was published in 1802, and was entitled Elemente der Natur-Philosophie. This was followed in 1805 by a work on Die Zeugrung. In these books he en- deavored to apply a general theory of nature to the facts presented by the forms and the development of animals. In his classification he took for his basis the presence of the senses, making each class of animals to represent an organ of sense. In his work on Generation he first sug- gested that all animals are built up of vesicles or cells. The formation of seminal matter is described as taking place by the decomposition of the organism into infu- soria, and propagation is described as the flight of the occupant from his falling house. In 1806 he published his Contributions to Comparative Anatomy and Physiol- ogy, and pointed out the origin of the intestines in the umbilical vesicle. In this year he made an excursion to the Harz Jlountains, which resulted in an important thought. Tills may be described in his own language : " In August, 1800," he says, " I made a journey over the Harz. I slid down through the wood on the south side ; and straight before me, at my feet, lay a most beauti- ful bleached skull of a liind. I picked it up, turned it round, regarded it intensely: the thing was done. 'It is a vertebral column !' struck me as a fiash of lightning
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to the marrow and bone ; and since that time the skull has been regarded as a vertebral column." This discov- ery was published in an essay on the " Signification of the Bones of the Skull." The essay, although it at- tracted little attention at first, laid the foundation of those inquiries which, in the hands of Carus, Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, and Owen, have led to the establishment of those laws of homologj' in the vertebrate skeleton that are now a universally received branch of anatomical science. It was by the persevering use of the idea that dashed across his mind in the Harz that Oken has earned for himself the title of " the father of morpho- logical science."
While still a young man, and deeply convinced of the importance of an ideal philosophy in explaining the phenomena of the external world, he wrote his Lehr- biich der Nutur-Philosophie (.Jena, 1809 ; 3d ed. Zurich, 1843), translated into English by Mr. Fulke, and pub- lished in 1847 by the Ray Society, entitled Elements of rhijsio-Philosophy. In this work the author takes the widest possible view of natural science, and classifies the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms according to his philosophical views. "The animal kingdom," says Oken, " is man resolved into his constituent ele- ments; what ill the lower stages of animal life are in- dependent antagonisms reappear in the higher as attri- butes." In 1817 Oken started a natural-history journal entitled Iris, which he conducted for thirty years. See Em/lish Cyclop, s. v. ; Ueberweg, I/isf. of Philos. ii, 227 ; Txnn&maxm, Manual of Philos. (see Index); Morell, Hist, of Philos. in the \Wi Century (see Index). Oketsim. See Talmud.