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UNIVERSAL PSYCHOLOGY.

The new System of Thought complete in sixteen vol-

umes, by
DENTON J. SNIDER.
I. ORGANIC PSYCHOLOGY.

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THE
BIOCOSMOS

The Processes of Life

Psychologically Ordered

BY

DENTON J. SNIDER

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ST. LOUIS, MO.
SIGMA PUBLISHING CO.
210 PINE ST.

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CONTENTS

OF THE
BIOCOSMOS
PAGE.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

CONCERNING EVOLUTION . : : 5
NATURE’S ORIGIN ; 4 : : 9
NATURE’S EVOLUTION : : la:
EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION : Serie
THE PHYSICAL AND THE PSYCHICAL 29
THE HUMAN FORM ., : , yeah
PRELIMINARY TO BIOCOSMOS . ; Sono!
PART FIRST—THE CELLULAR BIOCOSMOS ey
CYTOLOGY . : : eee lat)
PATHOLOGY . : A : : vm OO
HYGIOLOGY . : 5 é : snes

PART SECOND—THE PARTICULARIZED
BIOCOSMOS . é : : ; {Ss
PLANT-LIFE 3 ; : : ye TUE
FORMATION : : POW
ASSIMILATION . ‘ d : VALS

GENERATION. : : eOLZAT |
(iii)

iv CONTENTS.

PAGE.

ANIMAL-LIFE 5 ; 9 AED)
FORMATION MR Se paves 27)
ASSIMILATION . : ; 9207
GENERATION. . : t : a yall
EARTH-LIFE : : ; $ rool
FORMATION ; : ; : ; ole
ASSIMILATION . : ; : . sl
GENERATION. : : ; . ooo

PART THIRD—THE HISTORICAL BIOCOSMOS 402
DARWIN’S BIOGRAPHY , ee)
BEFORE DARWIN AND AFTER . . 430
RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT i .. 450

GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

CONCERNING EVOLUTION.

Charles Darwin, supreme biologist of all
time, and as we title him, the Hero of the
Biocosmos, replying to certain objectors who
eaviled at his use of scientific terms, replies:
“‘Tt is difficult to avoid personifying the word
Nature,’’ and he seemingly does not try very
hard to overcome the difficulty. But why does
the mind instinctively speak of Nature as a
person, thus endowing it with a psychical
element? Does this belong to Nature, or is it
forced upon the same from the outside by
ourselves? Here indeed we touch the deepest
problem of Nature—a problem which she is
always bringing up to the surface. Darwin
in the same passage goes on to say: ‘‘I mean

(5)

6 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

by Nature only the aggregate action and pro-
duct of many natural laws, and by laws the
sequence of events as ascertained by us.’’ A
collection of natural laws apparently self-ex-
ecuting is Nature according to the conscious
definition of Darwin. So he proceeds to think
himself rid of the intrusive personifying ten-
dency in his exposition of his science. But
Nature herself some how refuses to be treated
in that impersonal way, except perchance
by little fragments. Now we hold that the
instinctive procedure of Darwin as naturalist
is far truer and deeper than his expressed in-
tention; the naive observer in him is a much
greater man than the definer or metaphy-
sician.

In the same connection he takes occasion to
reply to the animadversions upon his use of
his pivotal category, Natural Selection, a term
whose easiest meaning is Selection by Nature.
This certainly indicates that Nature proceeds
by some sort of choice involving Will. Dar-
win speaks of the objectors who say that ‘‘the
term Selection implies conscious choice in the
animals which become modified, and it has
even been urged that as plants have no voli-
tion, Natural Selection is not applicable to
them.’’ Certainly lower animals and plants
are not conscious, are not Hgos; still they
have a psychical element in Life, and there

CONCERNING EVOLUTION.

~I

is the selection. But Darwin throws up the
sponge: ‘‘In the literal sense of the word, no
doubt, Natural Selection is a false term,’’
and so again he seeks to eliminate the psychi-
eal implication of his own great vocable:
‘‘Natural Selection is the preservation of
favorable individual differences and varia-
tions, and the destruction of those which are
injurious.’’ Thus he thinks he has eliminated
that insidious personal equation which has
already given him so much bother. Still it
remains and must ever remain, for it is not
merely his own, or subjective, but it has its
counterpart in Nature herself. Another com-
plaint he utters in the same paragraph: ‘‘It
has been said that I speak of Natural Selec-
tion as an active power or deity,’’ that is, as
a supreme Person ruling all living things,
vegetal and animal. Better and more pro-
phetie it would have been to make Evolution
a kind of God dominating Darwin and the
whole Nineteenth Century.

It is not often that we can catch Darwin
examining the ultimate categories by which
he does his thinking. On the whole he picks
them up without criticism, for which he evi-
dently had little taste or aptitude. Still his
instinct for the right word is correct; Natural
Selection must be deemed a very happy term
which helped make the fortune of the author’s

8 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

theory. Only when nagged by captious ob-
jectors, would he seek reasons for his verbal
usage (as may be seen in the above pas-
sages); which reasons in our opinion do not
strengthen his cause. Natural Selection as a
term has more truth in it and more virility
than Spencer’s phrase for the same thing:
‘the survival of the fittest,’’? though Darwin
himself seems to accept the latter as a kind of
synonym. It, too, seeks to obliterate the psy-
chical side of the process, and thus shows a
pallid, rather soulless expression.

Now, the foregoing trouble in the greatest
biological book of the ages (see The Origin of
Species, Chapter IV) has continued down to
the present, and is by no means yet overcome.
That unwelcome psychical intruder shows
himself a sort of marplot in the onward march
of biology, and cannot be put out. As his pres-
ence is always manifested in life from the
lowest to the highest forms, our purpose is to
acknowledge him, not merely as an alien
guest, but as a rightful possessor, in our Bio-
cosmus, which must have in every stage and
shape the twin elements, the physical or ma-
terial and the psychical, both being joined to-
gether in an immediate inseparable unity
which constitutes the living thing, from the
lowest cell to the highest organism.

Still one cannot help asking about the func-

NATURE'S ORIGIN. 9

tion of this psychical element in Nature. In
its final aspect it is the connecting principle
between all her separated forms millionfold,
for Nature in her outward appearance is sep-
arative, from the invisible atom, electron or
etherion, to the largest star or nebula. Now,
the bond of connection between all these di-
versified portions of the physical universe is
psychical, or mental, if you wish. The word
Nature implies some kind of unity or common
ground of generalization, which underlies its
every division. To know Nature truly is to
unify all her differences. Still further, we are
not going to rest till we ask: What is the
source of this psychical activity which
streams through the whole phenomenal world
and joins it to the universal fountain-head?

if
NATURE’s ORIGIN.

Many a scientist in these days-has remarked
on the tendency of Natural Science, supposed-
ly so concrete, to become abstract and meta-
physical. During the present century it
burst forth in a reaction against speculative
Philosophy, especially in Germany; but it is
getting to be quite as speculative as any Phi-
losophy. This movement is in the order of
evolution, we hold; it shows Nature striving

10 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

to get back to its origin in the Universe which
ean only be a thought, or more adequately
stated, the universal psychical process of
mind. This point we shall unfold somewhat.

Nature is a part of a greater whole, yea
ultimately, of the greatest whole, of the very
All itself. And every part of Nature, or part
of the part, even to the least, must be a part
of this All. So we may grasp, in an external
way, the divisions of the physical world. To
this view we can now add the reflection that
every part of a Whole, in order to be such
part, must have the process of that. Whole.
For instance, each member of your organism
—hand, arm, foot—must possess the organic
process of the entire body; thus it is truly a
member. Accordingly every minutest par-
ticle of the universe presupposes that uni-
verse, and is connected with the same in the
unseen bond which we eall the psychical. All
true science as universal seizes this unitary
principle of every manifestation of Nature,
and carries it up to its original source, which.
can only be the universe. So Natural Science
is not to stop with knowing the particular (as
it often does). Nature can be known only by
knowing the great Whole of which it is a part,
and from which it gets its ultimate process.
This, too, must be psychical, a fact which we
may look.into for a little while.

NATURE'S ORIGIN. nt

Back of every human consciousness lies
more or less distinctly the Great Totality
which we have already appealed to under the
name of the Universe, the All. This concept
is verily the elemental one, beyond which
there is none other; we might call it by anal-
ogy the primordial mind-stuff out of which
every Self arises and becomes an individual.
Of this origin the latter always carries the
mark or impress, and in its deepest moments
drops back into its genetic source which is
the Universe, whence arises man’s thought as
universal, that is, bearing the stamp of the
Universe. When the mind becomes truly cre-
ative, it re-enacts the creative act of the All,
it returns to and shares in the very source
and genesis of its own being. Such is the
deepest significance of man’s universality,
though he be merely this finite individual.

Now, this Universe of ours, with its inti-
mate relation to ourselves has long excited
the interest of the profound sages of the race,
as well as of the humbler run of people. Its
primal division into God, Nature, and Man,
is familiar, even popular. But the further
reflection is not so well known, that these
three form a process, yea, a psychical process,
which must therefore, be prototypalof allother
processes, being the universal one, just that
of the Universe itself, and creative of the

12 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

rest, even down to the most minute, to the
microscopic cell. Accordingly we say that
the Universe has three divisions primordially
—God, Nature, Man, and that these, being
psychical, form the process of the All-Self,
who creates the human Self, and indeed all
created things, in his image more or less ap-
proximate. It is necessary to designate this
supreme originative process of the Universe
by a special term: we call it the Pampsy-
chosis.

To formulate this absolute process of the
one Great Totality, fountain-head of all cre-
ation, has been the work of the loftiest spirits
of mankind—for instance the founders of the
world’s dominating Religions and Philoso-
phies. These have sought in a great variety
of forms and vocables to bring home to man
this ultimate creative process of the All. The
result is, we have the religious Norm and the
philosophical Norm, to which the time seems
to be adding a third, the psychological Norm
—all of which have one and the same content
—the Universe (see further elaboration of
this subject in our Ancient European Philos-
ophy, Introduction).

In the present book, Nature is treated psy-
chically. As the second stage or phase of the
All-Self (Pampsychosis), it bears everywhere
in its divisions large and small, the impress

NATURE'S ORIGIN. 13

of its origin. This is its psychical element,
which has been already stated to be the con-
necting principle which runs though all the
separate forms of Nature and interlinks them
together in their primordial genesis. Thus
we catch a glimpse of the universal science
of Nature—of Nature belonging to and gen-
erated by the Universe.

Moreover the psychical element is in me as
Ego, as self-conscious, whereby I come to
know all the diversity of Nature as process,
which is at bottom identical with mine; other-
wise I could not know it. Of old the philos-
opher observed that he could only recognize
his own in cognizing the object. That is, the
process of his Self (or Psychosis) must iden-
tify Nature’s process (or Psychosis) with
his own, and then connect it with the genetic
process of the Universe (the Pampsychosis).

In this connection a passage from one of
Darwin’s letters is significant in which he
acknowledges that it is ‘‘impossible to con-
ceive this immense and wonderful universe
including man with his capacity of looking
far backwards and far into futurity as the
result of blind chance or necessity.’’ Thus
we behold the great scientist summoning be-
fore himself the Universe and trying to ac-
count for it in some way, as being the origin
~ of all origins, ‘‘including man.’’ Still he does

14 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

not invoke it (and well it is for him that he
does not) in accounting for the origin of the
species, his unique scientific task and achieve-
ment. Meanwhile, however, he unfolds and
formulates the leading category of his age,
and plants it firmly in the consciousness even
of the common people—Evolution.

So there is some thing beyond Darwin ac-
cording to Darwin; he is but a stage of his
own principle universalized; Evolution must
evolve also, according to its own innermost
logic, and become a part or constituent of a
new and completer Evolution.

JUL,

Nature’s Evo.uurion.

At present the trend of Natural Science
sweeps toward expanding, applying, and in
a measure reconstructing the Darwinian the-
ory of Evolution. It has been carried into
fields which Darwin knew not of, and trans-
formed in ways of which he probably never
dreamed; it has been made universal, it has
categorized the age, it has builded itself into
the public consciousness. The time was ready
and ealling for its true utterance, of which
various forms had already been given before
Darwin. These voices.also the true-hearted
listener should not fail to hear.

NATURE'S EVOLUTION. 15

Darwinism is by no means identical with
Evolution, which had been announced long be-
fore the time of Darwin and was more or less
secretly fermenting in the spirit of the age.
Still it is more profoundly intergrown with
his name than with that of any other man.
He popularized it, injecting it into the deep-
est current of the folk-souf of his century.
In the introduction to his book on the Origin
of the Species, he has given a brief account
of some anticipations of his view, which puts
stress upon Evolution of a certain kind,
namely, by Natural Selection, the Darwinian
kind.

The Nineteenth Century, as we look back
at it, shows its own peculiar mental bent, its
psychical trend, which it has over and over
again in diverse ways expressed as a cate-
gory of thought. This category is the afore-
said Evolution, which is strictly a_ philo-
sophical term, even when ejected from the
mouth of a philosophy-hating scientist. The
Nineteenth Century (of course there is no
need of adhering strictly to its yearly bounds)
was evolutionary in its highest spiritual ac-
tivity as well as in its supreme self-expres-
sion. In Philosophy, in Poetry, as well as in
Science, it has found utterance through the
ereatest masterpieces of the century. Of this
fact we may take a short note.

16 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

The philosopher proper of Evolution is
unquestionably Hegel, who ranks among the
greatest of his guild. His first important
original work lay in the domain of the History
of Philosophy, whose systems of thought
from the old Greeks down to his time were
put into an evolutionary line which finally
evolved into his own system as the latest and
most complete. Thus Hegel quite at the start
of the century (perhaps a little before) came
into possession of the Evolution of Thought,
which indeed may be deemed the ideal pro-
totype of Evolution marching toward realisa-
tion during the ensuing years. Indeed he had
extracted it from its long antecedent historic
wrappage and revealed it in its pure Forms
or Ideas, as well as in its inner connection.
In the introduction to the foregoing work
(History of Philosophy) it is significant to
notice what strong and repeated stress he
puts upon Entwickelung (Evolution), as if
he already felt the pressure of the new spirit
of the age for its pivotal term or category.
In his next book (Phenomenology, 1806) he
unfolds the method in tracing the subjective
mind through its stages from lowest to high-
est. But his greatest work in this field is his
Logic (the larger one) which is an Evolution
of the ‘‘pure essences’’ of the Absolute Intel-
ligence (of the Logos) as expressed in the

NATURE'S EVOLUTION. Me

categories of Philosophy. This last work
has taken its rank as one of the supreme
masterpieces of human Thinking. It may be
regarded as the unique instance of Pure Kvo-
lution, as it exists in the Absolute Mind ‘‘be-
fore the creation of Nature and finite Man’’
(as Hegel puts it himself). So it is the evolu-
tionary Idea going in advance of the reality,
which, however, is soon to follow. In this
fashion Hegel the philosopher proclaims the
Thought of the Century in its primordial un-
alloyed essence. It should be added that
Hegel in his life embodied his philosophic
principle of Evolution, for he has very dis-
tinctly his personally evolutionary period.
Thus he biographically as well as philosophi-
cally manifests the fundamental character of
his Century; his life incarnates his thought.
(For a fuller view of this phase of Hegel, see
the essay upon him in our Modern Kuropean
Philosophy, especially the section headed The
Evolutionary Hegel, p. 654, ete.)

Still, Hegel, philosopher that he was,
showed his inherent limitation in the matter
of Evolution when the latter was to incorpor-
ate itself in Nature. He allowed only the
ideal Evolution, which determined, as it were
from without, all the shapes of the physical
world. He has left us a considerable book
on The Philosophy of Nature, which, amid

18 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

many profound insights, makes us conscious
of the externality of his method.when he claps
his abstract logical categories upon the pro-
cesses of Nature. Not so many years before
Darwin he declares that ‘‘the rise of the more
developed animals out of the lower must be
rejected by the thinker.’? Thus he denies
Evolution as immanent in Nature, it holds
with him only of Thought. This is a bad mis-
take of Hegel, which Darwin is to correct.
Indeed it contradicts Hegel himself, who
therein undermines his own principle of Evo-
lution as universal. Still he brings sharply to
light the inherent difficulty of every Philoso-
phy of Nature, which applies abstract cate-
gories externally to natural processes. It may
be here added that a Psychology of Nature
proceeds in a very different way.

Darwin, therefore, in the spiritual move-
ment of the century, supplements Hegel’s log-
ical or metaphysical Evolution with organic
or biological Evolution, which is immanent
in Nature. To be sure, Darwin knew nothing
of Hegel, and did his work of his own inner
impulse in a different country with a wholly
different environment. Still it is a point of
supreme interest to see the Spirit of the Age
uttering itself through both, though in dif-
ferent ways and in different, yea opposite
spheres. The sphere of the one was the Cre-

NATURE'S EVOLUTION. 19

*

ative Idea or the Absolute Mind; the sphere
of the other was Nature; yet both had ulti-
mately the same thought, the deepest of the
Century, and both spoke even the same word
—Evolution, which was now to manifest it-
self in every stage of the universal Norm,
already described. So we may say that the
time had come when the Universe itself must
reveal its evolutionary phase, which is to re-
main the spiritual heritage of the race. It
should be added that Darwin by no means
traversed the whole field of Nature, but con-
fined himself chiefly to its organic stage, nor
did he exhaust that. At present there is in
scientific investigation a noteworthy trend
toward inorganic Evolution. Darwin also
started or at least gave a new impulse to
what may be called psychic Evolution in Life,
which has had such a remarkable development
into a new science known as Physiological
Psychology.

Nor should we forget the expression of
Evolution in the realm of Poetry, very diverse
in form from Science and _ Philosophy.
Goethe’s Faust is justly regarded as the
poetic masterpiece of the Century, and the
latter’s supreme artistic expression, Goethe
himself as scientist is deemed one of the
precursors of Darwin in organic Evolution.
But he was essentially the poet rather than

90 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

the scientist. In the First Part of Faust he
has set forth the Evolution of Mephistophiles,
‘the Spirit that denies,’’ who unfolds through
a variety of shapes starting with the deny-
ing Faust and concluding with the appear-
ance of the traveling scholastic. Nor is this
the only case of the Evolution of Forms cor-
responding to internal character, in the poem,
whose adequate interpretation depends
largely upon an insight into this fact.
Interesting by way of comparison with
Faust are the utterances of Tennyson in re-
gard to Evolution. They are in the form of
external reflections rather than woven into
the very texture of the poem, as we find in the
ease of Goethe. The striking lines of In
Memoriam have been often cited:

So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life,

alluding to Nature. Then comes the peculiar
Darwinian response:

‘‘So careful of the type?’’ but no
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries: ‘‘A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.’’

Such is the negative conclusion of Tenny-
son, in accord with his theme and doubtiess

NATURE'S EVOLUTION. DAL

with his character. It should be added that
Darwin has something more affirmative than
the poet, for new and indeed higher types
are always being evolved out of the vanishing
old ones. The Origin of Species was pub-
lished ten years later (1859) than the dated
dedication of In Memoriam; so the Darwinian
idea was in the air, and indeed in the social
circumstances of the time.

Philosophy, Science, and Poetry had, there-
fore, uttered the deepest spiritual trend of
the century, each in its own manner and in
its own domain. Hegel’s Logic, Darwin’s
Origin of Species, and Goethe’s Faust remain
three supreme masterpieces of human genius,
belonging to one period and expressing one
content ultimately ; three very different voices
we may well deem them, but all proclaiming
the pivotal message of their time. And that
is the reason why they are the masterpieces
of the century, epoch-making we say, but
really epoch-voicing. They tell the character
and designate the place of their epoch in the
unfolding of man toward his goal. What we
have called the Pampsychosis they utter in
its latest temporal manifestation. The uni-
_ versal Spirit speaks through all of them its
most recent evangel, which is that of Evolu-
tion.

But the question rises: Is this the last word

99 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

of the ages? Is Evolution the finality?
Probably not. Undoubtedly it has come to
stay; a spiritual treasure once gained 1s never
wholly lost. Even the atom, first conceived
and stated in the old Greek world, has found
a new life in our modern science after a mil-
lennial subsidence. Still nobody can now be
satisfied with the Universe as atomic, except
by a kind of reversion to the thought of an
age long since past. Such relapses, by the
way, are not souncommon. But the problem
is whether Evolution itself is going to evolve
and thus become a stage of itself. Is it some-
how to transcend itself through its own inner
movement and bring forth something quite
different? The Eighteenth Century was a
negative, revolutionary Century, battering
down the past, as may be seen in its acme and
most typical manifestation, the French Revo-
lution. But it evolved quite its opposite, the
Nineteenth Century, which is essentially posi-
tive and evolutionary, conserving and renew-
ing the past, yet with anarchie and destruc-
tive seams running through it everywhere, the
inheritance of a former time. If Revolution
evolved Evolution—the negation undoing it-
self—what will Evolution evolve as its suc-
cessor, perchance in our Twentieth Century?
Tt should be emphasized here that Darwin
more than any other man made Evolution the

NATURE'S EVOLUTION. 23

conscious possession of his age. Philosophy,
especially Hegel, is understood only by the
precious few, while Poetry hides its meaning
in the outer image so that many never pene-
trate to the soul of its utterance—witness for
instance the vast army of commentators on
Faust. Nature’s Evolution, accordingly, has
been the mediating principle of the age for
making the same conscious of its own deepest
thought, aware of its very self; hence springs
the present dominating significance of Nat-
ural Science in comparison with Philosophy
and Poetry, both of which, however—and let
it not be forgotten—deliver the same mes-
sage. This is what the complete man is to
hear in all its forms. Darwin is, therefore,
the genius of Evolution, who brings down the
Spirit of the Age to the people; stated in
other phrase, he mediates the Pampsychosis
when it has become evolutionary, with the
folk-soul, of the Century. Such in all ages
has been the function of the hero or genius;
and as Darwin’s field was mainly biological,
we may pedestal him the hero of the Bio-
cosmos.

Still the question cannot be kept down:
What after Darwin? What is Evolution go-
ing to do with itself?

94 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

Tih:

Evo.uution oF Eivouurion.

Ultimately Evolution will have to be ap-
pled to itself, if it be truly universal. It
must be tested at last by its own principle,
subsumed under its own law; what then be-
comes of it? And the author of Evolution
we have to consider as evolutionary in him-
self, as subject to his own process, as an ex-
ample of his own work, as something evolved.

It is by no means the least fact of Evolu-
tion in the Nineteenth Century that it
evolves its evolver, Charles Darwin. It
makes him corporeally’ appear in his rise
through thousands of bodily forms, from the
lowest to the highest, after the procession of
untold aeons, possibly a hundred million of
years, if we may dare suppose with some
scientists that life on our planet began so
long ago. It is no wonder, then, that such an
appearance is mightily acclaimed by the time.
For every man sees now his true genealogy—
if not his own origin, at least his physical his-
tory; he begins to understand himself organi-
eally. Evolution oflife has beengoing forward
in a dumb unconscious way for all these mil-
leniums; but now it gets a voice for the first
time, yea an historian who looks back and in-

EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION. 95

dicates the stages through which it has passed
up to the historian himself. Evolution, there-
fore, has evolved the evolver evolving Evolu-
tion, as far as life goes, and thus shows a
cycle of present completion.

It is manifest, however, that there is an-
other and deeper act here than the physically
evolutionary. Darwin’s Ego or Mind is what
returns to his corporeal starting-point, and
traces the organic forms till he comes to his
own organism. That psychical return lies
outside of life, yea, outside of Evolution in
its more special sense; which, however, it
grasps and describes. What is its place and
significance? Just here we may glimpse pos-
sibly a flash of the coming century with its
own doctrine which reaches beyond Evolution,
though including it. Darwin consciously
evolves the organic world, but unconsciously
has evolved his Ego performing such an evo-
lutionary act. That is his unique achievement,
and makes him the unique man that he is. In
his work of Evolution he suggests and in-
stinctively employs something greater than
Evolution, great as it is.

We must inspect the inherent character of
Evolution, and see what it will do to itself.
It takes for granted an immanent principle
in Nature which projects itself into a line of
living forms, and thus manifests itself in a

96 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

kind of organic ladder from bottom to top.
But we have to inquire after this formative
energy which is pre-supposed in Evolution:
What is it and whence comes it? What could
have set it going and have imparted to it the
general tendency to rise in the scale of excel-
lence? Evolution does not answer such a
problem; it simply assumes the given prin-
ciple and points out its transformations. Ac-
cordingly something lies back of Evolution,
propelling it onward, and for the most part
upward. Darwin in spite of himself, at times
even under his spoken protest, introduces
such a power, usually by the name of Nature
or Natural Selection. Evolution, therefore,
eannot completely evolve itself, it has to in-
voke an energy outside itself to make a start,
and to drive it on. When it has evolved itself
entirely and universally, it must have evolved
its pre-supposition, that which originates and
performs its process. Evolution thus shows
itself but a part or phase of a greater move-
ment; through its own inner dialectic it calls
for the completion of itself. When Evolution
reaches the end which returns to and makes
the beginning, when it has evolved the prin-
ciple which starts it and propels it, the as-
cending evolutionary line is transcended, and
rounds itself out into a cycle. What is it that
has this self-returning power?

EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION. Bao

Evolution must at last run upon its secret
demiurge which is an Hgo unfolding and
formulating it as a doctrine or as the funda-
mental thought of an epoch. Such an Hgo
is itself an evolution of the ages and makes its
appearance in the fullness of time. The Unt
versal Spirit (or the Pampsychosis) was evo-
lutionary in the Nineteenth Century, and
manifested itself peculiarly in Darwin, who,
receiving the impress of his period, became
also evolutionary and uttered the supernal
message to his contemporaries.

Such, indeed, is the function of the Genius
in the progressive sweep of the ages—he is
to express in word or deed the spirit of the
time to the people, who are dumbly ready for
the message. The Great Man of the period
in one way or other, is the mediator between
World-Spirit and the Folk-Soul. Be he polit-
ical, literary, scientific—soldier, like Caesar,
statesman like Lincoln, poet like Goethe, biol-
‘ogist like Darwin—he is the great mediator
of his epoch, between what we may call the
upper world and the lower world, between the
universal mind in its movement and the indi-
vidual who is to be filled with and to become
conscious of the same—when we may pass
on to the next stage. Darwin, therefore, is
the incarnated Genius of the Century, more
than any other scientific man; biologist he

98 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

was It is true, but he had the power of making
his particular science universal, of causing
his special category (Evolution) to be applied
to every other department of knowledge—
history, philosophy, institutions, and finally
even theology.

Of course there can be heard in these days
the anarchic protest against the work of the
Genius in the World’s History. Lombroso
and his disciples have sought to show that
the Great Man of the Age is mostly crazy;
but really he is to be conceived as the sanest
person of his time, who communes with and
shares in the universal Reason in a deeper
sense than any other mind. Just on this
ground he may be thought to be mentally out
of order, but one cannot help thinking that the
man who deems just the world-historical
Genius to be crazy is himself the crazier.

Undoubtedly Nature had long been evolv-
ing, from the very beginning in fact, though
without the presence of the evolutionary con-
sciousness; but it is now made conscious of its
evolution through the Ego of Darwin, who
thus stands at a grand node of Nature’s un-
folding. Man was indeed conscious or self-
knowing long before the Nineteenth Century,
many thousands of years doubtless; still he
was not conscious of himself as evolved, of
his evolutionary principle. But the fullness

THE .PHYSICAL AND THE PSYCHICAL. 99

of time had come for just such a thought, and
it was Darwin who rendered it the spiritual
possession of the race. He it was who made
us aware of the evolutionary idea of the All-
Self (Pampsychosis), not its only idea by any
means, still one of its ideas, peculiarly that of
his epoch. Darwin was truly the child of his
time; he could not have done his task in any
other period or in any other country but Eng-
land; the age had to whisper to him its evan-
eel and the folk-soul had to be prepared for
listening. Whereof something will be told
more fully in a later chapter.

Vs
THE PHYSICAL AND THE PSYCHICAL.

Repeatedly has it been expressed that Na-
ture is inherently dual, the second or separ-
ative stage in the process of the Universe.
Evolution manifests this dualism in its own
way, perpetually striving to overcome it, yet
always dropping back into it again. Hence
Evolution has the appearance of a struggle
between two forces, an inner and an outer,
neither of which can altogther conquer the
other.

In all Life, micro-organic as well as macro-
organic, in the smallest unicellular organism
as well as in the largest multicellular organ-

80 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

ism, the two elements are present, physical
and psychical. Moreover their presence is in
every part or point of the vital body, wrought
together in an indissoluble union, which will
not permit one to exist without the other.
Body is in the soul and soul is in the body;
their unity is, aS we say, immediate. Even
if the one be essentially determining and the
other essentially determined, neither can do
without the other and exist. To be sure, we
shall find that the psychical element will reach
a stage in which it can separate from its em-
bodiment and be self-determining within it-
self; but that stage is beyond Life, transcend-
ing indeed Nature, though it is her goal and
very aspiration. Such is the deepest dualism
of this sphere (the Biocosmos), its two-sided
oneness; we might name it Life’s bi-lateral
symmetry, which runs through every plant
and animal. The two sides, however, are not
simply fixed in their twoness and opposition;
the living soul is always getting outside in the
body, and the living body is always getting
inside in the soul; the two counter concep-
tions we must somehow grasp together: the
internal keeps externalizing itself and the ex-
ternal keeps internalizing itself—this is the
double process in vital action. The dualism
of Nature is always present in Life, but is
always being overcome,—from which view-

THE PHYSICAL AND THE PSYCHICAL. 81

point we may again see that the Biocosmos is
the third or ever-returning stage of total
Nature.

When we seek to unfold the process of the
cell,as a nucleated oft-dividing mass of proto-
plasm, the activity we call a psychosis; that
is, its genetic movement is after the order of
the Psyche, which thus furnishes the typical
form of life, the creative energy, and, it may
be added, the end toward which the vital
world or Biocosmos is advancing. The psy-
chosis is the basic process of the Self both as
individual and universal, and is that secret
but very active determinant of the cell and of
all Life which the biologists are pursuing with
such an outlay of industry and talent. The
difficulty with it is that it cannot be coaxed
to show itself under the most penetrating mi-
croscopic eye, and yet is present and on duty.
It is often recognized as the architectonic
principle in the living organism—the cunning
artificer who is ever building and rebuilding
the outer structure according to his idea. But
that idea—how can we catch it with a lens?
Really it can be overtaken only with our own
Psyche, cognate to it, and able to unite with
it just in its process which is also psychical.
To be sure, Life’s Psyche is immanent in its
material shape, is one with its physical matrix
-asS we see in the cell. The psychosis in the

32 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

present case, therefore is the organic or vital
one, not as it is in itself; when. the Psyche is
its own matter as well as its own form, we
have advanced out of Biology into Psychology
proper. Still, Psychology, when rightly
grasped, is the universal science, which con-
strues itself and all other, namely, the special,
sciences, having in itself the typical and in-
deed genetic form of them all. So Biology
as a special science is not only psychical but
also psychological; in fact it is the immediate
unity of the physical and psychical elements
as already stated; but as science it is ulti-
mately the pure psychosis, seeing and form-
ulating itself in Life’s particular psychosis.

So fundamental is this point for the intel-
ligent study of Nature that we may symbolize
it in two names, one of which has been already
used: Physis,-the Greek word for Nature,
found in numerous English compound words,
and Psyche, the Greek word for Soul, also
well-knowninmany derivatives. Thesetwo per-
sonified existences—we may for the nonce
consider them as Hellenic Gods like Zeus and
Hera—have joint possession of our Olym-
pian Biocosmos,and dwell together in a pecul-
iar marriage, their children being every form
and process of Life and partaking of the fun-
damental traits of both parents. The lowest
vegetable form as well as the highest animate

THE PHYSICAL AND THE PSYCHICAL. 83

organism show the twofold strains of Physis
and Psyche, though in very. different grada-
tions. These twin deities are completely in-
tertwined and intergrown; the smallest mi-
eroscopic cell, yea, the least granule of the
protoplasmic mass of the cell are their com-
mon progeny, and manifest their common
basic character, physical and psychical. Still
this double godhood of the Biocosmos is deep-
ly discriminated within itself, the twins are
very different from each other, quiteopposites
indeed. Psyche is the unseen, the architect-
onic, ultra-microscopical; Physis is the vis-
ible, the extended, the material of the edi-
fice furnished from the outside by the Cos-
mos, which is also in its way psychical. More-
over, of the two divinities, Psyche is the as-
piring, the limit-transcending, also the con-
troller of its mate Physis, who is heavy, ter-
restrial, unwinged, and furnishes all the mi-
crosopy generously to the scientist. It may
be added that Psyche is not altogether con-
tented with her life-lot; she feels herself
clogged by her other part, though also divine;
she longs for separation, when she is com-
pletely self-controlled and autonomous—a
state which she will yet attain, though in all
Nature this remains an-ideal end. Still when
she has gained her autonomy, and separated
from her associate she will feel herself finite,

34 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

6

one-sided in fact, and will have a recurrence
to his presence, for Physis, too, belongs to
the Universe.

Now it is this Psyche which gives the chief,
yea, the insurmountable trouble to the biolo-
gist, always pushing into his horizon, yet al-
ways escaping him when he tries to grip her
or to witness her secrets with that cunning
magnifying eye of his. At present biologi-
cal division seems to be the grand mystery,
springing from some inscrutable source; the
cell divides, the nucleus divides, so does the
nucleolus and the protoplasmic granule, yea,
even the hypothetical biospore (Weissmann),
pangen (De Vries), biogen (Verworn). For
the self-separation of the germinal principle
has to take place: but why and whence?

Of course such an ultimate division in its
source carries us out of Life to its determi-
nant, which is psychical. It is important to
note in this connection, that Biology has be-
gotten its counterpart, Physiological Psychol-
ogy—whose title couples the twin elements
already mentioned, Physis and Psyche. This
new science takes for granted the immediate
unity of the physical and psychical elements
in the total evolution of Life since its first
appearance on our planet. The outer vital
act has always manifested the inner psychic
act, so we behold in this field an experimental

THE PHYSICAL AND.THE PSYCHICAL. 85

Psychology of the laboratory, which is to wit-
ness the internal procedure of Psyche shown
in the external phenomena of Physis. But of
course’ this Physio-psychology cannot be
deemed the true Psychology, but simply pre-
paratory. Still it has its significant place as
the counterpart and necessary concomitant of
Biology, which, as at present carried on, is
quite too much inclined to leave it out and
to treat the vital process as chemical or even
electrical, that is, as diacosmical. The uni-
tary science must be bio-psychical, and has to
be ordered not from the side of Natural
Science but of Psychology. It is really the
Psyche which determines the Physis, though
in experiment, we make the Physis determine
or rather manifest the Psyche.

So in our Biocosmos we shall try to keep
the twin deities together without neglecting
the part of either. Above both of them is
indeed a higher God, the highest, the pamp-
sychical Zeus we may for the occasion call
him, who rules not only Nature, but the total
Universe of which Nature is a part. Or, to
draw upon William Shakespeare in this myth-
ical adumbration, the Ariel and Caliban of
Life belong together in one island, and are
servants, yea complementary elements of the
one supreme ruler of their world, who is Pros-
pero, and who keeps both these refractory

86 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

opposites in submission to his order. Still we
are not to forget that the all-ruling Prospero
is himself a Psyche.

Somebody may here think a question: Is
there a science of this Psyche as such—a
science of the soul (or ego) in itself? Un-
doubtedly, and its processes are what we must
see as determining Nature, yea in the su-
preme glance as being Nature. This is a
stage of the Universal Psyche, which shows
itself as not only determining matter for in-
stance but as being matter—which statement
by the way is no denial of materiality. The
Psyche as individual determines its organism
(or Physis), but as universal it is the Physis
in one of its phases. Evolution manifests
Nature’s effort to overcome its primal es-
trangement, and to return out of separation.
In a different sphere (the Cosmos) Gravita-
tion may be said to show the same striving to
return to the first unity. But when Nature
has transcended its dualism, then it is no
longer Nature, it has gone over into another
sphere.

In the long-protracted struggle of Nature
between Physis and Psyche, which is the vie-
tor? And what is the victory?

THE HUMAN FORM. 37

VE
THe Human Form.

The culmination of Nature’s hierarchy of
shapes is finally embodied in a shape—the
last physical shape, it would seem, and a kind
of resumption and transfiguration of them
all. The life-stuff receives its ultimate in-
corporation, and appears incapable of rising
higher. The Psyche repelled by the refrac-
tory material, is thrown back upon itself, and
starts a new world of its own, that of con-
sciousness. Therewith the drama of Nature
with its long line of shapes—we may even
eall them characters—has concluded.

It is agreed that the highest manifestation
of the Psyche in the Physis is to be seen in
the Human Form. From the beginning’ there
has been a gradual evolution of physical
shapes of life till man has been reached, who
is supposed to be the topmost rung of the
ladder. So we see hanging down the aeons
that marvelous chain of life-forms, every link
of which is different from yet interrelated
with the rest. Moreover every link manifests
some gradation of the psychical revealed in
the physical, till the supreme revelation in
man is attained.

Given an elemental life-stuff or protoplasm

88 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

we may conceive a spirit entering the same
and moulding it into living shapes, as the
fabled Prometheus formed the clay into hu-
man beings. Here, however, he forms all
animate Nature, and vegetal also, into the
vast ladder of organisms from the simple uni-
cellular microbe to the supremely complex
body, in which he finally moulds himself. Such
is the creative artist in creation, shaping him-
self upwards (really none other than our
Psyche) till at last he brings forth the highest
artistic shape, that of himself embodying the
whole line of shapes below him. Embryolo-
gists tell us that the human embryo starts
with the single cel] and evolves through many
lower kinds of animals, probably represent-
ing the entire gamut of animality down
the geologic ages. A German investigator
tells us that he can trace a hundred rem-
nants of inferior creatures in our organism.
It looks as if Psyche, having built the ladder
on which she has ascended step by step, has
drawn it up after her into the highest story
of her human temple.

Something continuous, though invisible,
runs through and holds together this long gal-
lery of separate living shapes—an ever-cre-
ating and advancing continuity, not accessible
to the senses or to the microscope; and just
here the trouble of the scientist comes in,

THE HUMAN FORM. 39

eaused by the presence of that elusive sprite,
Ariel-Psyche, who is properly the connecting
as well as propelling principle, and who has
the habit of being specially active at the im-
portant transitions of evolution.

In this connection the question persists in
always returning: Has our Human Form
then attained its maximum of development?
Is the future man, as long as the sun lasts, to
be quite like us? This would mean that the
outer evolution of animal Forms has practi-
cally come to a close, that the Psyche has
reached her culminant manifestation in the
Physis, that the artist working over the plas-
tie life-stuff, has succeeded in producing his
masterpiece after the labor of at least one
hundred million of years (as some geologists
reckon). Harth’s shape-building Titan, the
Prometheus of Nature has now modeled his
ideal in the Human Form, the prototype of
the highest beauty, and doubtless the visible
presentation of himself, insofar as he can be
moulded into finite limits.

There are many signs, however, that this
outer evolution of the Physis is to be follow-
ed by the inner or pure evolution of the
Psyche, who no longer finds the plasticity of
the life-stuff adequate to her self-expression.
A sort of fixity of the Human Form has taken
place, so that there is little difference be-

40 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

tween the organisms containing the lowest
and highest human intelligence. Such is the
most significant turning point in the entire
stretch of animal evolution: the change from
a physical to a psychical plasticity, which al-
ready began to show itself decisively in the
era of the anthropoids.

In order to get the bearing of this subject,
it is worth while to go back and mark the
most important nodes of the evolutionary as-
cent of living shapes. Very sharply is it rec-
ognized that man has a vertebral column in
common with a long ancestral line down to
the Fishes. We may start with that portion
of the animal kingdom now ealled the Chor-
dates, from their distinctive member known
as the notochord. Of these the vertebrates
are a division whose beginning is usually
placed far back in the Devonian age. But
when did that vertebrated fish begin, or how?
Doubtless in the sea, and man still shows in
his organism traces of having once hved in
the water, where his backbone first started in
its primal simplicity. But the next great
node in the evolution of the vertebrate animal
was when it became a mammal, evolving the
mammary gland specially in the female—
which probably took place in the Carbonif-
erous era, estimated variously from ten to
fifty millions of years ago. Again we have

THE HUMAN FORM. Al

to question: At what place and How? Did
the great transition occur at a single point
in a single family and possibly in a single
species of animals? Or did the Mammal
spring forth cotemporaneously over a vast
area? The greater likelihood is that it, hav-
ing been formed under favorable conditions,
spread from a common center. The recent
excavations of the Fayum in Egypt, indicate
that it must have been at a very early period,
a prolific seat of Mammalian life, possibly
its original breeding source. At any rate
our muscles, our organs and their mutual re-
lations were formed as they now are in those
transformed vertebrates when they became
suck-giving and sucklings—a most weighty
node of life’s evolution, since the mother now
begins to appear, though the female had long
existed already. Another important node
may be mentioned in the development of
animals: the placentata, those which have
evolved a placenta (afterbirth) in connec-
tion with gestation. Again this new organ
belongs to the mother for the reproduction
of the higher order of animals. That is, the
evolution of the completer organs of ma-
ternity seems to be connected with the ad-
vance of the animal world toward man, even
if the placenta (or its first germ) occurs
sporadically in some Invertebrates. The

‘49 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

Marsupials may be taken as the order best
representing this transition, some having a
placenta and some none. They seem at pres-
ent to be on the way to geologic extinction,
being found chiefly in Australia (the opos-
sum is said to be the only American Marsu-
pial). But in the Mesozoic time these ani-
mals were scattered everywhere. The Nile
valley was probably the center of their orig-
inal development and distribution.
Accordingly the hitherto pronounced char-
acteristic of the evolving line of animals was
their formability—the apparently easy re-
sponse of Physis to Psyche. But the change
to a greater rigidity of shape is already no-
ticeable in the higher apes. <A curious fact is
that the zoologist of today has thrown over-
board the order Bimana as including man
alone and apart (this order was first desig-
nated by Blumenbach and retained by Cu-
vier), and on anatomical grounds has classed
man with the apes, monkeys, and lemurs.
That is, man is no longer distinguished as
two-handed (Bimana) in contrast with the
four-handed ape (Quadrumana), for the skel-
etal organisms of both are practically the
same. So both are now put together into
one order called the Primates (an old Lin-
nean designation), in spite of their enormous
difference as to intelligence. In fact, man

THE HUMAN FORM. 43

is said to differ less in body from an ape than
an ape from a monkey. Thus the fixed shape
of the animal kingdom seems to have been
essentially attained, the life-stuff no longer
responding te the formative artist Psyche, or
very slightly. The outer plasticity of the
Human Form appears to have culminated
and rounded itself out to a finish. It should
be here noted that some lower animal shapes
of the far-away past have shown themselves
very persistent, enduring all the changes of
the geologic ages till the present without any
essential change of form. An oft-cited case
is the Brachiopod Lingula, which, starting in
the Cambrian era, is still found today. In
like manner, the common crayfish, whose ori-
gin goes back to the Carboniferous era, re-
tains essentially the same shape it had then,
even with changed habits. So in the line of
animal evolution there have been strains of
dogged persistence of form quite from the
beginnings of life. Other humble cases might
be cited, prophetic, as it were, of the coming
rigidity of the highest physical shapes. But
the main evolutionary stream of animality
has shown the aforesaid plasticity till the
Primates are reached.

Is man ever to attain the point at which
he may be able to control his shape by con-
trolling the conditions which determine it?

44 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION,

Mr. Darwin’s thoughts on the human in-
fluence over Natural Selection in plants and
inferior animals have called up the applica-
tion of the same principle to man himself.
Can he take a conscious part in making his
own body, or cause it to evolve along certain
transcended lines, as the breeder does the
sheep or cow or pigeon? A famous attempt
in this direction was Mr. Galton’s Kugenies
or stirpiculture. Certain communistic socie-
ties have had the same end in view, for in-
stance the Oneida. Can man tap afresh the
fountain of his body’s plasticity, now almost
sealed, and start it to flowing again, but in
obedience to his will? Doubtless,such a work
will be more difficult than that pecuhar con-
trol over the vegetal life-stuff in producing
new forms, which has been attained by Mr.
Burbank in California. There seems, how-
ever, to have been no culmination of plant-
life in a fixed form, like that of animal life
im man.

We come back to consider the rigidity of
the animal shape, which rigidity, it is said,
has gradually increased from the marsupials
ap to the human being, that is, through the
whole line of placentate vertebrates. But
just in this cessation of outer evolution there
rises the inner evolution; corresponding to
the decrease of plasticity in the Physis. is

THE HUMAN FORM. 45
®

the increase of plasticity in the Psyche. In
the almost stationary body of the genus homo
(excepting the brain, which keeps enlarging)
there is an evolutionary line of mental forms
from the lowest Australasian to the highest
Caucasian, comparable to the graded shapes
of the animal kingdom. One biologist has
declared that these variations of intellect in
the one almost unvarying human shape are
relatively greater than the whole gamut of
the vertebrates, from the Fishes to highest
Primates. The proposition has been made to
have a new internal classification by the
standard of mind into species, genera, fam-
ilies, orders. Taking the races of men to-
gether from the lowest to the best, we observe
a line of psychical forms of the greatest va-
riety, in one nearly invariable organism.

It would seem, then, that the Psyche, hav-
ing quite lost its evolutionary power over the
Physis, has turned back upon itself and pro-
poses henceforth to evolve that. In other
words psychical evolution has now evolved
itself in its own right, capping physical evo-
lution, and is evidently going to have a long
eareer in the future. To be sure there is the
racial chasm between the far inferior and the
far superior man, and this chasm in certain
directions seems quite impassable already,
-and is possibly widening. But in the coming

46 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

million of years of psychical development in
the progressive man, what is to be the trend?
It is quite soul-stretching enough to think
of such a prophecy without attempting more
than the faintest foreshadow. The power of
association seems to be the line on which
mental mankind is at present most distinct-
ively evolving.

But before going further, we should glance
at the fact that the Psyche reaches the point
of turning back upon itself, grasping itself
and therefrom unfolding itself. What is that
process but Consciousness, which has now
broken through the shell of the Physis, not
yet into the sunlight but into the earliest cre-
puscule of self-knowledge? That is, the hu-
man go has arrived, hitherto only immanent
in the Physis, implicit, a potentiality evolv-
ing to reality. After the long separation in
Nature the Psyche has come back to itself
in the individual man, has risen to self-aware-
ness, and is a Psychosis with its own inner
self-divison and self-return, no longer a phy-
sically encumbered Psyche. But herewith the
entire realm of Nature is transcended, having
run its course of separation from and in the
Universe (or All-Self), and returned to its
fountain-head, with which it has become one
even in its separation as individual, who is
now psychical man. Or, in the terms already

THE HUMAN FORM. 47

employed, the Psychosis, while preserving it-
self as individual, is united with the Pampsy-
chosis as universal, completing the same in
its triune process of God, Nature and Man,
which constitutes the fulfilled cycle of the
Universe. The primordial fact, therefore, of
human consciousness (or the Ego) is that,
ere it can become, it must share in the uni-
versal or divine consciousness. Man, to know
himself, must at the same time know the All-
Self, though both knowledges be at first very
faint. Our single Ego is not drawn out of
itself merely, but must tap the universal cre-
ative Kgo.

It is fitting to ask when and where this
transition, this breaking-through of con-
sciousness took place, perchance like the chick
out of the egg-shell. No doubt the change
was slow measured even in millenniums. The
antiquity of man is now thrown back into
the Tertiary at least a million of years ago,
as the geologists say. As to locality, Egypt
again looms up as the probable starting-
point. The Nile may well be regarded on
Nature’s side as the father of conscious man.
No other river, no other part of the globe
furnishes so many favorable conditions for
the rise of human Ego. The Nile fed its
early anthropoid children with a hand which
reached from an unknown source like a deity,

43 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

and thus nursed a God-consciousness, inter-
linking it with human consciousness. Then
arose the earhest association of man in an
institution, doubtless the religious, with
which was intimately joined the political in-
stitution. As late as the time of Herodotus
the observant historian could declare that the
Egyptians were still the most religious of
peoples.

Conscious man, therefore, probably spread
out from the Nile, that unique stream-bed of
our terraqueous globe,where he broke through
into his double Self-awareness, not only that
of his own Self, but likewise that of the All-
Self, the two indeed being united in the one
basic process of consciousness. Certainly the
most important node was just that in the
movement of humanity, yea of all animality,
possibly of total Nature as far as our planet
is concerned. We have already noticed that
Egypt was probably the center of the great
Mammalian transition of the Vertebrates,
and even the Vertebrates may have started
there. For that matter the original proto-
plasmic life-stuff in which took place that
primordial transition from the Inorganic to
the Organic, from Unlife to Life, may have
been the Nile slime whose proliferous energy
has been famed from time immemorial. Not
without parallel significance is the fact that

>

THE HUMAN FORM. 49

Egypt was the home of the first human civili-
zation, of the earliest institutional associ-
ation of man, and perchance the breeding-
nest of Life itself. Very suggestive from this
point of view is that old recumbent statue
of the Nile-God still to be seen in a Roman
gallery of sculpture, with all sorts of crea-
tures crawling over and indeed out of his
body, which seems at every point to be
sprouting into living things. Ancient Art
would appear, accordingly, to have grasped
and embodied the divine paternity of Life
in old Father Nile, who was also an object
of worship in this character to his immediate
human children strown along his stream.
“The conscious man is not only aware of
himself but also of his fellow-man as con-
scious, and as participating in the All-Self.
Thus they have something in common, yea
the common universal Self, known to both
equally in the very act of consciousness. Here
is the primal uniting point for man’s asso-
ciation in institutions. Undoubtedly the non-
human animals, even the insects manifest al-
ready an instinctive association for mutual
‘security and co-operation, marvelously fore-
showing conscious association, which, how-
ever, indicates the passage of a grand nodal
epoch. Conscious men first unite in their
common All-Self (Pampsychosis) and build

50Q THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

their earliest institution to Him as their God,
who also indwells their earliest temple, the
abode of the religious institution. From this
germinal source evolves the whole institu-
tional world; even the Family, the sexual
relation of man and woman, rises out of ani-
mality into the institution, at least in the
beginning, through the religious sanction,
which stamps it with its own seal of perma-
nence, unity, and universality.

But what of the future, watchman? Hard
to foretell in any detail; still a lttle with
becoming modesty may be glimpsed. It is
highly probable that man’s development is to
move just on this line of institutional asso-
ciation, with which he dimly started far back
yonder in the twilight of his first conscious-
ness, perchance on the Nile banks. All indi-
viduals, while retaining and unfolding their
individuality to the fullest, are to be social-
ized in a common solidarity of institutions
which are to make possible and to secure the
free growth of the individual to his supreme
spiritual stature. A world-union only can
bring forth the world-man and the world-
people in their full freedom. Already the
statement has been taken up by the popular
mind that man is a social product, the child
of association—the completer the association
the greater the child. In the political insti-

THE HUMAN FORM. — 51

tution we may often hear the aspiration to
federate the nations and even the races.
Seers, poets, and philosophers have long since
expressed it; seemingly the ancient Stoic had
already some such ideal. In general the
proposition seems to hold good that the lower
the man, the people, the race, the less their
power of institutional association, which is
getting to be known as the final test of human
worth and efficiency.

Still the strong counterstroke to this trend
of mankind is not to be omitted. Always
moving with, yet struggling against institu-
tionalism is found its fierce antagonist, anar-
chism, which, however, takes many forms,
from bitter bloody destruction to mild moral
suasion. In literature there has ever been a
loud anti-institutional voice, often that of the
genius of the time, like Byron and Walt Whit-
man for instance, and even Goethe during one
period of his career. And this deeply hostile
spirit has not failed to proceed from the
word to the deed as in the French Revolu-
tion. So the supreme institutional move-
ment of humanity has its opponents within
its own ranks both doing and protesting,
who make up the negative element belonging
to the complete process.

The unity of man through institutional as-
sociation would seem to be the outlook. Not

52 THE BIOCOSMOS—GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

a pantheistical swallowing-up of the individ-
ual is here prefigured, but that co-operant
order which secures the individual in his free
development. And finally to make the bio-
logical connection, it may be stated that even
the simple living cell shows this power of
association. It unites, for instance with its
fellow-cells in order to form the human or-
gan, yea to form the total human organism,
with a marvelous variety of adjustment in
the one little cell-life. But this biological or-
ganization of each individual is to be carried
up into the psychical organization of all these
individuals who thus become one associated
whole, which we may faintly forecast as the
universal institution of the race. Possibly,
then, man may be able to master the cell-or-
ganization of his own framework, and to
mould anew the Human Form consciously.
Still at present the plasticity of the life-
stuff to the indwelling Psyche appears to be
halted for a period of inner development and
higher association. But therewith we have
moved out of the science of Nature into that
of Psychology proper, which, though suc-
ceeding Nature in the order of development
must finally go back to it and organize it
anew, putting it into its ultimate scientific
place in the great totality of all science, psy-
chical and physical. So man may now deem

THE HUMAN FORM. 53

himself to be in the epoch of the plastic
Psyche, whose forms are pouring forth with
dazzling rapidity into the world of reality.
And we may dream of some future return of
the plastic Physis, shaped no longer purely
by the instinctive impulse of Nature, but by
the conscious purpose of Man, who ultimately
needs not to take anything for granted in the
Universe, except the Universe with himself
thrown in.

But such a time is far removed and cannot
much concern us now; so we shall come back
to the theme which lies directly on our path.

THE BIOCOSMOS.

PRELIMINARY.

We now enter the sphere of the Science of
Life whose appropriate designation is known
as Biology. But the ordinary usage of this
term, which is indeed somewhat variable in
meaning, does not fit the conception which we
seek to formulate. So we adopt a cognate
word which also has the merit, for us at least,
of suggesting through its termination its con-
nection with the two correlative stages of
Nature which have preceded it.

If we should translate the word, taken from
the Greek, which is employed as the title of
this book, we would eall it Life’s Cosmos, or
Order. The subject is, therefore, the ordered
Life on this planet, since we are cognizant of
none other. Now this ordered Life must em-
brace not merely the activity of Nature but

(54)

RELATING TO COSMOS AND DIACOSMOS. 55

also of Man in his attempt to construe and
formulate the same—which gives the science
of Nature. It is Man who turns back upon
the physical world and seeks to re-order it ac-
cording to its own genetic principle, and then
to precipitate this into human speech. The
Biocosmos, therefore, to be complete, must
include not Life alone, not the Science of Life
alone, but likewise the Mind making this
Science.

Moreover, in the sweep of total Nature, the
Biocosmos is but one stage, the third, which
has the universal characteristic of turning
back upon itself and thus finishing its cycle.
The animated world has the pervasive trait
that it can be stimulated to some kind of self-
movement, which involves the life-round of
taking up and giving out. The oak develops
the acorn, which in turn becomes the oak pro-
ducing the acorn; the falling leaf whirls to
the source whence it came, the earth, ready
to begin over. More pronounced are the cir-
cuits of the animal body—nervous, cireu-
latory, muscular. Deeply grounded is this
self-returning principle of the Biocosmos as
the third stage of Nature; it is what the mind
is ultimately to see and formulate, and there-
by identify with itself. Its process is psych-
ical, must be so, else the Psyche never could
get it.

56 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

There are accordingly two other stages of
Nature as a whole which are antecedent to
the present one, and which we name in order
Cosmos and Diacosmos. The first is essen-
tially gravitative, and manifests the varied
unification of matter after its equally varied
separation, and thus gives rise to what is gen-
erally known as the mechanical world. The
second stage (Diacosmos) is the separative,
and as the opposite of unity-seeking gravita-
tion may be considered degravitative, or
radio-active in the wide sense of the term.
Already in the Cosmos is to be noticed a
radial force which arises in the case of a rap-
idly rotating body, and flings off an outermost
fragment in opposition to gravitation. This
is the way in which the sun as nebula is sup-
posed to have ejected the planets of the solar
system, which still remains cosmical or me-
chanical, since this ejective or radial energy is
in the end controlled by gravitation. Thus it
is that the planets, after having been thrown
off by the sun, remain in its gravitational
empire and circle about it in their orbits.
From this point of view we are to make a dis-
tinction between a radial (cosmical) move-
ment and a radio-active (diacosmical) move-
ment. An instance of the latter is seen in
Light, which the Sun rays out far beyond his
system, without return apparently, as may

RELATING TO COSMOS AND DIACOSMOS.' 57

be inferred from the luminosity of other dis-
tant suns in starry space. Light, therefore,
illustrates the degravitation of the Diacos-
mos, even it is can be weighed, and separates
and keeps on separating from its solar source
to the extent of its energy. The term Dia-
cosmos embraces what is usually included un-
der Physics and Chemistry in the scientific
nomenclature of to-day.

These, then, are the two stages which pre-_
cede the Biocosmos, and with it form the total
process of the physical world. The Order of
Life (Biocosmos) is, in this view the self-
returning stage of Nature, in which stage the
latter, after its separation, is seeking to get
back to itself. To take an example: Heat, the
diacosmical radiant, falling upon a plant, has
its energy transmuted into the round of
vegetal life, which moves from the burst-
ing seed into root, stem, branch, flower, back
to seed, its starting point. Thus Heat, with
its radiative energy undulating outward to
infinity, is made to wheel about and work in a
eycle through a living thing. Or, using our
general terms, we may say that the Diacosmos
with its radio-activity, is transformed into a
self-returning circular activity through the
Biocosmos whch controls it to the purpose of
hfe. The same is true of Light, Electricity,
Chemism, of water and air—in fine of the

58 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

whole Diacosmical realm. Life, in the uni-
versal view of Nature may be deemed to have
this object: to assimilate to itself and thus to
vitalize the ever-separating radio-active prin-
ciple of the physical world—in other words,
to elevate the Diacosmos into the Biocosmos,
to make air and water, Heat and Light live.
For it is agreed that Life is the higher.
Nevertheless Life is still of Nature and bears
within itself Nature’s dualism. It has not the
completed self-return which belongs to the
Psyche, is not spiritual; it is still corporeal,
in the material body, which, however, must
in its turn be transcended. Still in the Bio-
cosmos every piece of matter, even infinites-
imal, gets endowed with the self-returning
principle inside itself, and so is animate,
organic. Such is the great third stage of
Nature which unites the two other stages.
For the living thing is still eosmical and grav-
itative, as well as diacosmical and radiative;
the bit of vitality falls back to the earth, even
if it lift itself for awhile from the earth. The
original separation of Nature from the All
eannot be overcome by life.

At the start we are to consider the sur-
prising limitation of the Biocosmos compared
with its two correlative spheres. For the
Cosmos as well as the Diacosmos reach out to
an indefinite extent in the physical universe,

LIMITS OF LIFE. 59

are indeed often called infinite; while the Bio-
cosmos we find circumscribed on all sides, in
Space, Time, Quantity. Of this fact we shall
take some notice in detail.

I. In the first place, Life, as it is found on
our globe, exists nowhere else in the Universe,
as far as we know. Under the conditions
given by our earth, it can hardly endure on
any other planet, though some have thought
that Mars may be inhabited. Of course, there
can be imagined a vital activity very different
from ours—an animal heat, for instance,
equal to the heat of the Sun, and the Sun has
been sometimes held to be an animal. Still,
as far as we can at present discover, Life is
a unique terrestrial gift.

In the next place planetary Life regarded as
a whole, is an exceedingly small part—rela-
tively not more than a microscopic point—
of the total amount of matter of our globe.
One scientist has estimated that all living
organisms taken together—the sum total of
Earth-life—to be not more than one ten-
millionth part of the material whole of our
terrestrial sphere. This estimate does not
take into account the physical universe out-
side of the Harth-ball, which is also non-vital,
as far as we can tell. As to quantity, there-
fore, all Life, conceived together in mass, is

60 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

exceedingly small, compared with Unlife or
the inorganic Harth.

In the third place, the thermal limits of ter-
restrial Life are equally striking. Heat, the
diacosmical radiant, plays a most important
part not only in generating the planetary
system as a whole, but also in vitalizing our
globe. Yet the bounds are sharply drawn:
too-much Heat or too little destroys Life,
which, however, thrives on a certain amount
of it. Take the 180 degrees of the Fahren-
heit scale between the freezing and _ boiling
points; the middle 100 degrees constitute the
range of temperature in which the vast ma-
jority of organic beings’ exist. To be sure
there are exceptions both among plants and
animals which transcend the limits each way,
hot and cold; still these exceptions do not get
very far from the border, but hover around
the general range of Life’s temperature—the
before-mentioned hundred degrees (or per-
chance a little more). Here the fact must be
brought out that this heat-seale of terrestrial
vitality is but a small part—a dot as it were—
of the total scale (or spectrum) of thermal
energy in the universe. The heat at the sur-
face of the sun has been variously estimated,
say from 8,000 to 20,000 degrees Centigrade,
and even more; but with any of these meas-
urements we see to what a little speck of a

LIMITS OF LIFE. 61

heat-scale our Earth-life is confined. It may
be added that our sun is by no means the
hottest star, but it is reported by authori-
tative scientists to be about half burnt-out,
having already dissipated the moiety of its
heat-giving energy.

In the fourth place, as regards Time, Life
is and has been confined in what seems im-
passible limits. We at this moment exist be-
cause the Earth is cooling off; once it was too
hot, hereafter it will be too cold, according to
scientific prophecy. Thus Man, and indeed
the total Earth-life is limited at two temporal
boundaries in the Past and the Future, and is
properly moving through a transitional stage
of the globe, from the beginning to the end
of the organic world. It is supposed that this
Earth-life started about one hundred million
years ago at which time our original ter-
restrial fire-ball had cooled down to a point
which not only permitted but possibly gen-
erated the first protoplasmie vital stuff (Pro-
tobioticon) out of which have evolved all the
plants and animals of the geologic ages down
to the present moment. A long period had
elapsed—doubtless several hundred millions
of years—before this epoch of terrestrial
vitality arrived. At what turn of the exons
the Earth-life will expire is of course conjec-
tural; some say another hundred million

62 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

years at least are its due. Thus the heat-
scale of life, after having lasted so long, is to
vanish from the globe according to present
science, which in this way sees the thermal
principle slowly failing, and makes the Dia-
cosmos bring on the death of the Biocosmos.

Here it should be added that the other Dia-
cosmical radiants, Light and Hlectricity, are
quite as necessary to Life as is Heat. In
their case, too, vital action lies between too-
much and too-little. There is a light-scale of
Life, and an electric scale of Life; in both
these cases also comes up the question of the
final extinction of Harth-life with the waning
of the Sun. The problem likewise presents
itself in regard to other solar systems. For
instance, does the same heat-seale of life pre-
vail in the supposed planetary retinue of
Sirius, or of Arcturus? We may be curious
enough about our nearest stellar neighbor,
Alpha Centauri, to ask whether it has in its
train a planet corresponding to our Earth
with a similar Order of Life (Biocosmos) ?
Unanswerable are all such questions, but they
help illustrate the limits of our terrestrial
Life, which, like the Life of the individual,
has its period of birth, bloom, and cessation,
according to the present Diacosmical trend
of science. Still we cannot help interrogat-

LIMITS OF LIFE. 63

ing science herself: will you yet rescue our
Biocosmos from extinction?

Other limits of the Earth-life may be men-
tioned. It can hardly reach above seven miles
or so of the atmospheric envelope of the
olobe; on the other hand, it does not extend
very far below the terrestrial surface; thus
all living things exist on a thin globular shell.
There are also seasonal and zonal bounds
to vital activity upon the Earth’s surface.
Scientists have brought to light a curious
fact about carbon dioxide (carbonic acid gas)
in the air. The animal expels it, the plant
takes it up; too much of it in the atmosphere
destroys the animal, too little of it the plant.
Something similar may be said of other aerial
ingredients in reference to Life, for instance,
oxygen. The vital principle hovers on every
side between too-much and too-little; all Life,
be it of the whole Earth or of one individual,
seems to hang fated between two mortal ex-
tremes.

In some such fashion we have to draw the
limits of our Biocosmos. It is the one living
speck in the whole physical universe, as far
as man’s knowledge goes, and we, each one
of us, are but a little brief speck of that
speck—a microscopic microbe of the All.
Very limited in size and quantity, in place
and time is not only individual existence, but

64 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

the sum total of vitality. Life-is, therefore,
inseparable from its overwhelming negative
counterpart, Death, which bounds it on every
side. Sad, tragic, quite unéndurable would
be the outlook for thought, if mere Life were
the be-all and end-all of our terrestrial career.
But Life is only a stage of Nature, and Na-
ture herself is a stage of the larger and larg-
est process, in which Man _ participates
through mind.

Very small is, then, the Biocosmos, a mere
point in the physical universe; still we have
to think that through this poimt the bound-
less Cosmos as well as the Diacosmos have
to pass in order to attain the end of their
creation, whose outcome is the conscious Self.
This point of Life is a kind of pivot on which
the vast separation of Nature begins to turn
back toward its source; each living indi-
vidual is a little pivot of that sort, and shows
in himself and in many organic functions
(such as the circulation of the blood and
other fluids) the vital round of the totality
of which he is a part.

II. Quite as there is a heat-seale of Life,
so there is a heat-scale of chemical affinities,
above or below which such affinities grow
weak or vanish altogether. You have all seen
the avidity of the metal potassium for oxy-
gen; throw a piece of if into water and it will

EVOLUTION OF CHEMISM. 65

take fire, decomposing the water for the sake
of the oxygen with which it unites in a flame,
and releasing the hydrogen. The experiment
is indeed suggestive, and would seem to fore-
east the time when people will burn water
for heating and illuminating purposes. But
the significant fact in this connection is that
potassium loses its power at very high or
low temperatures; Davy, in 1807, separated
it from potash through electrical heat, where-
by it gave up its affinity; Dewar, who reduced
oxygen to a liquid by cold, has said that potas-
sium ‘‘will float untarnished in liquid oxy-
gen’’—just the opposite of what it will do
when immersed in water at the ordinary tem-
perature of Life. Thus the heat-scale of
affinity in case of potassium has a unique
parallellism with the heat-scale of living
things, as already given; like animals it seems
to take up oxygen between certain degrees of
temperature.

In the present case the behavior of potas-
sium may be taken as typical of Chemism
which shows a striking adjustment to the
heat-scale of terrestrial Life. We cannot yet
tell much about the chemical condition of mat-
ter at very low temperatures; there is no
spectroscope of intense cold such as we have
of the heat and light of the heavenly bodies.
At the life-temperature of the earth—say

66 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

generally between the freezing and the boil-
ing points—Chemism would seem to have a
tendency to the multiplication of its elements,
and to an easy combination of them into com-
pounds. But. when we turn to the intense
heat of the sun and stars, there is the oppo-
site tendency, namely, to prevent compounds
and to reduce the number of chemical ele-
ments. Such a compound as water would
not be tolerated in the sun; it would not sim-
ply be converted into vapor but decomposed
into its elements, oxygen and hydrogen. But
our sun is by no means the hottest star; this
trait, according to the spectroscopic investi-
gations of Lockyer, belongs to two stars in
the constellation Argo, which, however, have
no oxygen. But they do have hydrogen, and
what would seem the earliest form of it, called
proto-hydrogen, with some other fainter, pos-
sibly undeveloped chemical elements (such as
proto-caleium and proto-magnesium), and
also with at least two terrestrially unknown
elements. Now all this suggests the inor-
ganic evolution of the physical universe, espe-
cially on its chemical side. There is the indi-
eation (though not the proof) that the eighty
or more present elements known to chemistry
have been evolved from one primordial sub-
stance of which proto-hydrogen, marked by
the spectroscope, may be the first chemical

EVOLUTION OF CHEMISM. 67

derivative. But what is this primordial sub-
stance? Hther, we would say, though this is
as yet far-off conjecture—ether itself being
still at large, never having been caught and
caged by science. Still it is worth while to
note the intense stress of the time upon this
inorganic evolution as the due counterpart
to organic evolution, which so illumines the
name and work of Darwin, even if he was not
the beginner thereof.

The hydrogen of terrestrial water, which
enters so largely into animal and vegetabie
life, has thus a very hoary ancestry, reach-
ing back seemingly to the first stage of vis-
ible stellar evolution, to the time when our
sun was in the thermal condition of the very
hottest stars of the firmament (the two in
Argo, according to Lockyer, against whose
views, it should be added, there is consider-
able protest). Oxygen appears later, in the
group represented by the star Alnitam, very
faintly at first. These two elements, how-
ever, do not chemically unite on any star
seemingly; not till the earth has been ejected
by the sun and has cooled down toward the
thermal life-seale, does water appear in its
three forms, two of which, the solid and the
vapor, almost mark the bounds of vital exist-
ence. Such is the remote genealogy of the
liquid we thoughtlessly sip; it is the chief

68 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

mediator of life, the solvent of nature, the
purveyor of food, of heat and cold, to plant
and animal. ‘lo be sure all the chemical in-
gredients of our organism show a far-off stel-
lar ancestry; for instance, the lime in our
bones is carried back to the earliest group
of stars (Argonian) in proto-caleium. This
element (calcium) becomes very prominent in
our Sun from which the Harth derived it,
but chiefly if not entirely in the form of com-
pounds, for the pure metal calcium can only
be found in the chemist’s laboratory. Its
affinity for oxygen (like the typical potas-
sium) is so strong that it cannot persist at
the Earth’s life-temperature.

Thus we begin to glimpse the outlines of
the evolution of the chemical elements, appar-
ently from one original element in the far-off
hottest suns of the sky. Not only this, but
there would seem to be also an evolution of
chemical compounds, which a too intense heat
(and probably also cold) render impossibie.
The import of such a fact is very significant
for Life, since both plant and animal are
chemical compounds. ‘To be sure they are
something more. Protoplasm, the so-called
physical basis of life, has a number of com-
pounds, such as phosphates and other salts, as
well as the elements hydrogen, oxygen, car-
bon, nitrogen. These, having been evolved

=
.

EVOLUTION OF CHEMISM. 69

and cooled down to the vital seale of tempera-
ture, are seized and employed by a Power for
its end—we might call it the Demiurge of
Life, the creative principle of the animate
world. For Chemism of itself cannot produce
Vitalism, though it be the latter’s immediate
agent and condition. Nor is the vital spark
the electric spark, yet the former doubtless
employs a good deal of electricity, though
under strict control. _

It should be added that the chemical ele-
ments have something which pushes or di-
rects them in their evolution toward an end.
From the starry depths they may be seen
dimly coming down this way in a kind of pro-
gression one after the other, till they reach
our Harth’s lfe-temperature, when they are
slowly gripped by a new sort of energy, and
from a state of separation and independence
are whelmed into an organic process of whose
round they are the subordinate constituents.
In other words, there is interwound through
all Life a psychic factor, which has an imme-
diate connection with the physical element in
every particle, determining it from within,
and propelling it forward by organic evolu-
tion to the ultimate purpose and end of Life.
But there is also an inorganic evolution (as
above set forth) in which the psychie factor
ts certainly present and active (it is neces-

70 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

sarily implied in every kind of evolution), but
not yet fully internalized in the physical ele-
ment, which it controls, therefore, more from
the outside. Thus we come anew to the chasm
which separates the Inorganic from the Or-
ganic, though we have a new line in the
thought-chain of their unity through their
similar evolution. Still their evolution re-
mains twofold, and will not directly evolve
one into the other.

Necessarily the alert reader is bound to °
ask, Whence comes this psychic factor, which
exercises such sway in both evolutions,
though this sway be different in each case?
That same subtle, yet all-dominating Psyche
we have seen ordering the Cosmos as well as
the Diacosmos, even if somewhat externally.
Indeed all Nature must have this psychical
side by virtue of its primal origination from
the Universe as Self. And the ultimate sci-
ence of Nature must be psychical for the same
reason; moreover our individual Psyche
could otherwise never come into communion
with her, could never understand her action
or penetrate her meaning. Scientific investi-
gation is finally the Psyche of the scientist
trying to sleuth the Psyche of Nature, se-
creted and entangled in its material body.
The one must recognize and indeed identity

EVOLUTION OF CHEMISM. val

the other in alien wrappage, which, however,
as vital becomes an integral part of it.

Thus we may trace an outline of inorganic
evolution antecedent to and preparatory for
organic evolution. It should be stated that
the above exposition follows mainly the lines
of Lockyer, whose methods and results have
been sharply attacked. Doubtless his work
must be corrected and extended; still it seems
to us to be in the right direction.

So in struggling to reach back of our Bio-
cosmos to its sources, we come upon the
chemical elements of it first, which seem
ready and indeed striving to unité in the high-
est act of Life. But of themselves they are
quite powerless for such an end. It is true
that many scientists seek to express the vital
principles in terms of Chemism. But that
simply disintegrates and deadens the living
thing, leaving out its very essence, namely,
Life. What is the link here missing? It is
at this point that the ghostly intruder again
appears, that Psyche, who has so often trou-
bled the scientist, and in her spectral way
makes the transition through Chemism from
Unlife to Life.

So the vast separation of Nature has in the
Biocosmos reached the much-divided realm of
living individuals, everyone of which has
within itself the round of the Psyche,

72 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

though still incorporate in the Physis. Each
separate particle of the Universe now is striv-
ing to be complete within itself, to have the
process of the All as its own, not merely out-
side of itself but also inside. It lives as in-
dividual, be it the microscopic cell or the
total Karth-life, for the latter is but a small
vital speck in the entire Cosmos, as we have
already seen. The limits of Earth-life make
it an individual bounded in Space and Time
like the rest of us, moreover it as living indi-
vidual is also but a transition between
birth and death, a stage of the process of the
universe, the third stage, which is finally to
return as a whole to its cosmical origin.
Geologists tell us that we in our Earth-life
are just now passing out of the last glacial
epoch of the Pleistocene, into a succeeding
epoch of heat or perchance torridity. So the
terrestrial individual has its periods, which,
like man’s, are to be passed through. But
the fact which is here impressed on the mind
is that the Biocosmos is individuated both as
a whole and in its minutest parts, the infinite
divisibility of Nature seeking to turn into
the living act.

Ill. The origin of Life invariably comes
to the front in any thorough-going compre-
hension of the vital principle. Its beginning
in time on our Earth has been quite freely

LIFE’S GENESIS. 73

announced by science, of course, with consid-
erable difference in the number of years.
Then comes the question: How did it begin?
One scientist has suggested that Life was
originally brought to our globe from the out-
side, by a falling meteorite perchance. This
view (if it be not a joke) leaves the vital
starting point where it was. Then there is
the theory of special creation, which need not
trouble us further. Still again rises the view
that the origin of life, the origin of the world,
the origin of man, are inexplicable, unknow-
able; that origin itself is a contradictory con-
ception and had better be dropped from our
thought. Darwin, who wrote the Origin of
Species, particularly disclaims any knowl-
edge of the Origin of Life.

Still the biologist has to treat what he
calls Biogenesis (the genesis of Life), if this
be not indeed the dominating theme of his
science. Two theories have hitherto been held
in this field. The one maintains that every
living thing springs from an_ antecedent
individual which is alive; it requires Life to
beget Life. Such a view always presupposes
the vital individual. Still the mind must
query, how did the primal living thing get
to be? But science on the whole shuns this
question—for many people the really vital

74 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

one—and confines itself to the round of indi-
vidual Life.

The second theory of the Origin of Life
has long been known as Spontaneous or
Equivocal Generation, and now goes under
the scientific name of Abiogenesis. Here the
point is that Life is sometimes generated out
of non-vital matter. Popular belief has not
ceased to cling to spontaneous generation in
certain cases. Decayed meat is still supposed
to breed maggots; and horse-hairs in stag-
nant pools will turn to little snakes—every
farmer-boy has seen them. Formerly many
scientific men, from Aristotle down, held the
same view. But the current began to set in
the other way, especially when Redi (1638)
showed that meat would decay without pro-
ducing maggots if protected from flies and
other insects. The newly discovered micro-
scope revealed a new world of infusoria
which were for a long time deemed to be spon-
taneously generated. But this position was
attacked, and after many experiments oft re-
peated with new precautions, the science of
to-day with a few lingering exceptions doubt-
less has declared itself against Spontaneous
Generation. It has succeeded in sterilizing
quite all supposed microbe-breeding liquids,
chiefly by boiling, as the component proto-
plasm enters usually into its heat-rigor below

LIFE'S GENESIS. "5

the boiling point. Yet there are exceptions:
for instance, the spores of bacteria cannot be
boiled to death, but must be burned—heated
to nearly a hundred degrees (I*.) above the
boiling-point.

Still there is difficulty with this conception
of Biogenesis, and the difficulty springs from
Evolution. If our planet evolved from an
inorganic condition to an organic at some
time in the past when it had cooled down to
a heat-point consistent with Life, as is gen-
erally said by scientists, there must have been
a transition from a pre-vital to a vital stage.
Which, then, has to go to the wall as a uni-
versal principle of Nature, Evolution, or Bio-
genesis? Thus we run back again to the
edge of that chasm between the animate and
inanimate realms which Evolution has not
yet been able fully to pass. The most colossal
step in Nature, that from Matter.to Life, ,
or from the dead to the living, Science with
her experimental proof has not been able to
take. Meanwhile Nature’s laboratory before
our eye is always doing just thus: transform-
ing the inorganic into the organic. It may be
said that in a way the inorganic is forever
seeking to become organic, it wants to live.
The end and scope of Cosmos and Diacosmces
is to be Biocosmos, in which they have their
higher fulfillment.

76 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

The result is that a careful examination of
the scientific mind of today, which holds to
Evolution, will find a lurking unconscious be-
lief in Abiogenesis, notwithstanding the con-
scious denial. Undoubtedly in plant and ani-
mal as individuals all life comes from life,
passes from the living parent to the living
offspring. But the third great form of life,
besides that of Plant and Animal, Earth-
life we may call it, has a decided tendency to
transcend this narrow vital cycle from
individual to individual, and to whelm into
Life’s limited round the quite boundless
realm of Unlife—to transmute the non-vital
element of its being into the vital. The scien-
cies of Plant and Animal (Botany and Zool-
ogy), cling to the Life individual as their
theme, wherein matter is already organized.
But how, whence did they (Plant and Ani-
mal) get organized? The life-principle is
taken for granted in this single bit of earth
called a living thing, and its process set forth
in detail by the science of Biology; still back
of this process works another process, with
the transformation of its inorganic side into
its organic. Most scientists agree that this
had to take place once, according to Evolu-
tion; but it is probably taking place all the
time. Every living thing has to die, has to
go back to the beginning and be dipped again

LIFE’S GENESIS. ia

in the original inorganic element whence it
arose. All organic bodies have this fate of
death and dust hung over them from birth.
Such a transition, the end of the organism, is
but a stage of the larger Earth-life, which is
perpetually individualizing and re-vitalizing
its non-vital part, this being much the greater,
as already said.

Thus we may well affirm both kinds of gen-
eration—inorganic and organic—each within
its sphere. Biogenesis rules inside the round
of the individual Life, of Plant and Animal;
Abiogenesis cannot be eliminated from Life
conceived as a totality, from the Earth-life in
its completeness. All three forms of vital
manifestation—Plant, Animal, Harth—must
be considered in the Biocosmos, which treats
them separately, as well as in their process
together.

It is, therefore, highly improbable that the
transition from Unlife to Life took place
just once (or perchance a few times) on our
Harth many millions of years ago, and that
since then Life has proceeded by its own in-
ner evolution. Science thus seems to be tak-
ing its cue from its old enemy, Theology,
which makes all living things originate pri-
marily by divine fiat. Interesting still, as
showing the aspiration of science, is the at-
tempt of Bastian to reach the true archebiosis

72 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

or the beginning of Life, though Pasteur ex-
perimentally refuted the experiments on
which he based his conclusion. More sugges-
tive still is the story of the Bathybios (or
Deeplife), in whose mazes both Haeckel and
Huxley, most eminent scientists, got entang-
led. Masses of animal matter had been found,
it was claimed, strewn on the bottom of the
ocean at a great depth (more than 2,000 fath-
oms), in beds thirty feet thick. Here then
was supposed to be the original protoplasmic
life-stuff (Protobioticon) in the warm tropi-
cal seas not far from the Canary Islands (so
reported by Haeckel, and at first accepted by
Huxley). Thus the missing link between the
Inorganic and the Organic had been actually
found, and the rejoicing was somewhat simi-
lar to that produced by the discovery of the
more famous missing link between man and
the ape in the fossil Pithecanthropos (ape-
man) of Java. But science now declares that
the Bathybios is a delusion, though the sup-
position lay near that the strange Sargosso
Sea in the midst of the Atlantic (still a mys-
terious phenomenon in a number of ways),
might have been the original source of Karth-
life, which started in the water somewhere,
according to most scientists. Perhaps, too, it
still might be regarded as the reservoir in
which Earth-life, ever passing away, is fed

METHODS OF LIFE’S GENESIS. 79

from Unlife, and thus re-vitalized from its
primordial fountain. Purely speculative are
all such suggestions, and yet they hint the un-
conscious aspiration, so deeply implanted in
science. to get to the sources of Life. Already
in antiquity the conception of an universal
genesis was not unknown; the Greek philoso-
phers threw out flashes of it, and ancient Ho-
mer has suggested animal transformation in
that remarkable symbol called the Old Man
of the Sea, Proteus with his multitudinous
metamorphoses—our latest science saying
that life and man arose in the sea, of which
process Proteus may be imagined as a far-
off prototype. The Roman poet Lucretius
also suggested a common genesis of plant
and animal from the All-Mother, Earth. Thus
the philosophers and poets have uttered long
since the inner bent and aspiration of Nature
which the scientists also reveal in their way
which way is not the by-gone philosophic or
poetic insight, but the modern prosaic indus-
try of investigation.

IV. Another set of terms pretaining to the
Origin of Life, Science has elaborated along
with the conceptions expressed by them. Ev-
erybody has noticed that the living individual
produces its like; the acorn will not produce
a hickory tree, a hen’s ege a turkey, a cut-
ting from a grape-vine a fig. This principle

80 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

has been endowed with a technical name
Homogenesis, the genesis of lke Life from
like—of course through the individual. The
living organism reproduces its species, it is
said; species includes those of a kind. But
the species are many and very diverse, even
if alike in certain characteristics. Evolution,
however, demands that these diverse species
have a unity of origin, and thus clashes with
Homogenesis, quite as we saw its thrust
against Biogenesis. But the collision now is
inside the realm of Life, not of the organic
with the inorganic. Thus Evolution creates
difficulty with what seems an immediate sen-
suous fact: the descent of like Life from like.

On the other hand there has been some be-
lef, both popular and scientific, in the oppo-
site doctrine known in the books as Hetero-
genesis, the genesis of the unlike Life through
the individual: or as is often said, the lke
produces the unlike (an expression not logi-
eally correct). Very wide-spread is the be-
lief that a vegetable may sometimes produce
or become an animal, and the reverse; one
kind of Life is transmutable into another—
quite as we noted people believing that a non-
vital object, like a horse hair, might turn vital
and crawl. In poetry and mythology, with-
out doubt resting on popular faith originally,
is found the doctrine of metamorphosis

METHODS OF LIFE’S GENESIS. Q1

throughout the world. Of course such cred-
ence is directly opposed to science which,
however, has given us the remarkable trans-
formation of the butterfly and other insects
till the return to the first shape. But this is
not Heterogenesis proper, which the scientific
mind on the whole is inclined to deny.

Now the fact is that Life as a whole, the
Earth-life, has brought forth many very di-
verse individuals and species, from the
amceba to man. Indeed, the ever-varying
forms of both Plant and Animal are more
striking than anything else about them. This
diversity of living Nature in the matter of
species is what started Darwin on the road
to find their unity. The Earth-life, accord-
ingly, has been heterogenetic, producing vi-
tal difference in abundant quantity; on the
other hand the individual life of Plant and
Animal is homogenetic, producing the like in
its offshoots. Thus the universal Life in its
productivity shows a character quite opposite
to the individual Life, which the scientist so
fully records.> It must bring forth the unlike
as well as the like, difference as well as same-
ness; in fact, these are two sides of the one
process of total Earth-life which must have
begotten the present variety of Plant and
Animal (Heterogenesis) during its long con-
‘tinuance, and which also includes the repeti-

82 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

tion of the individual life (Homogenesis) of
Nature.

At this point we are to note another stage
of the vital act which hes intermediate be-
tween the foregoing extremes. It is this: the
individual does not produce his like wholly,
but always with some change; no child is quite
the same as the parent, even if similar. The
great diversity of species is brought about
by slight differences ever increasing through
heredity. This is the fact so strongly en-
forced by Darwin in accounting for the origin
of species. The like, therefore, does not pro-
duce the like or the unlike altogether, but
what may be called the similar, which grows
more and more toward the different. No
name has been given by science, as far as we
are aware, to this important kind of genesis,
but we may call it in correspondence with the
other two designations Homoviogenesis, or
genesis through the similar. The term re-
calls the dispute in the early Church regard-
ing the nature of Christ, when the two theo-
logical parties were respectively named
Homoousian and Homoiousian. To the Dar-
winists particularly the conception of Homo-
iogenesis is much more significant than either
of the other two sorts of genesis, being really
the mediating link which connects the unity
and variation of species, and upon which Nat-

METHODS OF LIFES GENESIS. 83

ural Selection does its work. The Earth-life
may be conceived as unfolding from its first
protoplasmic sameness into the latest differ-
entiation through this mediating Homoiogen-
esis, which thus is in its way a bridge be-
tween the beginning and end of vital forms,
especially in the view of Darwin, in whose
mind, however, the Earth-life is more implied
than expressed.

Here we are to note the new phase of Bio-
genesis, which springs from the so-called Doc-
trine of Mutation, or the sudden birth of a
different species from that of the parent.
This theory was some years ago brought to
the notice of the scientific world specially by
Hugo De Vries, a Duteh botanist, who ob-
served a flower, the primrose, bringing forth,
not merely a new individual similar to itself,
but a new species quite distinet from itself.
So Heterogenesis again came to the front,
now supported by the close observation of
the trained scientist. De Vries does not deny
the Darwinian evolution by slight differences,
but grafts upon it his additional principle.
Thus there would seem to be at work in Na-
ture both kinds of generation of species—
the slow and the instantaneous. This brings
a fresh conception into science. It would ap-
pear that every kind of plant and animal may
vary 1n an hitherto unsuspected way, namely,

SA THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

in the speed of specific reproduction. Some
have the power of persisting in about the
same organism for countless geologic ages,
hike the well-known Lingula, which is still
alive from the Devonian Period. On the oth-
er hand there are ancient species which, after
much variation, have died out, seemingly hav-
ing exhausted their elemental life-stuff. The
suggestion rises that there may be construct-
ed a gamut which shows the varying ability
of each plant and animal to reproduce new
species. Still further, it is declared that this
power of specific reproduction has its periods
of rise, culmination, and decline in the life
of each species, vegetal and animal. One is
inclined to think that the generation of an-
other species is a higher and more exhaust-
ing act than the generation of another indi-
vidual simply like the parent. Interesting is
the fact that every living thing bears in it
the tendency to break out the bounds of its
birth, and show a limit-transcending quality;
it will not be confined to the transmitted
forms of its species. To be sure only a few
will burst the barriers and move on a new
line, though probably all possess somewhat
of the same impulse. Those eapable of mak-
ing the transition from the old species and
of reconstructing one of their own may be
deemed the geniuses of the animal and vege-

METHODS OF LIFE'S GENESIS. 85

tal kingdoms. Such deviations from the
normal type have long been known to the
gardener and the breeder who have given
them the popular name of ‘‘sports,’’ which,
from being once deemed mere freaks of Na-
ture, have now become a recognized part of
the theory of the origin of species; so the
genesis of Life has traveled back and taken

“up again Heterogenesis.

e

Here it may be added that man in his orig-
inal separation from his ape-like ancestor has
been considered a ‘‘sport’’ by certain anthro-
pologists. That is, far back somewhere in the
Tertiary Period the common progenitor of
ape and man brought forth a remarkable devi-
ation from his own regular type which then
and there bifurcated for all future time into
the simian and human lines of evolution, as
we see them.today. From this point of view
we have to regard ourselves as having orig-
inated in the ‘‘sport’’ of a pithecoid—a fact
of ancestral as well as scientific interest,
though its truth is questioned.

Truly the time reflects itself not only in the
science of Nature, but in Nature herself, who
is found to possess all our human tendencies,
though in a very remote, implicit way. Even
the plant seems to have its reformers, its bar-
rier-bursters, its prophets leading it out of

-the old into the new. That famous little pri

86 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY

mula of De Vries, a kind of a runaway from
the garden of civilisation or perchance a floral
rebel, has the appearance of having wearied
of the transmitted order, of its inherited spe-
cies and of its narrow social bounds; then,
having somehow gotten the opportunity, it
makes a break for liberty and establishes a
new species which perpetuates itself and thus
gives a peculiar flowery immortality to its
founder who otherwise had died merely a
nameless individual. In like manner we still
hear of the founder of States—Romulus, The-
seus and so on. Thus the work of the Dutch
botanist started a considerable ripple in biol-
ogy and science generally, and if we listen
closely, we may catch an echo of it in the in-
stitutional world of man.

V. Already Earth-hfe has been mentioned
a number of times, and a general conception
of the significance lurking in this compound
word has been pre-supposed in the reader.
Some special remarks upon its meaning may
here be given, to be followed later with a view
of it in the total order of the Biocosmos. It
is correlated with Plant-life and Animal-life,
to which it is joined in the present work as
the third kind of Life, namely Earth-life.
Evidently it signifies the sum total of all ter-
restrial vitality, which, as far as we know, is
the sum total of life as such in the universe.

EARTH-LIFE. 87

Tt includes not only plant and animal, the
microscopic and the macroscopic organisms,
but also what may be called the extra-sensible
life-world; from which the seen life-world
emerges and into which it returns. The tran-
sition, already mentioned, from the Inorganic
to the Organic, and back again, must he in
the realm of Earth-life, and cannot be left out
of a complete view of Biology, to which it has
become as necessary as Ether is to Physics,
though both be speculative. The rise, bloom
and evanishment of all individual hfe take
place in and through the Earth-life, and con-
stitutes its process, or at least a part of the
same. Vegetal and animal forms have their
vital round, appearing and disappearing; but
this vital round is but a stage of a far larger
vital round, that of Earth-life.

In this connection we impinge upon the
question: Is there a given amount of vital
stuff in the universe—a fixed quantity, so
much and no more? This corresponds to the
well-known law of the conservation of energy,
of which one form maybe deemed vital energy.
The Earth-life ean be regarded as the store-
house of all individual life, both arising and
departing—passing from the Inorganic to the
Organic, and from the Organic to the Inor-
ganic, in a ceaseless cycle. In general one
can see the means which the Earth-life takes

88 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

in order to produce its vital round: it indi-
viduates a primal life-stuff (often called pro-
toplasm) into innumerable plants and ani--
mals which still further develop into species,
families, orders, ete. The living individual,
to which, as microscopic cell or as large or-
ganism, Biology has quite confined itself hith-
erto, must be grasped ultimately as but one
stage of the total terrestrial process of Life.
The vast reservoir of vital energy out of
which the living individual of every sort is
born and to which it returns through death,
belongs to Harth-lfe, whose chief struggle is
to transform the overwhelming non-vital
mass of our globe into the vital, which, how-
ever, never gets beyond one part in ten mil-
lion, according to an estimate already cited.
So this fixed quantity of Life-stuff (if it be
fixed), seems always to be fighting for itself,
namely, for Life against Unlife. An eminent
authority in geology has stated that the sum
total of Life in the past geologic ages appears
to be about the same as it is at present, though
its differentiation into plants and animals has
been very different in different periods. If
that be so, it would seem that the Organic
is not gaining on the Inorganic, but barely
holding its own in the battle with the non-
vital world environing it on every side to in-
finity—which drawn battle has been going on

EARTH-LIFE. 89

these hundred million of years. In such a
view the earliest vital mass (Protobioticon)
started with a given amount which it has been
evolving ever since into higher and higher or-
ganisms, measured by a standard which can
only be psychical. The quantity of Life has
then not increased since its first launching as
a little speck in the ocean of its gigantic en-
emy; but its quality has improved instead.
Thus the Earth-life, conceived as all vitality
embodied in a single shape, has had the func-
tion to evolve itself from its primordial stuff
through individuation toward the perfect or-
ganism, which is now considered to be man’s
body.

Such, then, is the outer struggle between
the Organic and the Inorganic in the develop-
ment of Earth-life, but this has also what
may be deemed its inner struggle. Each sin-
gle living thing in the reproduction of itself
must draw on the contents of the reservoir
of Life, which holds a limited quantity ac-
cording to supposition. Well-known is the
ability of a pair of rabbits through propaga-
tion to monopolize the Earth-life of a given
territory, unless vigorously suppressed by
other vital forms, including man. There are
protozoa capable of multiplying at such a
rate that all living existence would turn back
to protozoan unless the increase be stopped

90 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

by destruction. Plants likewise have the
same prolific energy in tapping the general
source of vitality that they seem able to ab-
sorb it if not halted in their reproduction. It
would appear that each living species has the
bent to take the whole Earth-life as its own
for its kind. Moreover, all living things,
plant and animal, must have food, whose sup-
ply is limited; the individuals of the same spe-
cies would at last fall into conflict. over suste-
nance. The surface of the globe would soon
be too small for the exploitation of any vig-
orous species in the matter of propagation
and subsistence.

Thus the Earth-life in its totality has its
bounds; though it includes all individual
plants and animals, it too is an individual.
Within it each living thing arises and passes
away; has it the same destiny? That is again
the problem of the extinction of our globe,
which springs upon us in these scientific days
from many sides. The Harth-life is still going
on, youthful, it may be, but more probably in
its middle age—the only individual of its sort
in the universe. Herein it differs from all veg-
etal and animal existence, and of course from
us. A thousand years of Earth-life is hardly
a day, in comparison with our lives. What
its vital round may be, and how long it will
last, can only be guessed. What, however, is

PARTH-LIFE. 91

manifest, is that the living things on our globe
—plant and animal, protozoa and metazoa—
have a relatively brief duration, and seem
but instruments of a total Life, helping to
bring it forth and then vanishing. Still they
participate in it, though constituting but a
little stream of flickering individualities which
flash in existence for a shorter or longer mo-
ment. The vital stream is indeed a small one,
if we contrast it with the circumambient non-
vital matter through which it seems to be
trickling down Time. Each wee life of a mi-
croscopic ameba is a petty flash of this gen-
eral Earth-life which manifests itself in the
vast complex of living individuals, plant and
animal, and yet is therein an individual itself.

Accordingly it is said that the Earth with
all its Life must pass away, like one of its
own brief micro-organisms, when its round
is completed. Thus it is merely repeating its
own history in the small and smallest of its
living individuals, each of which foreshadows
its fate, for it, too, must vanish. The cycle
of our Life from birth to demise is, therefore,
the impress of the Farth-life upon us, and
upon every object alive. The vital spark
which comes from it is endowed with death
as well as with birth, both of which are like-
wise its own. It reproduces itself in its chil-
dren. To be sure this universal individual,

92 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

Karth-lfe, has not vet gone through its one
eyele. A tick on the clock of the universe is
an easy million of vears; the period of Karth-
life, we are told, must be many myriads of
millenniums. And still the end must come in
Time.

If this Karth-life, like one of its minutest
microbes, goes through the process of birth
and cessation, 1s it not itself but one evanes-
cent individual of the All-Life (Pambiosis) ?
Some such conception rises and has been held,
but it lies beyond all proof and stretches the
most elastic limits of thinking. It is conceiv-
able that many millions of planets lke ours
are dead and buried throughout the dark
eraveyard of space; indeed, whole suns and
their systems are extinct, having lived their
day, and are awaiting resurrection into light
and life. So some astronomers have reported
to us, fortifying hope. Still we have at last
to take the Earth-life as individual in the to-
tal universe, a drop, as it were, in the vast
reservoir; but that there is another drop of
life anywhere in the cosmical spaces we do
not know. It is natural to suppose that ours
is not the sole vital appearance in all cre-
ation, or that our conditions of life are not
the only ones possible. For instance, a wholly
different heat-seale from our hundred de-
erees is conceivable; indeed, every hundred

PARTH-LIFE. 93

degrees of the heat-scale of the universe—
possibly a hundred thousand degrees—can
have its corresponding life, which everywhere
may be the movement from the Inorganic,
through the Organic to the Psychic, the latter
being the outcome and end of Nature.

Our Earth-life, accordingly, is for us the all-
embracing Life, its final real circumscription ;
but ideally we may regard it as a mere cell
of the universal Life, no more comparatively
than one of its brief unicellular organisms, a
microbe of the living Universe. We should
emphasize, however, that each individual life,
minute as it may be, has in it the total process
of the Earth-life, which also begins, flourishes
and passes away. Again we have to re-think
and re-apply the thought that every. part of a
Whole, in order to be such a part, must have
in it the movement of that Whole. Earth-
life is, therefore, a needed element of the Bio-
cosmos, which is to include the totality of Life.
We may here state that science has made
little use of the conception of Earth-life,
though it would seem to be the necessary com-
plement of individual life, vegetal and animal.
These two vital forms have filled the horizon
of the biologist. And the past products of
the Earth in its long evolution, organic and
inorganic, have been set forth in the science
of Geology, which ought to reveal to us not

94 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

merely a dead, but a living Earth-life in its
process ever going’ on. Thus Botany and
Zoology, both of them essentially sciences of
the manifold individual Life, would find their
fulfillment in the Harth-lhfe, the one great
living organism creative of all the rest—the
one universal living individual we may con-
sider it relatively, even if it too must perish
like its own ephemeral butterfly.

Evidently Life’s struggle for existence,
taken in all its phases, embraces much more
than the wrestle of individual with individual
for existence. Let us note the cases. (1)
There is first the struggle of Harth-life itself
with the overwhelming mass of Harth’s non-
vital matter, the never-ending conflict be-
tween the Organic and Inorganic, whereby
the latter is in a wee point transformed into
the former. (2) Then there is the struggle
of each species seemingly for the whole of
this Harth-life, whereby it falls into conflict
with other species. (3) Finally, comes the
struggle of individual with individual of the
same species for their common means of sub-
sistence, whereby results Natural Selection.
It is this last phase of Life’s total struggle
for existence which has been emphasized by
Darwin. But the first phase, that of Karth-
life itself struggling with its gigantic enemy,
is what presupposes and includes all the rest.

CELL-LIFE. 95

And when Harth-life has run its course, all
other kinds of Life will pass away with it, as
it embraces them all. Great as it is compared
to our organisms, it is very small compared
to the universe—a little living cell of the All,
we may deem it, yet genetic of our micro-
scopic cells. |
VI. We have touched here the conception
of the cell, looking in the other direction, that
is, from the large to the small, and not from
the small to the large. Cell-life with its mi-
nuteness is in striking contrast to Earth-life
with its magnitude, at least for us; for we
naturally place ourselves between the two,
gazing both ways in wonder. The individual
man is ever pushing toward the infinite, or
rather toward the two infinites, as we may
eall them for the nonce, the infinitely large
and the infinitely little~he being a kind of
mean between the two extremes. In the Cos-
mos we have seen how he has traveled from
sun to star, from the visible to the remote
invisible nebula; while in the Diacosmos we
have observed him moving in the reverse way,
toward the small and smallest of the material
world—toward the molecule, atom, electron,
perchance the etherion. But now in the Bio-
cosmos we have come upon its minutest in-
dividuation, the cell, which bears within itself
the pivotal principle of life. It is seen with

06 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

the microscope, which is verily the telescope
reversed, and revealing to us a wholly new
world of living individuals. For the cell has
hfe—that is its fundamental category.

The word cell is not the best one for the
thing. This is not a hollow chamber or cup
holding a fluid in a wall or enclosure; at least
such is not its general character—a natural
conception of it from its name. .On the con-
trary the cell must be grasped in its simplest
form as a mass, which tends to the globular
when it is single, as in a unicellular plant.
Still it is capable of assuming many forms.
both by itself (as in case of the ameeba), and
by association with other cells. Sometimes,
indeed, this mass hollows itself out, and builds
for itself also a pretty firm wall (found in
plants more than in animals) ; then it becomes
literally cellular, though this form. as before
said, is not by any means the prevailing one.
Probably the earliest observer saw such cells
first, and gave the name which is now too
strongly intrenched in the science to be ex-
pelled.

The next point in the conception of the cell
is to consider how this, its mass, is organ-
ized. It shows the following main divisions:
first, the central principle of it is the so-called
nucleus, a rounded definite shape, long ago
recognized by Fontana (1781), but without

CELL-LIFE. 97

seeing its significance, which still seems to be
erowing. The second fact here is that this
nucleus is in a state of self-separation; it ap-
pears always in the process of giving off
other nuclei, or nucleoli, of reproducing itself
by a sort of fissiparism or segmentation. The
third important fact about the cell is its mass
of formative material called protoplasm,
which embosoms the nucleus and its process.
This protoplasmic mass is described as a vis-
cous, somewhat transparent substance, often
quite homogeneous, but oftener granulated or
even reticulated. The part that it plays is
not yet settled; but it may be deemed the en-
vironing element or body which sustains the
nucleus, stimulating and possibly evolving its
process. Whence it comes, or how produced
is not known; even whether it be organic is a
question among biologists. Doubtless it is
an early stage (though not the earliest) of
that transitional bridge which reaches over
from the Inorganic to the Organic—which
bridge has not yet been traversed by science,
yea not yet been reached probably. Still it
is worth while to notice that in this proto-
plasmic mass external to the nucleus are float-
ing numerous small bodies, passive, seemingly
non-vital, probably rejected waste from the
laboratory of Nature, which prepares this
_protoplasm, and which lies as yet beyond the

98 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

microscope or any chemical re-action. In-
deed, there is no little discussion among biol-
ogists whether this protoplasmic mass should
be called living, though it is hardly dead or
inorganic. Various intermediate terms have
been suggested in order to avoid the difficulty,
which predicates something living before life;
for hfe is regarded as belonging to the cell-
organism as a whole and not to any of its
parts or members, least of all to the most ex-
ternal part or member. Yet if the cell as a
whole be alive, each member of it must share
in such life, in order to be a member (as our
hand or finger is alive till cut off).

But amid all these questions we come back
to the main process of the cell, which, accord-
ing to our conception, should start with the
nucleus as central and germinal, then pass
to its self-separation or genetic act, which is
finally completed by the protoplasm or body.
Thus the process of cell-life is a continual
generation of itself; its function and, seem-
ingly, its sole function is a ceaseless repro-
duction of its kind, and so it is the prototype
of the genetic continuity of all living things
through the species. The individual cell be-
gets the individual cell, and just that is its
business—verily the primal business of life,
which is to keep itself alive and going. The
plant and animal, each of which is a large

CELL-LIFE. 99

number of associated cells, will repeat as a
whole, in its generative process what this, its
smallest vital constituent is doing, undoubt-
edly with great variety. Still this cell-indi-
vidual is its prototypal unit, not simply ideal
but actual and visible, yea creative; we may
deem it the miniature pattern after which
Creation works in small and large, reproduc-
ing it not only in the microscopic cell itself,
but in the hugest of all animals now known
or that have ever been known among the mon-
sters of the geologic ages, the whale measur-
ing eighty feet and more in length. Its bil-
lions of cells are doing, each in its own life-
process, quite what it as total animal is doing.

Accordingly in the cell we observe individ-
ual generation, birth, maturity, age and
death. It goes the round of life from start
to finish; indeed, just that is what makes it
alive. It has the primordial vital process, at
least as far as our present knowledge ex-
tends, even if the cell has been supposed to
consist of still more minute cellules beyond
the reach of the most powerful microscope—
a conjecture, by the way, not at all improb-
able. But just now the cell may well be
deemed the pivot upon which the Biocosmos
turns. It is the germinal point of every liv-
ing thing in the universe; it is the ultimate
vital constituent, out of which all other forms

100 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

of life, vegetable and animal, are associated.
It is no wonder, then, that the biologist has
come to oecupy himself with the cell; he is
probing to reach the original source of him-
self, as this living individual, and therewith
of all humanity, yea of all life. But if he
should reach a new, more elemental shape be-
yond the cell, would that be the end of his
search? It may well be doubted, for he has
not yet attained the infinitely small, he has
not yet come to the end of an infinite series
—nor will he. He has not yet passed the
bridge between the Inorganic and the Or-
ganic—the real object of his hot pursuit, even
if unconscious. Meanwhile the scientist will
precipitate for us a great deal of most valu-
able knowledge, his very science, indeed,
through his endeavor to scrutinize the In-
serutable—which, of course, he never will. It
is no abuse of him—vwe intend it as a due rec-
ognition of his worth—that he does not, in the
long run, know what he is about. Well, who
does? Nature is not self-conscious, in fact,
ends where self-consciousness begins. The
scientist becomes one with what he works in,
and shares in its deepest character; he is un-
aware of his ultimate end, and, so is Nature,
though both are working for it with all their
might. The scientist is unconsciously teleo-
logic, as well as Nature, though he often re-

=r

_CELL-LIFE. 101

pels the teleologic view with heat, even with
bitterness. But we hold it to be his chief ex-
eellence that he does not altogether know
what he is about; if he did he would not be
the true scientist; he could not be the desper-
ate investigator, if he saw that what he was
really investigating was the Uninvestigable
(called by Goethe Das Unerforschliche). Dar-
win revealed Evolution with unparalleled in-
dustry and power; but he was unwittingly
evolving Darwin as the grand end of evolu-
tion. He saw, indeed, Evolution, but he was
unconscious of what he had really evolved,
namely, the evolver of evolution as the crown
and summit of the whole evolutionary pro-
cess. Quite unknown to himself he had
evolved an evolution which could go back to
the start as well as forward to the finish. But
consciously he clung to his limit and so he
could, as pure scientist, watch and formulate
Evolution proper.

Another aspect of cell-life may be men-
tioned in this connection. As the cell per-
forms the primal generative act of life, here-
dity must be transmitted through it from par-
ent to child. All the inheritances of the race,
it would seem, have to make this cellular pass-
age. All the species of the earth, plant and
animal, have their unitary germ in this wee
protoplasmic dot, out of which unfolds the

102 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

entire differentiation of life on the planet.
The past, with its accumulated stores, vital
and mental, has to be put through this genetic
point in order to be perpetuated and recreat-
ed. Thought, civilisation, morals and institu-
tions, whose bearer is man, have somehow to
make the trip with him through the cell to
reach their destination in the future. The re-
sult is that what may be called cellular here-
dity has the dominant stress in the biology of
today. Its practical application is of far-
reaching consequence, especially in the social
order; with it is connected Galton’s new sci-
ence of Eugenics, suggesting race-culture, as
well as race-suicide.

Indeed, organic evolution has been largely
turned into cellular evolution. Darwin had
little to do with the cell; it was evidently alien
to him, though the chief facts of its structure
were known in his time. For instance, Vir-
chow’s great book on Cellular Pathology,
epoch-making in this field, appeared contem-
poraneously with Darwin’s Origin of Species.
It was, however, the German biologist Weiss-
mann who had the chief hand in giving this
bent to his science, through his doctrine of
germinal continuity, which regards heredity
proper to be transmitted by the germ-cells
and not by the body-cells. The chief contribu-
tion of Virchow is contained in his famous

CELL-LIFE. 103

aphorism that every cell springs from a cell,
from its like, and not from something inor-
ganic or non-cellular. Of course this corre-
sponds to another famous aphorism usually
attributed to Haller: All life comes of life,
or, in the Latin, omne vivum ex vivo. Similar
is the expression and also the thought when
applied to the ege (ex ovo). Now Virchow
has likewise Latinized his conception aphor-
istically in the phrase, Omnis cellula e cellula,
which has had a marvelous currency, stream-
ing through all biological literature since it.
was uttered. Great, truly, is the might of the
aphorism when rightly forged; this equals,
perchance, in influence all the rest of Vir-
chow’s volumes, and he has not a few. Still
the same difficulty rises here which we found
in Biogenesis; it brings us up to that same
old chasm between the Inorganic and the Or-
ganic, and bids us look into it, perchance a
little more deeply and despairinely, and then
leaves us. For outside the cell, which is usu-
ally declared to be the first living thing by the
biologists, must be a stage preparatory to life,
which cannot be the protoplasm, since this
hes still inside the cell, and is a necessary con-
stituent of it. So Virchow’s aphorism Omnis
cellula e cellula, projects a pre-cellular mate-
rial of life (Protobioticon), which is, indeed,

104 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

hypothetical, but just for that reason, the
grand object of scientific research.

In a general way we may, therefore, affirm
that the present trend of biology, dealing, as
it does, so exclusively with the cell, is micro-
organic, while previously it had been largely
macro-organic, since it concerned itself about
the larger forms and organs of plants and
animals, which, however, are composites of
minuter units. These vital composites have
accordingly, been dissolved, somewhat like
chemical compounds, into their original inde-
composable elements, wherein lies an analogy
of the cell to the atom, though the latter is
still beyond the microscope. But the hitherto
irreducible atom is just now being reduced to
its new constituents, in the opinion of scien-
tists; it is passing through a process of disin-
tegration, and the cell will doubtless move in
the same direction, in accord with the ten-
dency of the present scientific mind. Indeed,
certain biologists have already struck such a
note.

So a certain analogy can be traced between
the atom as the ultimate unit of chemism (if
it be ultimate), and the cell as the ultimate
unit of vitalism (if it be ultimate). More-
over their destiny seems to have a similar out-
look in the scientific trend of the time—both
apparently marching toward some form of

.

CELL-LIFE. 105

disintegration. Still they are very different,
utterly dissociated from each other; between
them yawns again that chasm dividing the In-
organic and the Organic; the atomic limit is
drawn: impassable, as yet, on one side of this
deepest rift of Nature, the vital limit stands
immovable on the other. Science has long at-
tempted to fly across, through the air, on the
wings of some cunningly constructed hypoth-
esis, but her aeroplane usually capsizes dur-
ing the flight and drops into the abyss, lke
that ancient craft of ambitious Icarus soar-
ing sunward. Still just that achievement re-
mains the ideal end of the science.

Finally there remains to be emphasized
that marvelous power of the cell which is
sometimes called its architectural impulse,
but which we prefer to think of under the
name of association. The cell combines with
its fellow-cells and produces the different or-
gans of the body, changing itself in accord
with its new organic function. Thus all the
diversities of our organism unfold out of the
cell, which seems to possess this inner power
of crganizing itself into associated wholes of
many sorts. Again and again one is remind-
ed of the higher institutional association of
man. But of this more will be said later.
. Here we may add that such associative power
in the cell can only be ascribed to the unseen

106 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

might of the Psyche, which is implanted in
the living Physis, developing and directing
the same toward its purpose along the line
of evolutionary shapes. Accordingly we run
again upon that subtle psychical strain which
permeates all Nature, especially all living
Nature, and interconnects the same amid all
its separate multiplicity of forms—a thread
of light (seen only by the unifying mind, how-
ever) stringing the microscopic cell together
with the highest organism. Of this psychical
_activity we may extend our glance a little.
VII. In the account of the process of the
cell previously given, three stages were out-
lined in a certain order. Now this division
with its order is not an accidental thing, is
not somewhat simply picked up by the way.
On the contrary, it has its deep correspon-
dence with the Self which grasps it and with
the Universe, of which it is an integral part,
even if small, and which is at last its creative
source. To repeat the process of the cell in
brief: first comes the nucleus (not the outer
protoplasmie mass, which biological books
usually start with), then the separation of
this nucleus within itself into new centers,
which in the third place divide also the proto-
plasmic mass and thus become embodied in it
as new-born cells. Given the cell as imme-
diate, it is forever separating itself, and re-

THE PSYCHICAL ELEMENT. 107

turning to itself as a fresh individual. In
this process of ever-recurrent individuation,
or of self-reproduction, it exists wholly. The
cell must be creative, yea self-creative, im-
aging therein the Creator, undoubtedly at a
considerable distance. So, if we ask whence
comes this self-creative power of the cell, we
have to trace it back primarily to the self-
creative All, of which the cell is both a mani-
festation and a constituent part, even in its
far-off minuteness. Indeed, to be a member of
the Whole, it must in some way reflect that
Whole of which it is a member.

Accordingly one has to affirm that this pro-
cess of the cell is not only physical but psy-
chical; its movement is in and with matter,
but its ordering principle is the Self. Not
sunply my or your Self, but the Self, the All-
Self, if one may so say. To be sure I and you
must identify the process of the cell with our
own ultimate process, that of our Ego; all
true knowledge is, indeed, to investigate the
process of the thing with the process of
thought. I can never understand the cell till
I make it truly mine—appropriate it inter-
nally; which appropriation takes place when
I fetch up, assimilate, and unite the essence
of the cell with my own essence, proclaiming
both of us as one in all our difference. Thus
there is a bond conjoming us in our cognition,

108 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

yea creating us both, namely, the cell and me,
who are coupled finally in the act of the Cre-
ator, or the Universal Ego (Pampsychosis).

Or we may say that the process of the cell
is an impress upon it from the outside, verily,
from above, and I bear the same’ impress, to
be sure, in a different and doubtless higher
form; that is, I bear it as conscious of itself.
Still further that cell-process is not merely an
image of the All-process, but is created by it,
yea, is created by it creative. So the Creator
imparts his own creativity to his Creation, of
which the cell with its process is not only an
instance, but an integral part. When it is
asked whence comes that power of self-divi-
sion in the nucleus of the cell the answer may
be given that such is the fact and that science
inquires no further, content with observing
and describing correctly the phenomena. Or
it may be said that such a question lies not
only beyond the province of science, but be-
yond the limits of our intelligence, being in
the realm of the Unknowable. Still, man can-
not be quieted by such a makeshift, the search
for the creative source of the cell and of all
things, man included, continues unremitting-
ly. Millionfold are the details yet to be dis-
covered; but we can now say, as was long
since said, though in a very general way, that
the creativity of the part springs from the

THE PSYCHICAL ELEMENT. 109

Whole, that the perpetual self-reproduction
or self-regeneration of the individual is trans-
mitted from the ever-creating activity of the
Universe itself. Germinal continuity has be-
come the leading concept of today’s biology,
chiefly through the work of Weissmann; that
indeed unconsciously calls for, even it does
not yet glimpse, the universal origin, the pri-
mordial source of this germinal continuity
which courses as yet only through the genetic
cells of individuals. The universally creative
reservoir—in fact, just the Universe—is wait-
ing to be tapped at its fountain-head by sci-
ence, which for the most part cries out that
the thing can never be done, in that famous
shout of Du Bois Reymond: ignoramus et ig-
norabimus.

Coming back to our cell-process again, we
may now give to it a name which designates
not oily its formal order, but its origin as
well as its genetic character. It is a Psycho-
sis, a psychical process as well as a physical.
The first is more the formative principle, the
second more the material; each inheres in the
other inseparably throughout cell-life and the
entire Biocosmos. The psychical side is the
mysterious supersensible one to the biologist,
which he cannot reach with his microscope or
other detectives, chemical and mechanical;
still it is present and working, yea, in control.

110 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

He often notes its activity as the architectonic
principle of the cell, the hidden builder or
demiurge thereof; but its origin as well as
its character lie in the dark chaos outside of
his world, branded often as useless, if not for-
bidden themes of thought. Still even he can-
not help pursuing them, if only to damn them.

It may well be here added that the fighting
biologist has somewhat receded into the back-
ground since the days of Huxley, who took
such delight in exhibiting his expert swords-
manship of speech against his antagonists, es-
pecially the Anglican clergy. Even Tyndall,
naturally a gentle, lovable soul welters in a
good deal of controversy with his peculiar
devil, whom he often genially larrups but can-
not quite put down. Meanwhile he gives us
much important knowledge in a very agree-
able way. Some of his scientific writings rise
into the realm of Literature through their
beautiful, or at least, very neat-fitting form.
Huxley, on the other hand, is grandly pugna-
cious, when the full power is on, which the
sight of a bishop seemingly ean excite in him;
that famous speech of his on The Physical
Basis of Life—for it is an oration in spirit
and expression—smites at times with the ring
of Thor’s hammer, through which we can
often hear the undertone of self-contradic-
tion; it has in passages a furious Demosthe-

THE PSYCHICAL ELEMENT. ilalal

nic utterance which, however, on close inspec-
tion is worm-holed through and through by
a defective logic. Still today, though more
than forty years old, as a sample of the Lit-
erature of Science it remains of the greatest.
In this connection the remark is due that the
band of scientists contemporary with Darwin
show a sense of style unusual with their pro-
fession; the result is that they have added to
Literature proper a new department, repre-
sented before their time only by a few sparse
and humble works (like White’s History of
Selborne). Not a little of the power of Dar-
win himself springs from his feeling for the
right word in the right place; he has for his
work the appropriate literary gift which is
always felt by the reader. The beauty-winged
words of these writers has borne science to
the hearts of the people where it must finally
have lodgment, if it is to be effective and ful-
filits highest purpose. Scientific thought and
speech in their less technical forms have be-
come implanted in the consciousness of the
folk and have intrenched themselves as a spe-
cial branch in the belles-lettres of the age.
This must be deemed a very significant fact,
and gives us a glimpse of a fresh trend of the
time-spirit. The scientific thought-world is
thus a necessary element or strand of the
whole man, but it must not claim total and

18 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

exclusive possession of his spiritual estate
(which it has been sometimes inclined to do.)

Coming back to the’ process of the cell, we
observe that it has already within itself the
process of the Ego, which it is to unfold
through a long line of evolutionary shapes.
of Nature till just that process of the Ego
becomes explicit, self-active, having itself as
its own content—consciousness. Thus it
emerges from the Physis, creates and re-cre-
ates its own form at will, is indeed itself sim-
ple will. The purposive end of all Life ac-
cordingly—Plant-life, Animal-life, HEarth-
life—is the evolution of the pure Psyche or
Kgo. Herein we may note that the generative
process is wholly in the individual, is in fact
his mind, producing its other in itself and as
a part of its total activity—self-separating
and self-returning. So it is our Self which
can now separate from the organism, turn
back and look at the same. But when such a
Self has evolved not only to the point that it
ean behold its own individuated form, but the
whole ladder of forms evolving up to its own
from the cell, then we have reached the stage
of a Darwin, not merely as this individual
consciousness, but as the consciousness of his
century.

Moreover such an act we are to conceive
as the supreme overreaching act of the Bicos-

DIVISIONS OF THE BIOCOSMOS. 113

mos, its very consciousness, at least in its
present attainment. Doubtless it will evolve
to a new stage in the future.

VIII. And now before setting out on our
special journey, we have to peer over the com-
ing territory in a little map on which we may
mark down the main stages. As the Biocos-
mos signifies the Order of Life, so we may
well ask for a glimpse of this ordering of the
subject at the start. Already we have noted
the place of the Bicosmos in the total Order
of Nature, of which it is the third supreme
member or constituent, along with the Cos-
mos and Diocosmos. But within itself, as here
set forth, it shows three leading divisions,
which form its process as a whole and which
must be conceived ultimately as psychical.
These may be in general designated briefly as
follows:

(I.) Tse Cettuzar Brocosmos: which, in
the present state of biological science we have
put first, as the cell is deemed the primal uni-
tary basis of Life. The immediate or ele-
mental stage of the total Biocosmos is, accord-
ingly, the cellular; in the language of recent
biology, the cell is the ultimate unit of organic
Life. Still the cell has its own inner process
of separation and restoration, as we have al-
ready seen, even if the biologist is seeking
among its various divisions for something

114 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMIN ARY.

more ultimate. And there is somethng more
ultimate, controlling it in various ways, but
hardy visible by the microscope. Just this
cell-division and on the other hand cell-organ-
isation reveal the work of a determining en-
ergy only palpable in its results. The highest
act of the Cellular Bicosmos is the organic as-
sociation of cells, which leads to the next
stage.

-(II.) THe ParticuLarizeED BrocosMos:
that is, the universal cell-life of the Biocos-
mos is now to be seen particularizing itself
into its three leading forms, Plant-life, Ani-
mal-life and Earth-life. Each of these falls
into its own special line of evolution, which
is still further divided into many successive
shapes or individuals, from low to high in
gerade, and from first to last in time. Thus
the present is the vast realm of separated
Life, of the Biocosmos particularized down
to the living individual, which may be even a
cell, our previous starting-point. But the
emphasis is here upon the association of
cells which become organized into many
forms, of which the three leading ones we
have noted. Especially the Earth-life has a
long history which leads up to the self-return-
ing EHgo—wherewith a new stage of the Bio-
cosmos begins to be manifested.

(III.) THe Hisroricay Brocosmos: this is

DIVISIONS OF THR BIOCOSMOS. 115

the product of a retrospective power which
has arisen through Nature and is looking
back at her, unfolding her stages which are
also its own. Thus the self-returning Self (or
Kgo), in accord with its deepest character,
returns upon itself, and sets forth its life-
history. Without this rounding-out in its
process the Biocosmos would not be complete.
The Psyche, hitherto implicit, has now become
explicit, and is to unfold its own evolution
through all Life up to this final retrogressive
act, which may for the present be deemed its
culmination. The movement is indeed psy-
chical, though its content is still Nature (or
the Physis), but not merely in her individual
shapes; these are now united in one universal
sweep from the lowest organism to the high-
est, forming an interconnected whole which
ends in man with the aforesaid psychical
power. Such is essentially the Darwin deed:
the Psyche grappling the Physis in the lat-
ter’s entirety, which is simply its own evolu-
tion up to this self-returning historic act of
itself.

Such are some preliminary hints of the
scope of the Biocosmos, which indeed seems
small compared to the extent of the Cosmos
and Diacosmos. Still the goal and consum-
mation of the latter must be deemed this one
little vital dot in the universe, though there

116 THE BIOCOSMOS—PRELIMINARY.

may be others which we know not of. Even
the mass of the Harth-ball is far greater than
the thin green film of Life which enwraps it
on the outside. Relatively all living exist-
ence is but a tiny moth flitting its brief mo-
ment in the light and warmth of the Sun.
Still just this tiny moth is the purposive end
toward which all Nature moves through its
colossal magnitudes and mighty revolutions,
and which is its fulfilment and completion.
For the Biocosmos is the conclusion of Na-
ture, thus rounding-out the cosmical and dia-
cosmical stages, and evolving up to man, who
looks back and reproduces in thought and
word his own evolution. This is what we are
now to follow out in our exposition.

Wart Hirst.

THe Cetuuuar Brocosmos.

So we shall designate the first and most
immediate part or stage of the total Bio-
cosmos. The cell is the primordial form of
Life, its first appearance to the senses; it is,
therefore, the beginning. Already we have
given a brief statement of its process; here
the fact must be noted that the cell has risen
to be the leading principle in the science of
Life. Biology at present chiefly concerns it-
self wlth the cell, which has become not sim-
ply an object of theoretical investigation, but
has deeply entered, if not quite usurped the
practical field of the sciences of disease and
health. Medicinerhas been transformed in re-
cent years by the knowledge and treatment

(117)

118 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

of the cell. The physician in these days has
to be something of a cellular biologist, even
if he does not specialize on given lines (like
the bacteriologist). The complete view of
the Science of Life must include the Sci-
ence of Disease (Pathology, Nosology), and
the Science of Health (Hygiology or Hy-
gienics), as well as the Science of the Cell
(now sometimes called Cytology, but far
oftener Biology which in this narrow sense is
properly a misnomer). All these special de-
partments we put under the head of The Cel-
lular Biocosmos, which is itself but one stage,
the first, of our entire theme.

The cell, accordingly, being the ultimate
unit or the first form of organic Life, consti-
tutes the primal division of biological sci-
ence as a whole. It is the element out of
which all living shapes are constructed, or
better, are associated. So it comes that this
constitutive element of Life is just now the
object of the concentrated pursuit of Life’s
science. In one sense the biologist has over-
taken and caught the cell; in another sense,
he is still in the hottest search for it, seem-
ingly unable to catch it. What is the matter?

Very significant is the fact that the Bio-
cosmos is moving scientifically in the same di-
rection as the Diacosmos, whose trend was
set forth in a former volume (Cosmos and

THE MOVEMENT OF THE CELL. 119

Diacosmos). The movement in both is to-
ward the small and srhallest as constituents
of the physical universe. Already we have
noted the analogy .between the Diacosmical
molecule (or even the atom) and the Biocos-
mical cell; each is in an ever diminishing line
of descent toward the infinitely minute or di-
vided. Both therein mirror the character of
the science of the time, which is so deeply sep-
arative and specialized, but not well synthe-
sized and ordered; indeed the same divisive
tendency is largely the character of the age
in all thought and activity. Ours is not a
ereat integrating epoch, such as we have seen
in other periods of the World’s History.
This is no lamentation over the time, for
Psychology in its universal sense recognizes
the separative stage to be as necessary as
any other, to be indeed an inherent part of
the total process, be this little or large. In
the Diacosmos we saw the material divided
into speculative molecules, which in due time
were separated into atoms, which semed for
a while to be the final resting-place. But
now the atom has been disintegrated (so sci-
ence is saying’), and is found to be made up
of whirling electrons, which may be compared
to particles of dust flying in a room when it
is swept, the atom being the room. Each
‘atom of a chemical element (this element was

120 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

also the result of an epochal separation of a
material object, for instance, water), has now
many electrons, which indeed vary in every
elemental atom and are supposed to consti-
tute its distinct character. So we whiz from
the small to the smaller, but have probably
not yet gotten to the smallest. For the elec-
tron, the last and as yet least Diacosmical
product, is already showing signs of disinte-
gration in its turn; yea, it bore such a sign
as its birth-mark in the two antagonistic
electricities (positive and negative), of which
it is said to be composed. Manifestly the
divisive process cannot stop on this side of
the ultimate universal element of all ele-
ments, now conceived as ether. And this
ether cannot fail to have its corresponding
small constituent unit, the etherion; and as
atomicity has been succeeded by electricity
(or electronicity), so electricity likewise must
pass down the line and be followed perchance
by ethericitv. (See Cosmos and Diacosmos,
pp. 426, 554-60, etc.) This is of course merely
glancing ahead, possibly far ahead, and so
it runs the danger of all prophecy. But we
must recollect that the molecule, the atom,
the ion, and the electron are as yet purely
hypothetical, and, from the strict scientific
standpoint of sense-perception, they are
wholly unproved and possibly unprovable.

THE MOVEMENT OF THE CELL. 121

Still they are the kernel of the Diacosmical
science of today, which, as often observed,
is getting more speculative than philosoph-
ical speculation in its greatest bloom. A
necessity of Nature’s Science is this, we say:
within its field it is running at full tilt towards
its unseen psychical origin and control—its
destiny.

Now this same tendency of reaching out
for the infinitely small in order to get at the
source and soul of things, is next to be ob-
served in the Biocosmos. We have already
noted the aphorism of the early biologist that
all Life comes of Life (Omne vivum ex vivo),
which we may take as a starting-point. The
next step is the cell when it gets fairly in-
trenched through the microscope in the biolo-
gical consciousness, whose expression is
found in the aphorism of Virchow that every
cell arises out of a preceding cell (Omnis
céllula e cellula). But his is not the end of
the ever-diminishing series. The cell under
the microscope becomes a large organic ob-
ject, too large, in fact, and therefore must be
biologically divided. The cell has in it float-
ing many protoplasmic points or granules;
what are they and whence and whither? They
have been supposed to be new cellular units,
the seeds of young cells capable of growth
and division; that is, possessed of the cell-

122 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

process. On the other hand they may pos-
sibly connect with the Diacosmical molecule
or atom or electron. So they may form a
little span of that bridge between the Inor-
ganic and the Organic, the great object of
biological pursuit. At any rate, these gran-
ules have been conceived to be forms of the
organized primordial cell which has likewise
the power of self propagation through divi-
sion. The result is a new aphorism: every
granule springs of a granule (Omne granu-
lum ex granulo). This contribution comes
from a German biologist, Altmann; but it is,
we learn, rather discredited by the guild, who
feel that such a whirl is endlessly coming to
the same thing. Still it shows the inherent
scientific trend of the time, and will be adopt-
ed, if not in this shape, then in some other
at some later date. Undoubtedly, it is a di-
rect offshoot of Virehow’s aphorism which
in its turn is a derivative, all of them in des-
perate pursuit of the infinitely small as the
great original of Nature and indeed of the
Universe. It is truly suggestive, yea, pivotal,
to observe how one aphorism germinates in
the mind from another, quite like this pro-
cess of cell from cell. We witness the idea
running parallel in evolution with the real-
itv; thus the process of biological science
takes after that of its own cell, which is in-

THE MOVEMENT OF THE CELL. 123

deed its central content. Will it stop? Hard-
ly at its present landing-place, one has to
think; the next investigator will divide again,
for such division is in him, in his conscious-
ness, as well as outside of him, in the object,
yea, in the spirit of the age.

It is, therefore, significant, that many a
biologist has predicated already the ultimate
cellular unit beyond the cell as at present vis-
ible, yea, beyond the granule as the hypothe-
tical basis or source of Life. This tendency
is already found in Herbert Spencer’s phy-
siological units and in Darwin’s gemmules;
here too belong the biophors (Weismann),
the plastidules (Hickel), the bioblasts
(Beall), the biogens (Verworn), the pangens
(De Vries), the idioblasts (Hertwig), and so
on indefinitely. Each investigator has a bent
for springing upon us a new name, so that
these names seem to be also moving toward
infinite diversity, like the cell. The above
designations are but a few samples out of
the lot, and they are already getting a little
aged. (See a longer list in Wilson’s The
Cell, p. 291, where the author remarks that
his list is by no means complete and that the
above terms are shaded with different mean-
ings by their proposers, though all have the
one content and show the same trend of the
science. It may be added that the cited book

124 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

is, at the date of this writing (1911) more
than ten years old, which period has been
prolific in biological discovery, but even more
prolific in biological hypothesis—all of it,
however, going pretty much the same way.)

Still in this field of the small and smallest
we round up with the concept that life springs
only from life. The division seems always
to return to its starting point, as if to start
over again. So we are inclined to go back
to Darwin’s hypothesis of the gemmule,
which he sets forth in his doctrine of pangen-
esis, holding that the germ-cells contain still.
more minute cells (his gemmules) separated
from every part of the body and thus share
in or register the changes taking place in the
organism. Thus he seeks to account for both
acquired and congenital variations and their
transmissions to offspring—round which
themes recent biology surges so tempestu-
ously. Darwin hardly introduces the micro-
scope, the grand modern weapon, but theor-
izes purely in this case. (See Variation of
Animals and Plants, ec. 27). His view was
not generally accepted at the time of its pro-
mulgation, even by his followers—a fact
which we find him very gently complaining
about in his correspondence.. Still it has been
exceedingly fruitful of posterity, though
purely an idea; indeed, it may well be deemed

THE MOVEMENT OF THE CELL. 125

the germ of today’s biological dicussion,
which is seeking so desperately to account
for heredity, with the practical purpose of
somehow controlling it, or at least directing
it into certain improved channels. The Dar-
winian gemmule, though supposed to be only
physical, has certainly produced many gem-
mules of mind, which are still being born;
and again it is to be noted how the psyche
of the biologists is itself a kind of cellular
process in this sphere, the deeper reason be-
ing that the cellular process likewise is at last
psychical. The gemmule, then, may be con-
sidered the germinal idea out of which so
much recent biology has evolved. But with
it the question again comes up: is it the real
origin of Life? Hardly, though it is the ori-
gin of itself.

Here, then, dawns a new form of the old
aphorism already cited, though this new form
has not been expressed as far as we are
aware. Following the analogy of its previous
Latinized sentences, one may set it down
thus: Omnis gemmula e gemmula. Such is
the fourth aphorism or aphoristic model in
this field, uttering the last phase of the bio-
logical evolution of the cell, inclusive or per-
chance typical of all the rest. For it is now
confessedly the idea, hypothetical, unseen,
ultra-microscopical, whereas the other three,

126 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

even the granule, were material, visible un-
der the microscope, and hence realities. The
gemmule in its evolution has become as spec-
ulative as the atom or electron—a mental ob-
ject asserted to be physical. The Psyche has
thus reached the point of affirming on its own
authority that it has the Physis as sensuous
counterpart, though inaccessible to the
senses.

Inevitably the question rises about the re-
lation between these ultimate units (of course
only at present ultimate) of the organic and
inorganic worlds, for instance, the gemmule
and the electron. As yet they are refractory
and refuse unity; each maintains decidedly
its own individuality against the other. Still
we have to east the horoscope of science
which, in its own evolution, has become so
deeply speculative. The possibility of a com-
mon meeting-point between the Diacosmos
and the Biocosmos would seém to lie in that
as yet very elusive medium known as the
Ether, and in its unit (called by us the Ethe-
rion) the elemental gemmule of Life may yet
be found reposing. All this is only theory
and forecast; still on both sides of the line
Diacosmical as well as Biocosmical, we note
the common trend, as yet separate, but seem-
ingly converging in a point toward the in-
finitely small. Such we may see in these two

THE MOVEMENT OF THE CELL. 127

quite identical movements of the two grand
divisions of Nature toward a real point of
identity which, if never quite to be reached
is certainly to be more and more approached.
The biological aspiration is apparently to
behold the initial point or germ-plasm whence
fork the Organic and Inorganic from a com-
mon center, to discover the bifurcation of the
Diacosmos and Biocosmos, each of which then
evolves independently on its own road after
its own fashion. In a somewhat similar way
the plant and the animal have been carried
back to an organic cell from which they both
diverge and evolve along separate paths.
Such a function is usually assigned to the
Protista, which, however, must still be car-
ried up to some remoter source or sources,
even to the ultimate unit not merely of Life
(which is the cell), but of Unlife and Life of
all Nature. Psyche has already that unit
ideally in herself, and is at present emphatic-
ally bent on finding it. in Physis.

So our cellular Biocosmos may be deemed
the scene of the great scientific struggle of
the time, displaying the ideal pursuit of the
scientist as well as the strength and also the
limitation of his consciousness. For the Ego
of the biologist is formed by his work; while
evolving the cell, he is equally evolving the
evolver, namely, himself. But he is doing

198 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

something more and of deeper import: his
act is likewise a social act, bearing the im-
press of his age, of which he is more or less of
an utterance. Darwin must remain his su-
preme prototype, who formulated the deepest
strain of his time, with his doctrine of Kvo-
lution. That doubleness of Nature les in
both men; it is that of Physis and Psyche,
with their perpetual approachment, yet sep-
aration still. Will there ever be a final syn-
thesis of the twain, the ideal end of the scien-
tist?

Putting the problem in another form, we
may ask, Will the Psyche ever get inside the
atom, or electron, and make it live? ‘To some
such result it seems to be leading the Biocos-
mos in its search for the ultimate unit of Life
beyond the cell; or we may call it the new cell.
To be sure this pursuit cannot stop with such
an attainment, for the electron is clearly not
an ultimate, it is already going to pieces in
spite of the herculean attempts to hold it to-
gether. The far subtler ether with its ethe-
rion is at work underneath every cosmical
and diacosmical form (such as electricity for
instance), and is calling for the new synthe-
sis. So we run upon the question, the last
for the present; Is the Psyche finally to be
found inside the etherion, and thus become
the original elemental cell of the Biocosmos?

THE MOVEMENT OF THE CELL. 129

Here we may well cry halt to the remotely
forecasting imagination (which Tyndall,
however, makes an important part of the sci-
entists’ intellectual outfit), and come down to
the present state of our’science. As already
indicated the Cellular Biocosmos falls natur-
ally into the following three divisions, which
form a process together :

(1) Cytology—the science of the cell in
its immediate manifestation.

(Il) Pathology—in general known as the
science of disease; the negative phase of the
cell.

(IIT) Hygiology—the science of health,
the restoration of the cell from its negative
condition.

The present is a vast field, embracing as it
does the whole subject of medicine and heal-
ing, with its numerous theories and practices
—all more or less in a state of bitter strife.
Of course there can be no attempt here to
give even a slight survey of the merits or
demerits of this conflict of the doctors of
physic, in which also the doctors of divinity
and even divinity without the doctor have
mingled. This field more than any other per-
haps, may be deemed the present battle-
ground of the Biocosmos on account of the
many combatants, the great diversity of their
positions, and the frequent fierceness of their

130 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

mutual onslaughts. Still we hope to run a
slender line of order through this seething
mass which seems on the outside so chaotic.

I. Cyrouoey.

The first portion of the Cellular Biocos-
mos deals with the cell proper, its origin,
structure and functions apart from its dis-
eases—its positive side we may call this, as
distinct from its negative side. This direct
positive field of cell-science is very generally
known as Biology in the narrow sense, though
the special term for it, Cytology, seems to be
creeping into use. At any rate the word is
needed, though it unfortunately has the
wrong implication of a cell being always a
hollow thing—against which conception the
biologist of the present day seldom fails to
speak his protest. But the Greek word
kutos is a literal translation of the Latin
cella, and perpetuates the old mistake. Cytol-
ogy is, then, the science of the cell taken in
itself or as immediate, and hence it comes
first in the Biocosmos as the basic principle
of all Life, as the very beginning thereof.

It is true that this beginning of Life has
not yet been found as a sensuous object, and
so is vigorously pursued by science—which
pursuit will probably last for a long time yet.
Here is a term of mind, a category of thought

CYTOLOGY. 131

if you please—the Beginning—which nobody
ever Saw, or can see with eyesight and sun-
hght, which is nevertheless to be reached
somehow by the microscope in one of its spe-
cial applications. It were well if the observer
would oftener turn his vision within and ex-
amine these categories of the mind which he
has to use far more than his microscope. For
not only does he express himself by them, but
he thinks by them, yea, sees by them—or pos-
sibly does not see. That microscope which he
uses does not exist in nature but is a thought
realized through evolution, for the microscope
also has its history, and he has to learn care-
fully how to employ it, otherwise it may fool
him, as he well knows. Such is his chief
outer weapon; but his Psyche is full of inner
weapons, a grand armory of categories given
him by heredity and culture, which he had
better study a little, else they may deceive
him worse than his eye or his eye-glass. The
difficulty is that the much-defamed Philoso-
phy is in its deepest purport just the study
of these categories of thought, which man
has made and precipitated into human speech
quite from its origin. The two supreme books
of abstract Thought or Philosophy are doubt-
less Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Hegel’s
Logic; both these ultimate thinkers of the
ultimate turn their inner mental microscope

182 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

upon just the categories of mind and describe
their character, that every man who handles
these basic implements of all Intelligence
may know what he is doing, yea, what he him-
self truly is. The scientist, to his and our
misfortune, has imbibed the strongest preju-
dice against this study of his own brain-tools
and often uses them with astonishing awk-
wardness and ignorance, slashing himself
horribly with the keen-edged contradictory
eoncepts lurking in his own words, even to
the point of cutting off his own head.

Now one of these subtle categories of
Thought ensconced in human language and
transmitted down the ages, is just this voc-
able, the Beginning (or perchance the Becom-
ing.) And in order to catch the whole sweep
of it we must add its negative counterpart,
the Ceasing—both then will be the Beginning
to be and the Ceasing to be. Let any reader
reflect how many times a day he applies to
special cases these two thought-forms (called
here categories), and he will be on the way to
see what really fills his Psyche. This is his
mental bag stuffed with acquired or congeni-
tal categories, by which he measures every-
thing, to be sure, quite unconsciously. It
would seem of importance to take, at times, an
inventory of the whoie bag (which is the spe-
cial work of Philosophy, or better yet, of Psy-

CYTOLOGY. 133

chology). Now the scientist (like every mor-
tal) has in his head a bag full of such cate-
gories, some of which have been picked up
by himself, others he has inherited. But he
keeps it carefully tied fast in his unconscious
world, showing a kind of terror of it, lest, if
he once open it, a Pandora box of ills or in-
deed of demons would fly out and eat him up.
One of the categories, in fact, the main one,
of Biology today, is the Beginning—here the
Beginning of Life. But the difficulty with
such Beginning is, that it is already the Be-
gun; when seen in its minutest form under
the microscope, it must have had an ante-
cedent source or cause, it must have been be-
fore, and so it is not the Beginning. Such
elusive duplicity lurks in this category when
sought as an object of the senses, which is the
scientific object. If the Beginning thus turns
out the Begun, the mind, in intense pursuit
of the former, must get back of the latter and
find its source in something still smaller or
more remote. So scientific research bears
the impress of an infinitely regressive series,
with an ever diminishing line of forms in pur-
suit of the Inscrutable. But always the dissi-
dence will be secretly felt or recognized open-
ly: the Serutable is not the Inscrutable, the
Seen (of Sense) persists in being distinct
from Unseen (given by Mind); or, to use

134 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

other terms, the Particular is not the Uni-
versal. And still scrutator will and must con-
tinue his scrutiny of the Inscrutible. As nat-
uralist he is inherently and necessarily teleol-
ogic; if he should ever attain the end of his
investigation, his calling would be gone.
Accordingly, in this ceaseless ever-recur-
rent pursuit, he is in the profoundest har-
mony with Nature herself. For she is also
just. | this’. pursuit ‘of van end) by “her
unattainable, that is, when she once reaches
it, she has passed out of herself into another
sphere. She is the infinite longing or aspir-
ation for the beyond, which characteristic ex-
presses itself in the endless series—or the
unexpressed or indeed inexpressible. Nature,
therefore, cannot utter herself, or rather her |
utterance is the striving for utterance, like
the song of a bird or perchance the famous
music of the spheres. Ever approaching the
goal, she cannot quite touch it—and remain
herself. As Nature, so the Naturalist; his
consciousness becomes a part of what he
works in, despite itself; his Psyche goes back _
and assimilates itself to that of Physis—
which fact is verily its worth and glory. The
Ego of the scientist is undoubtedly self-re-
turning or self-conscious, like every other
Ego; still it uses this power in its own way:
to return upon Nature from which it has

CYTOLOGY. : 135

really evolved, and to become one with her,
especially on her psychical side, and to articu-
late her who has no articulation. This the
scientist does for his time and people—a serv-
ice of the highest order. For the evolution-
ary clock strikes the hour when the man has
to go back to his own evolution in and out
of Nature, and take the same up into himself
that he may make the step in advance.

A little study, then, it is well to give to the
leading category or defining term of Cytol-
ogy, which is declared to be the science of the
Beginning of Life, since this tool of mind has
its subtle character which ought to be under-
stood by those who employ it as a scientific
concept.

When it comes to the right ordering of this
cell-science, several points of view may be
taken. There are many kinds of cells, for in-
stance, and they show various characters.
Some have a far tougher vitality than others,
seeming to concentrate a greater strength
and intensity of life. Birth, maturation, de-
cline, death move through their periods in the
cell as in man, of whom it is in so many ways
the organic prototype as well as the constit-
uent. Millions of lives are being lived in our
life, each with its rise, bloom and decay. Each
inhabitant of the Earth—and there are sup-
posed to be sixteen hundred millions of them

136 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

—has at least as many living inhabitants as
the Karth, in his own body, or probably in
his brains. The cellular population we may
thus conceive in every man to be equal to the
human population of the globe (usually said
to be many times more). Therein he is the
epitome of all men, the cell makes him such
even in Nature. Moreover, the round of life
is always going on with these little creatures
—millions of births and millions of funerals
from the daily pomp of your individual globe.

It is evident, however, that your organism
has its own collective life as distinct from
that of its cellular denizens of whom it is made
up. In other words, they are associated, and
are severally members of a greater whole to
whose end they contribute, and which looks
after them. They are not autonomous units
merely aggregated together, but are subordi-
nated to a center, indeed to many centers in
graduation reaching up to the highest. Now
this tendency of the cell towards association
may well be regarded as its pivotal fact. It
associates to form all the organs of the body
and then to form the latter’s entirety. When
the cell becomes autonomous, or more espe-
cially when a community of them sets up for
itself as independent, disease has started,
and a cell-war opens between the rebels and
the faithful, which may end in dissolution

CYTOLOGY. 187

or restoration. So a negative, fighting, col-
liding world dawns far down among these
micro-organisms of cell-life.

Perchance the chief interest here is to ob-
serve the faint reflex, the far-off forecast, as
it were, of human association, of man form-
ing his social institutions. Hach individual
person strives to become a member of a
greater organism which integrates him with
his fellow-man in state and society, as the cell
pushes for union with its fellow-cell in the
animal body. Stages of the same great pro-
cess of evolution we may deem both these
facts, though they be very different rungs of
the one colossal ladder, rising from Nature to
Mind, a veritable Jacob’s-ladder from Earth
to Heaven. The cell is already in its way in-
stitutional, and builds its world of institu-
tional order, which has its control, its author-
ity, its law, its constitution. It may be said
that our human organism, if it be true to that
deepest principle of itself which made it an
organism, cannot stop in its career of organ-
ization, but must organize itself with others of
its like. The cell is, therefore, in its supreme
aspect, associative, and keeps generating as-
sociation in its round of life, being the bearer
of the same not only through the lapse of
time, but up the many-graded steps of evolu-
tion. We may say that it shows the aspira-

138 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

tion to become purely associative without the
physical counterpart which it has in Nature.
This instinct of the cell, as it can be called,
we may at this point identify as its psychical
portion, which determines it to ever-renewed
and higher association, whose culminating
point in Nature is the human organism. But
this is again individual, which must rise out
of its limitation, out of its mere individuality,
and seek to be universal—which is manifest-
ed in association, whereby the one shares in
the all. The cell, we repeat, showed that same
associative striving in its little framework,
which was the Psyche belaboring and unfold-
ing the Physis, or the cell-soul in the cell-
body. We have already noted theoretically
the point at which the Psyche seems to pass
from the outside of Nature to the inside, and
Life begins perchance in some pre-cellular
condition of matter, wherewith the Biocos-
mos opens, at least, in thought. Throughout
this sphere the cell becomes more and more
associative, its Psyche carrying along and
evolving its Physis, up the ascending stairway
of all organic forms, till at last in human in-
stitutions the Psyche gets to be its own self-
conscious process and associates itself pure-
ly. So we may say that the cell from the be-
ginning has the aspiration in Nature to be-
come institutional though strictly it cannot

CYTOLOGY. 139

reach such a goal without transcending Na-
ture and the Biocosmos, which, however, con-
stitutes its sphere.

Consequently we shall divide this realm of
Cytology, the science of the cell-world proper,
according to itsdeepest criterion, which is its
associative character. The first of its stages
is the pre-cellular protoplasmic mass of vi-
talism, the potentiality of all Life, Nature
becoming cell. The second stage is the cell
separated and organized, as self-active and
self-contained individual, the unicellular or-
ganism in its primal autonomy. The third is
the organized multi-cellular stage, the asso-
ciation of cells to form all the higher organ-
isms of Nature, vegetal and animal.

I. Pre-cellular Life. First of all let it be
remembered that this has never been opened
up to the senses, it is as yet a speculative en-
tity, toward which biological science with its
varied laboratory equipment is in hot pur-
suit. Already it has been stated often enough
that the First Life (primum vivum, proto-
bioticon), has not been reached microscopic-
ally or otherwise, and only exists for us as a
postulate of thought. Still this is what the
grand army of biologists are seeking more or
less unconsciously, namely, the physical man-
ifestation of their psychical concept. Can we
not find in Nature what exists in our minds

140 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

as her very starting-point and source of ex-
istence? The result of this search is research
which insists upon searching again and again,
and approaching closer and closer toward the
small and smallest; much is indeed picked up
on the way, even if the end be as yet un-
reached—whereof the record is set down in
works of biology, and constitutes the main
subject-matter of this science.

In this aspect pre-cellular Life has its
striking analogy to Ether. Both are hypo-
thetical concepts lying far back at the source
of their respective stages of Nature. One
is the ultimate of the Biocosmos, the other is
the ultimate of the Diacosmos, each is con-
ceived as the last constituent, as well as the
primal origin of its own distinct sphere.
Hence one is the ideal goal of the biologist
which he wishes to find real; the other is the
ideal goal of the physicist, which he seeks
to see in its sensuous counterpart. Psychi-
cally, therefore, both scientists are quite
alike in their different fields of research; each
is hurrying to overtake the incorporate
Psyche at its start, to behold the ideal and
the real just at the first point of their con-
junction. Still further we may push the
thought: the ultimate unit of Ether (say the
Etherion) may be found to be one with the
ultimate unit of Life (say the gemmule),

CYTOLOGY. 141

though both these units today are remotely
hypothetical, and yet more remote is their
oneness. Still in this way we may take the
speculative pleasure of viewing the primor-
dial bond between the dead and living worlds,
or perchance the central generative point
from which starts the grand bifurcation of
all Nature into organic and inorganic, which
mighty twins may be well supposed to have
had a common womb.

From these far speculative outreaches
which have become indeed an integrating ele-
ment of today’s Natural Science, we shall
come back to consider a few things about this
primal Life (Protobioticon). The first con-
cept which may be formulated concerning it
is that here lies the scene or arena of the in-
dividuation of Life, the transition from the
protoplasmic mass to the first differentiation
of the living individual, in whatever earliest
form the latter may appear. This pre-or-
ganic field may be conceived to stretch be-
tween the Inorganic and Organic, to consti-
tute that bridge of which so much has been
said. To be sure, one may well ask whence
comes this protoplasmic mass which is here
taken for granted? Merely the hypothetical
starting-point, we may say; but meanwhile
the deeper question rises to the surface: What
is the origin of that power of living individ-

142 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

uation with which this elemental stuff is en-
dowed? Manifestly here we glimpse the psy-
chical strain which runs through all Nature
and propels it from without and from with-
in toward the self-conscious individual.
The next point which we may consider is
that this peculiar antecedent life-slime, this
unindividuated mass vitally individuating it-
self, must have arisen somewhere and some-
when on our globe after it had reached a cer-
tain stage in its planetary evolution. Not
when it was a nebulous piece of fire-mist just
flung off from the Heliosphere; not when it
had cooled down for many millions of years,
but was still red-hot and would not allow the
formation of water on its surface; a much
later epoch must be taken when the Earth is
ready with air, soil and moisture, and actu-
ally evolves this earliest life-stuff, about one
hundred million years ago, according to cer-
tain scientists. On some favorable part of
our planet it must have started; as the Earth
was still hot in portions, it has been conjec-
tured that the Arctic regions first produced
those limits of temperature in which Life
arises and thrives. Hence from the poles, now
grown too cold for vital thrift, the plant and
animal have overspread the other zones,
which possibly in their turn may get too

frigid. And still but a very small part of the

CYTOLOGY. 143

total terrestrial mass of matter ever became
vitalized; a ten-millionth of it is one well-
known estimate. In many ways Life is lim-
ited in quantity; in fact, it often limits itself
with a destructive violence. Yet this quan-
tity has remained about the same through the
later geologic ages, it is supposed; still one
is inclined to think that, as the Earth kept
cooling off in the earliest stages, the life-area
of it, starting from the polar point, must have
enlarged, and therewith in proportion the
primal life-stuff must have increased.

So in one form or other we have to con-
ceive a primal original reservoir of life-stuff,
be its locality arctic or equatorial, in the Sar-
gasso Sea or in the Nile-bed, or indeed ev-
erywhere. Moreover we hardly dare limit
- this elemental protoplasmic material to early
time; it still must exist in some way and be
at work, if it could only be found; that first
creative living individuation of Nature has
never stopped, can never stop but with Life
itself.

Given, then, our planetary evolution from
the Heliosphere, Earth-life must have arisen
in time and place along with the right tem-
perature and other accordant conditions, and
attained a certain amount of vital material
whose quality has been improving ever since
through evolution without much change in

144 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

quantity, as is supposed. Ata given stage it
would seem that the Earth produced its full
quota of life-stuff (Protobioticon), which it
has kept supplied from that time on, such
being all that it could do in this line. When
our globe broke through the previous Unlife
into Life, must be regarded as a chief act in
its evolutionary drama. When long ages aft-
erward Life broke through into Self-con-
sciousness, was also a chief act in that same
evolutionary drama; between which two acts
lies our Biocosmos; where, when and into
what Self-consciousness is to break through,
belongs to the future, and will be another
great act, possibly the greatest, of our ter-
restrial evolution. So we may put together
some of the huge steps of our planet’s jour-
ney; such a step we are now trying to grasp
in the elemental life-stuff.

The cellular organism which, in its smallest
form is already very complex and composite, .
presupposes some sort of organic material
for its use. And we should not forget that
this stage is the Psyche getting inside the
Physis and starting its internal control of
matter. And its method seems to be individ-
uation, the protoplasmic mass is turning to
living units, however minute these may be.
And in one way or other this is peculiarly
the work of the active Psyche (the Psycho-

CYTOLOGY. 145

sis), imparting to tiny points of matter its
process, whereby they become alive. Again
we may bring to mind that the biology of to-
day has as its chief object to catch Nature in-
dividuating herself into these living units
whose primal forms are cells.

So we are next to pass out of our specula-
tive postulate of a Pre-cellular Biocosmos,
its first stage, as yet unrevealed to the strictly
scientific eye, but its ever-present necessary
pre-supposition and indeed the ideal object
of its search and research. We have reached
the single cell, separated, individuated, vis-
ible, organized, with its own round of life.
This is therefore the second or separated
stage of the Cellular Biocosmos as a whole—
a vast living territory, by no means yet fully
explored. We may call it the unicellular
world, with an enormous and varied popula-
tion of individuals.

II. Unicellular Life. Actually now lies
before us the visible unit of all Life, a com-
plete organism even if microscopic, the first
vital individuation, as far as ean at present
be seen—the single cell.’ In a sense it is the
passage from a hypothetical element to the
real appearance, the ideal clothing itself in
its material counterpart, the unformed or
purely formable taking form to our vision.
The organic universe is now seen split up

146 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

into. its living atoms, or elemental units, in
a state of complete separation. Here we may
note that this unicellular Life is also multi-
cellular—that is, indefinitely reproduced and
repeated. Hach is primarily taken as an in-
dependent whole with its own entire round
of life, even if they be externally connected.
A string or mass of single cells is properly
multicellular, though not internally interre-
lated.

Still we have to recall that this elemental
unit of Life is an organism which is a result
of something gone before; it is a conse-
quent which presupposes an antecedent; or
as previously set forth, it is the beginning
which has already begun. Thus it keeps
throwing back of itself its own starting-point,
which the scientist at once sets out to explore
as a new object. And so the search keeps on
for finding the ultimate unit of Nature, who
always turns out twofold, in accord with her
deepest character.

The general process of the cell has been
given on a former page, with its central nu-
cleus and protoplasmic body ever dividing
and forming new cells. In the detailed ac-
counts of the cellular organs and parts, many
other items, such as the nucleus, the centro-
some, the granules, ete., have been carefully
studied and described by the biologist, but

CYTOLOGY. 147

these we shall have to pass over. We behold
the leading fact of the self-separation of the
body starting in the nucleus which re-unites
the protoplasm and forms the new cell. A
cellular image of the Psychosis we may well
see in this process, which thus reveals its
psychical phase.

A good deal of biological discussion at the
present time turns on this nucleus. The com-
plete cell has it, but the incomplete cell seems
to show it in a state of gradual formation.
The Bacterion, probably the least developed
living cell of Life, possesses the nucleus only
in a very incipient stage, if at all—some in-
vestigators see it, some do not. The transi-
tion out of the pre-cellular Life into the cel-
lular, would appear to take place in the nu-
cleus, which thus comes to be the primal cen-
ter of vital individuation. A little mass of |
protoplasm which at the start shows no dif-
ference between nucleus and cytoplasm (or
cell-stuff) somehow gets nucleated and there-
with soon forms a cellular body. The primor-
dial living individual of the planet is then
born—the cell, at first quite isolated, inde-
pendent, unassociated. Again the question
rises, Whence this nucleus with its power of
self-separation and incorporation? Mani-
festly here is another node of Life in which
Psyche is directly at work, but can be seen

148 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

only in the results. Still another point to be
mentioned .is that these early unicellular or-
ganisms cannot with any definiteness be dis-
tinguished as plant or animal—such bifurea-
tion has hardly yet taken place corporeally.
What is it thatdetermines the seemingly unde-
termined cell to its future, be this vegetal or
animal? Such a problem opens into another
prolific discussion of biologists on pre-forma-
tion and epigenesis, which must here be omit-
ted. The claim has been made that this uni-
cellular Life is greater in quantity than all
other forms of Life combined, that it em-
braces more than half of the total Life-stuff
of the globe.

The Bacterion, then, may stand as the near-
est approach to the transition from Unlfe
fo ite “Possibly upon) this) tactescan be
grounded its destructive character when it
gets a strong foothold in higher organisms
like the human. It disintegrates them, turn-
ing them back into these primordial cells
which lead to Unlife, and which are negative
to associated cell-life. Thus the Bacterion
has brought forth a special science of itself
(Bacteriology) which has an important place
in Pathology.

But not all of these Bacteria are destruc-
tive, not all have their tendency toward death.
Others are life-promoting; in fact, the most

CYTOLOGY. 149

appear of this sort. The human body is re-
ported to be full of these micro-organisms,
which perform important vital functions; it
would appear that they still are engaged in
their original action of bridging over the In-
organic into the Organic for the higher or-
ganisms; they are the primordial means in
this our living body of transforming Unlife
into Life.

The Bacterion is usually declared to be
vegetal in character, though not by all biolo-
gists; on the other hand the first animal is
affirmed to be the Ameeba. Both are unicellu-
lar, microscopic and are of many different
kinds or species. The two would seem to rep-
resent the first bifurcation of pre-cellular
Life into the two great lines of organic evo-
lution in plant and animal.

The indifferentiated mass of pre-cellular
Life is transformed primarily into single
cells, which, as already recorded, have be-
come the special content of biological inves-
tigation. In the cell, accordingly, Life ap-
pears for the first time as individuated, as a
peripheral piece of matter, with its own inner
process continually going on. Here is what
we may call its primal divisive stage; there
is a separation, approximately infinite, of
the original unseparated material into vital
centers with their bodies. And having once

150 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

started, this corporeal individuation of Life
will not stop till it reaches the topmost form
of Nature, rising through a long series of or-
ganisms, from the smallest to the largest.
One may ask concerning the cause or source
of this individuation of Life. Is there no
other way for the evolution of the Biocosmos
than through the living individual? Nature
takes just that method—why? She must, it
lies in the deepest necessity of her origin.
We notice the same separative tendency to-
ward individuals in the inorganic Cosmos.
The sky shows it in the stars, in the nebula,
in the planets, in the Earth which originally
separated from the Sun, and became itself an
individual, which was to carry forward its own
primal division indefinitely. Here we may
recur to that fundamental thought from which
this treatise starts in the germ; Nature in
its total sweep is the second or separative
stage in the process of the All (or the Pamp-
sychosis). So in this case, as in every other,
we have to go back to the Universe to get the
ultimate ground of individuality, which is a
phase of its partition. The Biocosmical cell
is a living individual, which is perpetually
dividing itself anew, repeating itself, repro-
ducing itself. Why does it thus? It is re-
enacting the All of which it is a part, and it
can only be a part of the Universe but by

CYTOLOGY. 151

having the universal process within itself.
And so we have to account ultimately for this
inner propulsion of Life to individuate itself
—it is therein fulfilling its part and place in
the movement of the All of which it must
make itself an integral portion in order to be
of the same.

But we come back to the fact that the ear-
lest living individual in the universe, as far
as we now know, is the cell; with it every or-
ganism, however complex, starts on its career
of development; also with it the world of or-
ganisms starts visibly, moving along the lines
of its development. Man begins with incor-
porating himself in a cell, which has been
often called his prison, the original incarcer-
ation of his Psyche. It is the cell which con-
nects man (and all living existence) with the
past; he receives his inheritance of character
from his fathers through the cell; all the
progress of the ages has to pass into and out
of the cell, the World-Spirit indeed cannot be
excused from this cellular experience. It is,
then, the point of transition and of transmis-
sion from parent to child in all Life and what
Life carries—arts, sciences, institutions, civ-
ilisations. We may conceive it likewise as
the connecting link between what has been and
_ what is to be, the little genetic dot which is
eternally propagating the past into the fu-

152 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

ture. Very interesting becomes the unicel-
lular Amoeba, simply dividing itself and re-
producing another cell like itself, when we
behold it in its farthest significance as the
protypal act of Life, even the human. Thus
we may contemplate the cell as the first liv-
ing individuation of the Universe, the primal
vital embodiment of the Pampsychosis.

But it lies in the character of the cell that
it cannot stay merely a separate individual,
or a string of protozoa. It shows the bent
to organize itself—a psychical bent, we con-
ceive it; the many divided units push of them-
selves toward an associated unity, subordi-
nating them, yet preserving them in a new
order. This brings us to a new stage in the
development of the cell, in fact, its very pur-
pose in the Biocosmos, which it is now to
build, being both the builder and the built,
even furnishing itself as the brick of the edi-
fice, Or more simply conceived, each cell is
now made the unit of association which pro-
duces all the varied organic forms of living
existence.

Tll. Associated Cellular Life. The pres-
ent sphere is usually named simply multi-
cellular in biological books; but the term
gives a wrong suggestion, merely that of a
multiplicity of cells, or of a cellular aggre-
gate, Such a conception belongs still to the

CYTOLOGY. 153

separative stage just considered; whereas
now we are to emphasize cell-organization,
or, employing a more decisive word, cell-as-
sociation. Moreover this word correlates cel-
lular Life with its highest manifestation in
the human form, and even beyond it, hint-
ing human institutions, which also rise
through association. All living organs of an
organism, and the organism itself show this
associated cellular Life, which we are to con-
sider next.

At this point, then, enters a pivotal activity
of the Cellular Biocosmos, namely, the asso-
ciation of cells. Cellular autonomy, which we
have seen to be the previous stage of the cell
evolving from the protoplasmic life-mass,
evolves in its turn from its separated, individ-
ualistic, autonomous condition into a newly
organized, associated Life, in which the cel-
lular community becomes truly manifested
and explicit. Still we must not forget that
the cell in itself was already the implicit com-
munity, and showed many marks of its so-
called complexity in its incipient organs.
Thus it too manifests the inner propulsion
to form all its distinctive parts into an or-
ganic whole; this is indeed its psychical side.
But the same power will seize the entire cell-
body and integrate it with the higher organ-
isms of plant and animal. Thus a multi-cel-°

154 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

lular associated Life dawns, which is likewise
to have a great career, and which has the ad-
vantage of visibility, of unfolding within the
limits of the eye—which eye is itself a part of
the same evolution.

Such is the rise from the divisive principle
of the previous unicellular stage of cell-life,
the second stage of what we here call Cytol-
ogy. The independent cell has been produced
and then has reproduced itself in Nature with
a vast multiplicity, but this individual inde-
pendence passes over into inter-dependence,
the outer relation is transmuted into an in-
ner relation; the single cell gives up its isola-
tion through its own psychical instinct and
becomes social, communal, and so reflects
from afar the institutional world, toward
which it is mounting on Life’s ladder.

Moreover the simple elemental uniformity
of the original cell changes, adapting itself
to its new place and duty in the larger or-
ganism of which it has become a member.
The cellular structure of each organ of the
human body, for instance, becomes different
—that of the muscle is not that of the nerve.
So we observe a great differentiation of the
cell through its associated life with other
cells in the same organism. And in different
organisms, on the other hand, we find a mar-
velous similarity of cells belonging to the

CYTOLOGY. 155

same organ, for instance, in the liver, from
the low to the high animal. And _ in this
sphere of the cell new relationships appear in
organisms seemingly far apart. The blood
of each animal has been found to be different
from that of any other animal, with relations
near and remote. Hence the blood has been
made the basis of ordering anew all the ani-
mated world. For example, the walrus,
through its blood, is declared to be more deep-
ly allied in its microscopic character to the
horse than to its next-door neighbor in the
same element of salt water, namely, the
whale. This suggests a new classification of
animals very different from the old one, which
looked more to the large outer form or to its
bony structure (for instance, to the vertebral
column). In such manner the inner circula-
tory system going around the organic cycle
and feeding all its activity, furnishes a fresh
basis of the outer system of living forms. So
classification is looking to the micro-organic
world, having been hitherto macro-organic.
And the consanguinity of the total Biocos-
mos may yet have to be settled and ordered
by a microscopic examination of the actual
blood-kinship of its entire population, vegetal
and animal—for the plant also has its kind
of blood. Meanwhile the thought lies open
that some more pivotal system than the cir-

156 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

culatory (possibly the nervous) may yet be
found for the deeper ordering of the present
vast rather chaotic menagerie of Biocosmical
shapes.

This leads us to another somewhat similar
consideration: the Psyche of the biologist
himself is in a condition corresponding to the
foregoing unicellular ‘stage, as revealed by
his works. Wonderful is his cellular indus-
try, but he seems unable to integrate his vast
details into a complete organism; cell after
cell he adds, keeping up an almost infinite
division (a kind of intellectual mitosis, to use
one of his terms). We conceive the hundreds
of biological investigators now found in ey-
ery part of the globe; each one is reproduc-
ing by some sort of fission that original
thought-cell of his science till the quantity
of individuals overwhelm us with their chaotic
multiplicity, and we start to praying for a
deliverer : O, for some organizer of this scien-
tific cell-world, some categorizer—perchance
a Darwin even with his limited Natural Selec-
tion! So, we pray in tribulation of spirit;
but the scientist, as the report flies, does not
listen to prayer, does not even believe in it;
accordingly the outsider has to run his own
lines of organisation, if he feels the need of
them—which need, as Psyche, he cannot help
feeling now and then. So we behold every-

CYTOLOGY. 157

where an associated cell-life, but an associat-
ed science of cell-life, with all its members
duly ordered and organized, is what has yet
to appear.

Will man ever be able to control directly
this cell-life of plant and animal, and also
of himself? Indirectly he does so already.
At present he is occupied with finding out
this cellular existence and with formulating
some of its laws. But he would seem to be
on his way toward getting hold of its associa-
tive power, which has so many analogies to
his own. Cell-association intimates man-as- -
sociation and is prophetic of it, and may be
taken as the primordial push towards it in
the movement of Life. Indeed each individ-
ual cell of the human organism, as the bearer
and propagator of past inheritances, is the
arena of conflict between transmitted traits
of millions of ancestors, especially if Life on
our planet reaches back a hundred million of
years. The cell, is, therefore, a brief abstract
of the man, his little eidolon, seeking to realize
association; yea, we may conceive it as an
image, condensed in the smallest space and as
yet undeveloped, of human society, of whose
institutions it is a far-away pre-figurement.
In fact, it is their actual living germ, which
is slowly to evolve into the structure of man
himself and then into his institutional world.

158 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

Of course we are not to forget the part of
Psyche in this long evolution, which is already
working in the cell and is, step by step, im-
pelling it forward—into what? Into itself as
the completed psychical process.

Naturalists have observed the greater suc-
cess in Life of those animals which associate.
It is noteworthy that many insects—hees,
ants, termites (white ants)—show a greater
power of association than some of the higher
vertebrates. Many lines of living animals
have failed in the course of the geologic ages
—one reason among others being the lack of
associative ability. Herein doubtless lies the
chief ground of man’s persistence through
all sorts of terrestrial changes. His evolu-
tion is a slender thread running through
many thousands of different organic shapes,
with an ever-rising might of association, till
now his body seems to have reached its limit
of cellular formation. That is, his shape
does not essentially change, while evolution
has gone over into his mind, which is in the
very hey-day of its progress. His body ap-
pears now static, but his soul is certainly
dynamic. And the line on which his physical
evolution seems to be moving is institutional
association (as already set forth in the Intro-
duction, pp. 50-52).

Man is not the largest animal with the

CYTOLOGY. 159

greatest number of cells—he is far surpassed
by the whale and the elephant. Still in him
the cellular structure is most highly organ-
ized, with greatest diversity and complexity.
Nor is he the longest-lived of living exist-
ence—there are trees, animals and birds
which get older. Still through creating insti-
tutions his individual Psyche remains longer
in evidence upon our earth than any merely
physical shape of vital Nature. Julius Cesar
is yet among us, not to speak of Christ. From
this point of view man wins an institutional
immortality which is no: longer dependent on
his cell-life. .

_ The analogy of cellular association to
human association is noteworthy. The
movement of society in History shows man’s
mind associative as well as his body. Human
souls associate and form bodies (institu-
tional, as a state, or a church, or even a club),
as well as human cells. We think of the lit-
tle Greek City-States as the starting point
of European political association, constitut-
ing rather an aggregate of separate cells,
while the Roman City-State unites them and
brings them: (often by force) into one organ-
ism. Still we must not construe the State
or other institutions as biological, as some
philosophers are inclined to do. Both biology
and political science are manifestations of

160 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

the Psyche, and are to get their ultimate
order from Psychology, as the universal
science.

It should be added here that there are
scientists who find in the human body numer-
ous rudimentary organs which await their full
development. From this point of view man’s
organism has not yet completely evolved
itself, or realized its possibilities. This is
the opinion of the eminent anatomist Gegen-
baur. The so-called transcended parts, once
useful but now useless and even dangerous
(like the os coccygis) are far outstripped by
the unevolved parts, which are yet to con-
stitute the perfect Human Form. This
prophecy, however, seems not at present to
be marching toward fulfilment.

But the Cellular Biocosmos falls into con-

flict with itself, the organism in its associated
cell-life has its strife and war, and hence suf-
fers (Pathology, literally the science of suf-
fering). Cells indeed become pathogenic, to
use the scientific term. Whereof a little may
now be said.

II. ParHouoey.

The cell has its negative side, its separative
‘destructive phase, the conception of which
has in recent times given an entirely new
turn to the science of medicine, or better, the

PATHOLOGY. 161

_ science of disease (sometimes called Nosol-
ogy as well as Pathology). The cell becomes
infected in hundreds of ways; indeed the
primary basic infection of the organism must
lie in it as the ultimate organic unit. The
bite of a certain kind of mosquito introduces
into the cellular tissue of the body a hostile
cell or microbe which produces the scourge
known as yellow fever. The ordinary organic
cells are totally unable to resist the incursions
of this terrible foe, who rapidly sweeps to the
center of life. Unless he be met by a new
power introduced from the outside, he will
soon have possession. But first he must be
distinctly separated and recognized before he
can be successfully attacked; or the bacillus
must be found, as the books say. In like man-
ner there is a cholera bacillus, a consumption
bacillus, ete. It has always been regarded
as a great scientific event when the investi-
gator has fully isolated and described one
of these microscopic enemies of life. Still
greater has been the jubilation when the scien-
tist has found some counter agent (serum,
anti-toxin, anti-septic, ete.), which will single
out the intruder and slay him without per-
manent injury to the other cells of the organ-
ism. The most famous name in this field is
doubtless that of Louis Pasteur, who has
-found the antidote for the bite of the mad

162 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

dog, of which the bacillus, it is declared, has
never been isolated. Still this terrible un-
seen antagonist is met and conquered. On
the other hand, the consumption bacillus has
been isolated and is well known; still the
special antidote, the personal foe we may call
him, seems not yet to have come to the front.
Thus a large part of human suffering is due
to what may be called a cell-war, which has
its analogy to man-war, though the latter in-
volves the entire organism, indeed whole peo-
ples. The cell gets to fighting with the cell,
as nation with nation, or race with race. The
science of ailment (Pathology) has largely
reached down to the cell as the primordial
seat of bodily malady, which may affect the
whole sweep of cellular life—pre-cellular, uni-
cellular and multi-cellular as _ associated.
That is, the single cell may become diseased,
then the association of cells may be broken
up by numerous causes; doubtless, too, the
elemental cell-stuff (Protobioticon) can get
disordered, though this realm reaches as yet
beyond the microscope. Possibly the source
of rabies, which has never been seen, though
the malady yields to treatment, lies back in
the source of cell-life itself, in the very foun-
tain of cellular individuation. Here rises to
view a great future field for the investigator
who may yet through his science discover the

PATHOLOGY. 163

unseen in the Little World and deal with it,
as Leverrier through his mathematics dis-
covered the unseen planet in the Large World
and designated its locality.

Accordingly Biology in its true conception
as the Science of Life must include its own
negative, or Life destroying Life. The bacil-
lus is a living thing, yet its function is to
assail a living thing. Indeed one of the most
striking manifestations of Life as whole is
its bent toward annihilating Life, that is,
itself. Micro-organisms prey on micro-
organisms, as well as on macro-organ-
isms, as the latter prey on one another.
Man/’s food is the living thing, vegetal or ani-
mal; he lives by swallowing Life daily. He
cannot take the Inorganic for his diet; the
plant alone can do that. The invisible cell-
war thus rises to an ever-present visible life-
war, to which there is no truce. Life in its
totality has this deeply negative strand; yea
it is self-negative, perpetually it undoes itself.
Yet the other side must be noted: through
this self-undoing, it is always being re-born.
Strangely Life lives off itself in a large meas-
ure; Life as whole, the Karth-Life, endures
through death. Fiercely destructive, yea self-
destructive, it destroys its own destruction.
This is the point where we may see the dialec-
tic of Life; inherently negative it is indeed;

164 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

yet in spite of this, or rather through this,
it negates its own negativity—and so lives
on. In the Cellular Biocosmos we are ac-
cordingly to behold not only the positive cell
in its origin, structure and _ association
(Cytology), but also the negative cell which
separates from the immediate positive cell-
life, and assails the same both as individual
and as associated. This is hence the second
or separative stage of the Cellular Biocos-
mos, which in its separated forms is to suf-
fer its own negation through disaster, dis-
ease and death (the sphere of Pathology).
A world individuated is necessarily a world of
suffering—of assault from without and of ail-
ment from within. Yet just this suffering
we are to see as part of organized Life in its
totality.

We may well ask: What is it propelling
Life in this process? Evidently the Psyche
again, which is just this driving force in Life,
and which is seeking to evolve the same into
correspondence with itself. For it is the
Psyche which has purely and internally the
power of self-division and self-return, and
which is unfolding the Physis toward the
same end. Now in the living cell this self-
division takes place likewise, but externally,
and so produces another living cell outside
of itself, which continues the same act of self-

HYGIOLOGY. 165

division or of individuation. That is, there is
no inner self-return out of this separation of
Life; the individual cell halves itself, and the
second half (as it may be called) becomes a
new individual external to the first, not re-
turning to it and forming one inner process
in one individuality. That would indeed be
not Life, but Ego or Self-consciousness to-
ward which Life is moving, and which is its
secret motive energy. Just now it manifests
itself in the self-division of the living cell, but
the divided part is not taken back into its
source but remains another individual cell,
which in its turn reproduces itself in like
manner. The first cell, however, having given
away its half-life, never fully recovers its
primal energy, though it may still throw off
other individuals. Gradually it loses its re-
productive power, and then its vital activity;
the individual cell dies, having exhausted its
original store of energy. Death is the mani-
festation of Life’s negative; the mortality of
the cell indicates that it cannot restore itself
after its own self-division, but is giving up
Life through reproducing Life in its cellular
progeny. Thus cell-life has its analogy to
the so-called infinite division of matter,
which is also a search for completing the
process of Nature’s separation by getting
back to the source, though matter as such is

166 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

lifeless, non-cellular. The unit of the Biocos-
mos is not, therefore, an atom or molecule,
but a cell with its minute vital process. This
cell, however, as distinct from the atom has
reached the point at which it can divide itself,
and so self-genesis enters with Life. Still let
us remember, that the cell persists not, but
dies at last through its own inner division
which it cannot control but which ultimately
controls it as a thing of Nature. The inher-
ent dialectic of its separation is that it must
finally separate from itself, and perish.

Now this negative of Life, or Death, be-
longs to the great totality, is a phase or stage
thereof. The living individual through his
self-negative act perpetuates himself in an-
other individual. Life continues through its
own cessation. So the law runs that still in
Nature, Death is properly the death of Death,
the negation of the negative, the separation
from separation. The highest attainment of
Nature is Life, the Death of Life must be
accordingly the conclusion of Nature, which
as a whole is the stage of separation in the
Universe.

If, therefore, we wish to reach back to the
primal force which drives the cell to its repro-
ductive division (which is such a marvel to
the biologist), we cannot stop till we come
to the conception of the universe as psychical

PATHOLOGY. 167

(the Pampsychosis) which has the original
self-division whose manifestation is Nature.
So it comes that all Nature is divisive, and
self-divisive, quite to infinity, but she has no
complete self-return, though this is what she
is seeking, yea what she is manifesting ex-
ternally. But when Nature overcomes her
self-division completely, that is just her end, ©
she has ceased to be, having transcended her
original and pervasive endowment. ‘The
death of the living individual is, universally
considered, the death of all individuation and
separation as such, the mortality of all mor-
tality, or the mortal served up to itself dia-
lectically. Here we may glimpse, as the posi-
tive result of the foregoing process, immor-
tality, which belongs not to Nature properly,
being just her negation.

Pathology, the science of disease, may in
its widest sense be regarded as the science of
the negative Biocosmos, which has indeed va-
rious stages. It has to be introduced with
the cell which in many ways may become the
source of disease, this being in itself a new
separation from the normal process of the
- organism (indicated in the particle dis). In-
deed all Nature as separative is subject to
disease inherently, which is only a wrong sort
of separation—a kind of dialectic in which
separation turns against itself. The tumor is

168 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

a mass of cells which, still in the body, have
declared their independence of the body.
This exerescence, as it is called, may be quite
indifferent to the rest of the organism, and
so not very harmful; but in the cancer we see
an actively destructive cellular mass, which
produces a virulent cell-war. Each battling
side is an organism of cells like two armies,
which grapple as organized. Yet each cell
has its principle, or is infected, we say; this
is usually the source of the whole trouble.

At this point rises the very important ques-
tion of the place and influence of the Psyche
in Pathology. For disease can be dominant-
ly psychical as well as physical; indeed it is
more or less of both. As the living cell and
every organism are composed of the two ele-
ments—Physis and Psyche—so the negative
principle starting in the one involves the
other. This fact may well be deemed the
basic one of all pathological treatment which
just now is in the bitterest sort of strife be-
tween its two elemental factors, the psychical
and the physical. The science of disease
should include both. Pathology must at the
start seek to give some classification of the
ereat chaotic throng of human ills. We shall
run our very brief survey so as to include
the negative phases of both Physis and
Psyche.

PATHOLOGY. 169

I. Physical: there can be an external de-
struction of the cell, organ and organism.
The ill starts from without; the environment
erushes in, such as heat, cold, accident. But
the physical must pass into the following:

II. Physio-psychical: here the two ele-
ments of the cell have become mutually re-
pellent, and no longer co-operative. Very
often a foreign cell enters, a bacillus, and
produces the dissociation or disease. Indeed
this is the chief field of disease which fluc-
tuates variously between the two sides, and
ean become wholly psychical. The ill of a
part attacks the Psyche who is president of
the whole organism, which is, therefore, sick,
inharmonious with itself. Half the diseases
are imaginary, but not the less real for that..

III. Psychical: the supreme psychical ill
taken by itself is insanity, which has many
forms and gradations.

It need hardly be repeated that all these
classes play into one another; Physis and
Psyche of the living organism are in direct
unity, and the affection of the one cannot help
influencing the other. Still the preceding
divisions hold good, indicating the chief lo-
eality or stress of the ailment. Though only
a limb be injured, the man is sick all over;
his entire body is disordered through the lit-
tle fragment of it. The stone can hardly be

170 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

ealled sick, though it be broken to pieces; each
piece remains what the whole is. But a sev-
ered limb is different, it lives only through
the entire organism, in whose process it
shares. It is the prerogative of the living
thing to be able to get sick; man, as the high-
est of life, can become sicker than any other
animal, and disease can hit him in more spots.
Still he is gifted with greater power of meet-
ing malady through his intelligence. In fact,
man has drilled a valiant army of disease-
fighters, verily a vast standing army with
many branches of service.

Sickness, accordingly, arises when a part
or a member of the living organism does not
perform its function in the whole through
some collapse or injury, or when it sets up
its own active process against that of the
total body, which then suffers, becomes path-
ological or the subject of Pathology. This
we may divide into three main branches
which have been above indicated in general:
Physiopathy (affection of the Physis);
Psyeho-physiopathy (the vast but indefinite
middle division, which just at present is hav-
the chief stress); Psychopathy (affection of
the Psyche, the realm specially of mental dis-
order).

But now follows the problem of overcoming
this sphere of separation, of negating this

HYGIOLOGY. 171

negation of Life, whose ultimate unit, the in-
tegral cell, again becomes the center. If there
are pathogenic cells (disease-creating), so
there are also hygiogenic cells (health-creat-
ing); through the latter the Cellular Biocos-
mos in a special science (which we here call
Hygiology) returns out of its stage of inner
conflict and disease.

III. Hyerouoey.

A science of Health must be the counter-
part to a science of Disease, though closely
connected in the field of medicine. How can
the negative element of the living cell and
organism be met and mastered is the ques-
tion of Hygienics or Hygiology.

This is a part of Biology as the science of
Life. The seat of all vitality being primar-
ily in the cell, this must be restored if affect-
ed. Hygiology (Hygienics) seek to restore
the cell, individual and associated, to its orig-
inal activity, which has been interrupted.
So we may deem it a return to Cytology in its
scientific scope and the third stage of the
Cellular Biocosmos.

Here we observe again an undoing of the
separative principle, an attack on the cell
foe with release of the cell, which, however,
must still have the vital power to resume its
normal process. The cell foe may be slain

172 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

by the antidote, but if the cell too be slain
or mortally wounded, there is no restoration.
Or the poison (toxin) of the cell-foe may
be rendered innocuous by a neutralizing agent
known as anti-toxin. Here les at present
the great field of the physician who by edu-
eation and habit is inclined to put his chief
stress upon Physis.

But the striking fact at the present time
in the development of the Healing Art is that
the psychician (so we call him for the con-
trast) has arisen who puts his chief stress
upon Psyche, and proposes to cure human
ills in that way. The result is a feud which
does not lack signs of bitterness. But the
surprising thing is the strong popular sup-
port which is given to the psychician who
practices psychical therapy, which, by the
way, has many forms and names. On the
whole he is regarded as irregular by the phy-
sician who deems himself regular, and usual-
ly denounces his psychical rival as a quack
and seeks to outlaw him. And the truth will
have to be confessed about both sides: too
often is the psychician an ignorant charlatan,
and on the other hand the physician a shal-
low if learned empiric. At the same time
it is not hard to find men of high character
in both parties. But this cannot obscure the
important fact that the Healing Art (which

HYGIOLOGY. 173

ought to make us whole) is today rent in the
middle from top to bottom along the line of
the elemental constituents of Nature her-
self, namely Physis and Psyche, which ought
to be joined in co-operation for health. Such,
we have to think, is the deep dualism in the
curative science of the present time, which
certainly ought to set about curing itself
first of all. For it surely has a lesion (or sep-
aration) within itself greater than that of
any individual sufferer. So the cry goes up:
Where is the Newton of medicine who will
unify its two warring sides and make a new.
synthesis of the science of Health? For it
is sicker than any of its human patients, and
needs the doctor of doctors, the universal
doctor who is able to prescribe the right med-
icine to medicine itself.

Another peculiar fact about the present
dualism in therapeutics is that it reaches
over into theology. The act of healing is
made a religious act, and its devotees have
organized even new churches. This has
roused the old church with its priesthood to
combat, and it is noticeable that those two
ancient enemies, the soul-curer and the body-
curer are joining in a common crusade
against this new foe. (Quite a little litera-
_ture already in this line.) To take an ex-
ample, Mrs. Hddy, whatever else she may

174 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

be, is a furiously destructive criticism of the
two doctors, the one of medicine, the other
of divinity, from the side of the Psyche. De-
structive, we say, in the most effective and
sensitive manner, for she has taken away
many followers of both, and hence is
destroying their vocation, and with it
their livelihood. That is certainly the
most penetrating sort of criticism, not of
words alone but likewise of deeds. So the
two sides stand in continual battle-line
awaiting perchance the coming peace-maker
and healer, who will unite both in a new
wholeness of health. Certain dawn-signs of
him may already be discerned by the eye of
hope.

But here we must quit this field of Hygi-
ology and with it the entire realm of the Cel-
lular Diacosmos which has gone its round, as
we conceive it, and which leaves us with a
return to the cellular structure as organized.
The separative hostile cell-life is conceived to
be overcome, and its association is now to be
regarded as it proceeds to evolve its distinct
typical forms of Life—forms of associated
cell-life which also have their own divisions
and their process. So we are brought to con-
sider the second chief stage of the Biocosmos,
which is designated, on account of its thor-
ough-going separative character, as the Par-

HYGIOLOGY. 175

ticularized Biocosmos, the association of cells
into their particular forms. ;
Retrospect. Before passing on, we may
take a glance back at the Cellular Biocosmos,
and trace some of its relations to the Dia-
cosmos, especially in the matter of Chemism,
which is the final diacosimeal stage (see Cos-
mos and Diacosmos, p. 543), and is just an-
fecedent to Life, or the Biocosmos. The
result is that not a few scientists have re-
solved the vital process into a chemical one,
which it is, but also something distinctively
more. Chemism does not control Life, on the
contrary Life controls Chemism to its end.
This point we may reflect upon a little.
The chemical process presupposes a chem-
ical product which it decomposes into its con-
stituents; thus it tears to pieces its own pre-
vious work. On the other hand it reeomposes
these constituents, making them perchance
into new compounds, which again it assails
and separates. Chemism is, therefore, al-
ways attacking Chemism in its own product,
which it will undo, and so undo itself. Yet, it
will put together in another way what it has
divided. So Chemism has a negative and a
positive action, which fall apart while ‘each
is ever counteracting the other; each seems
to be pursuing the other without overtaking
it. The compound is decomposed into its

176 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

component parts, which are recomposed
afresh, to be decomposed still again. Thus
the chemical pursuit is kept up through all
matter—neither side ever quite reaching the
other. Decomposition negates composition,
and is in turn negated by recomposition, one
after the other in endless sequence racing
through all earth’s substances and doubtless
through the entire Cosmos.

Now the point which we wish to empha-
size is that these two mutually fleeing and
mutually pursuing sides of Chemism overtake
each other and unite in the process of Life
or of the living thing. The organism is per-
petually decomposing and recomposing in
the same product. Your body as a given com-
pound never ceases while Life lasts, to de-
compose its food, and to recompose the same
into its tissues and organs, which are the
means as well as the result of the total chem-
ical process. The stomach decomposes what
in the end keeps recomposing it, and gives
to it the power of decomposition. From the
chemical point of view cause and effect,
means and end, come to unity in the living
object, which separates what it puts together
for the purpose of such separation. Under
this aspect we may call Life organized an
end unto itself within itself, or briefly self-
end.

HYGIOLOGY. 177

Indeed the animal body is full of chemical
processes but always under command. The
air we breathe oxydizes the venous blood,
which is thereby chemically changed, so that
we may breathe. That is, our breathing ap-
paratus through Chemism creates and keeps
re-creating itself. What our muscular sys-
tem does is just what enables it to do; the
power which goes out brings itself back. The
organism is indeed the product of Chemism,
but just this product produces in turn Chem-
ism, which by itself has no such return. Oth-
erwise stated, the producing and the produced
in Chemism are separated and end in separ-
ation, while in Life they are in one and form
one process. Decomposition and recomposi-
tion are cut in two by the chemical process,
and are held asunder, while in the vital pro-
cess, the produced is the producing, the de-
composed is recomposed into what decomp-
poses.

Still we are not to forget that Chemism
is the potentiality of Life, the latter’s two
sides shown as separate just before they are
united or rather just for the purpose of be-
ing united in their higher synthesis. The
chemical process seems ever ready to pitch
over into Life, but does not, cannot, without
ceasing to be itself. Still we may mark its
striving in that direction, it longs to over-

178 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

come its dualism in the unity of Life. Chem-
ism, as already remarked, is ever negative to
itself, it never fails to assail what it has pro-
duced as if deeply dissatisfied with itself.
Still it cannot overcome and control its own
negation, and so it calls for Life to complete
its insufficiency. For it is Life which in the
living body perpetually remakes the product
which it is unmaking. Thus we may conceive
Life as a chemical process self-reproducing
in its production and hence perennial.

Next we may ask where this movement out
of Chemism into Life takes place. Its arena
must be the cell in some form, as the ultimate
vital unit. This brings us back to that world
not yet unveiled, which we have already
named the Pre-cellular Biocosmos. The great
transition from Unlife to Life moves into the
evolving the cell perchance from the atom of
Chemism. Of course such a view is as yet
hypothetical; it is not based on any known
chemical reaction or on what may be seen
under the microscope. Still we may well con-
ceive the cell becoming gradually the mistress
of the atom, and directing it to her end which
is that of Life. The theory of Chemism de-
clares that the cell is composed of chemical
atoms, which must have been marshaled by
that living cellular energy already designated
as Psyche, who appears at just such con-

HYGIOLOGY. 179

junctures, with her process self-dividing (as
in Chemism) and self-returning (as in Life.)

Chemism must be regarded as the last and
highest point of Unlife before passing into
Life, the culmination of the Inorganic on its
way to the Organic, verily the final phase of
the Diacosmos, the deepest separative stage
of Nature herself ere she develops into her
self-returning vital act. Life is a rounded
and complete chemical process, which is al-
ways disintegrating its product (as blood,
muscle, organ), yet at the same time is al-
ways re-integrating what it disintegrates,
ever building anew the body which it is tear-
ing down. Thus Life is the secret agent
which turns Chemism against Chemism and
makes the same undo its undoing, or negate
its negative—which process thus becomes the
positive and vital. It is no wonder that the
negative Eighteenth Century developed
Chemistry, first really elevating it into a
science, which was also the favorite intellec-
tual pursuit of so many French revolution-
ists—the Spirit of Man in one of its epochal
phases being sympathetic with the like Spirit
of Nature. Here again we should note the
characteristic fact that Life is a chemical re-
turn to its start, that Chemism therein is
eyeled around upon itself, which act it can-
not perform alone; Chemism cannot round

180 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

out its own process, but remains deeply dual
and separative. On the other hand Life, even
- in its chemical aspect is an ever self-return-
ing process, overcoming not only the dualism
of Chemism, but of the whole Diacosmos, as
we have already seen.

Still, lest Life may become too proud over
its superiority, we have to emphasize again
its smallness, its relatively tiny volume. But
Chemism reaches out to the extent of the
cosmical universe, it is taking place in the
sun and stars, which are burning to the point
of luminosity—combustion being a chemical
process. And in the interstellar spaces no-
body can tell how much chemistry is going
on, keeping invisible and perchance awaiting
other ways of detection besides that of light.
The spectroscope is essentially a chemical in-
strument, and has revealed to us the stellar
fires as the blazes of innumerable cosmical
smithies which are forging the chemical ele-
ments, hydrogen and the rest. Thus Chem-
ism has its laboratories strewn throughout
the physical universe.

And yet we have to think that the chemical
act has its purposive end in the vital process,
small as this is. The unbounded Cosmos is
to be strained through a point, is to be indi-
viduated that it reach its destiny and get
alive, that it become quick and stay no longer

HYGIOLOGY. 181

wholly dead. So Chemism we see undoing it-
self into and through Life, its immediate
goal. Still we have to ask ourselves: Is this
colossal factory of the total Cosmos built
up just to produce a little speck of Life on
our Karth-ball? Probably the same product
exists elsewhere, though we have not yet
found it. Still further, science declares that
the small speck of Life, is destined to be
snuffed out, be it the cell or your body, or the
Karth’s total organism. If that be so, Life .
will relapse into Chemism, which will again
be the highest stage of Nature’s Evolution;
and the supreme transformation of the Cos-
mos of Matter and Motion through the Dia-
cosmos of Heat, Light and Chemism into the
Biocosmos of living shapes will have come to
an end. Such has been the recent scientific
view held up before us on many sides, and
has to be considered not only in its own right,
but as an image of the spirit of science, and
also as a deep-seated strain of the present
age. Still we have here to add a more recent
fact: the discovery of radium, which seems
(though its character is by no means fully
unfolded as yet) a kind of universal chemical
element, which is self-radiative or self-sep-
arative, but has the power of recovering the
energy which it has given out. Thus it has
a speck of the total chemical process within

182 THE BIOCOSMOS—CELLULAR.

itself and suggests life—a piece of matter
decomposing and recomposing itself. But
there is an interval of time between these
two acts, and so radium, taken piecemeal,
drops back to, or rather stays in Chemism.
But if the sun be largely composed of radium,
the self-emanating and the self-restoring ele-
ment, our central luminary would appear to
be in no danger of extinction or even of dimi-
nution, for while some parts are indeed
spending, others are recovering, so that the
loss may be always balanced by the gain.
Thus within the past few years radium has
given new hope to the universe, and specially
to our own solar system, and much more spe-
cially to our little Biocosmos which is now
exulting in the prospect of an eternal lease
of Life, in contrast with its former brief lot
of a hundred millions of years (according to
the Last Judgment of famous geologists).
Still our Earth-life may cease, while the Bio-
cosmos perchance lives on, not being depend-
ent upon a single planet. But such knowledge
belongs to the future.

And so, at this point, with some feeling of
relief we may return to our little Biocosmos,
whose second stage is before us and can fully
employ us with its vast variety of organs and
organized shapes, which we seek to put into
some kind of order within itself, as well as in
relation to the rest of the universe.

Bart Second.

THE PARTICULARIZED Briocosmos.

We are next to see how the Biocosmos, the
Order of Life, is particularized, differenti-
ated, specialized. What divisions or stages
does it now manifest? These, we may here
set down in advance, are regarded as three—
Plant-life, Animal-life, and Earth-life. All
are distinct and are to be separately treated;
yet they are likewise joined together in a
certain sequence and form a process.

The preceding part, which considered the
Cellular Biocosmos, must be regarded as the
immediate or elemental stage of this Order
of Life—the primal, constitutive portion—
made up as it is of the cell, which the three
kinds of Life pre-suppose. Associated cells

(183)

184 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

with their varied interdependence and _ ad-
justment form the living plant and animal
as we see them, and the earth, too, in so far
as this is alive. Thus we think the Biocos-
mos differentiating itself along three main
lines; or better, unfolding itself into three
fundamental. Life-forms, which, however,
round themselves out into one movement
whose theme is what we here call the Partic-
ularized Biocosmos.

Nor should we fail to note that this is the
second stage of the Biocosmical domain—that
of separation, particularity, division. It is
true that the cell may be a separated, yea, an
isolated object, as seen under the all-dividing,
separative microscope. It is as it were the
immediate living atom, which has an ultimate
sameness, but which is to combine or asso-
ciate with itself in producing the varied Life-
forms. We behold again the march from an
essential identity to a wide diversity which
is the unfolding of the vital Order. To be
sure we have seen that this atomic cell is re-
morsely hunted down by the biologist of the
present time with his sharp-sighted weapon,
so that the cell shrinks to the cellule, to the
granule, perchance to the gemmule, which
may for the nonce be taken as the universal
cell, cell of all cells, prototype and an archi-
tect of the rest. Thus the cell seems to be

ITS MEANING AND DIVISIONS. 185

moving regressively as well as progressively ;
it is itself claimed to be an association of
lesser cells, and thus is but working out its
own character in producing the larger Life-
forms of Nature.

Here again turns up the question which is
so often emphasized in this book: What is it
that produces all this division and combina-
tion? Who is the subtle Panurge that can-
not be exorcised from the minutest form of
the cell as well as its largest association? The
reader will probably anticipate our answer:
Psyche is again present and incarnating her-
self in all these living shapes from least to
largest, and urging them forward to their
goal. Just now, however, it is sufficient to
say upon this point that the Particularized
Biocosmos, our present theme, is the second
division or stage, and is such by virtue of
its psychical character in the process of the
total Biocosmos, which in its turn is the third
stage of Nature as a whole. Nor will the
true-hearted student stop in his thought till
he has carried this Biocosmical process up to
its ultimate source in the Universe itself and
has identified it as pampsychical.

More pressing than ever is the need of some
formulation or definition of Life, though hith-
erto this has not been absent At present let
us pick it up as a piece of matter having the

186 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED. —

gift of moving itself and of sustaining itself
from the outside along with an internal as-
similation, and of reproducing itself as indi-
vidual. In all three of these basic acts there
is some form of self-return, which may be
regarded as the characteristic of Life.

Take yourself as a living thing. A shred
of the Cosmos you were in the ancient of
days, a streak of nebula such as we still may
observe in Orion for instance. Now that cos-
mical wisp of tenuous fire-mist began to
evolve many hundreds of millions of years
ago until it attained Life with the power of
self-movement and form having self-sustenta-
tion and self generation. Thus you became a
member of the Biocosmos, doubtless after
having had a long cosmical experience
(through gravitation for instance) and also
a long diacosmical experience (through heat,
light, electricity and chemism, for instance).
But that was not the end of your evolution:
through many a gradation of Life, probably
from the cell through uncounted vital shapes,
you ascend till you break over the limit of
Life into Self- consciousness, truly your goal.
Now you ean turn back and view Life evolv-
ing through its long sequences—which act
Life itself could not perform. What is it that
can in thought re-evolve itself evolving
through multi-myriaded millenniums? That

ITS MEANING AND DIVISIONS. 187

is you now in the present act—your present
Ego as evolved. But of this, hereafter.

It would seem that the sphere of self-move-
ment is extending more and more into the
inorganic realm. The self-forming power of
the crystal has long been remarked, and spec-
ulated about, some observers even going to
the extent of attributing to it a sort of life. In
the crystal Nature manifests herself as ge-
ometrizing purely, and shapes herself reg-
ularly in line, surface and solid. Given the
material and the conditions, it forms itself
after a certain type which is externally re-
peated in layers, a kind of outer generation;
just so much matter shoots into shape, like
ice and snow, from water; it assumes fixed
limits, it individualizes itself into an outer
form. Now, every living thing also has this
formative power, it bounds itself in an ex-
ternal shape which characterizes it normally,
be it plant or animal. Undoubtedly these
shapes become very diversified in life; they
are the outward signs of what is going on in-
ward; they show an ascending line from the
simplest to the most complex or highest or-
ganisms. The erystal is the first external
manifestation of this form-making energy of
Nature, the inorganic formation which is to
become organi, or the shaping power of Life
taken by itself before Life. For every living

188 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

thing has a material form, an inorganic sub-
strate which it organizes. We can say that in
a degree it is crystallized into its typical
form, which however is not pure material
form like a crystal, but has Life; this moves
its form with a certain mastery, it sustains
and rebuilds the same, finally it generates the
same as another individual. The crystal is
accordingly endowed with a certain formative
spontaneity (a kind of will in Nature again)
over lifeless matter, itself remaining lifeless,
though formed. But this formative power of
the crystal goes over into Life, which, how-
ever, employs the same to its own end, so that
vital forms are not those of the crystal. Here,
too, we ask what is and whence comes such
form-giving energy which can make matter
move into a shape, but not yet into a living
shape. The crystal, accordingly, we may con-
ceive as pointing the way to Life, though not
yet alive, a stage of Unlife which strives to be.
alive. ;

The living Form cannot stay merely Form,
but must assimilate sustenance from its en-
vironment, and keep on assimilating. A con-
tinual re-making of itself from the external
world is the prime function of this Form,
which never stops being formed unless it
somehow gets crystallized, like a piece of fos-
sil wood. This is the ceaseless round of As-

ITS MEANING AND DIVISIONS. 189

similation, the Form’s real identification of
the world with itself, which only death inter-
rupts in the living thing. The process of
Assimilation is, therefore, the perennial bat-
tle between Life and Unlife, through which
battle every living individual passes with vic-
tory and defeat.

Still this living individual reproduces it-
self not only in its own body, but in another
body; it begets its like as we say. This is the
generative Process of Life, its highest mani-
festation, the supreme act of Nature. We
see that the living organism has to reproduce
not merely its own tissues, but must rise to
reproducing a different organism; Life the
very lowest has thus a side of altruism, which
starts far down in Nature. The microbe’s
trend, in its simple fissiparism, is to live not
merely in itself, but in and for another. More-
over, the generative Process returns to the
starting-point and recreates the Form which
thus begins anew the round of Life.

Manifestly in all the kinds of Life—vege-
tal, animal, terrestrial—there is the threefold
movement above indicated, whose stages are
Formation, Assimilation, Generation. Here
again we may discern that inner all-ordering
process so often noted as psychical, which
never fails at the nodal point to direct Na-
~ture. Moreover, we shall find that each of

190 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

these stages, formative, assimilative, and
generative, has its own process also—the part

re-enacting the whole in order to be a part.
~ Now the definition of Life is best conceived
in these three terms, with their process. The
individual Form which assimilates the ex-
ternal world to itself (so far as needful) and
ejects itself into the world as a new individ-
ual Form, is alive, and nothing else is. Such
a living Form is doubly creative, reproducing
itself within itself and reproducing itself in
another. It is said by many, perhaps by
most biologists, that Life cannot be defined,
that what they are trying to formulate ad-
mits of no formulation. Such is their inner
contradiction in this matter; still they seem
to push ahead all the same, seeking to define
what admits of no definition. For just this
definition, broadly taken, is their science,
which must be, therefore, the knowing of what
never can be known. But it is well that the
scientist on the whole is not logical, if he
were, we would lose all the valuable knowl-
edge which he strews along his way in pur-
suit of the Unknowable, desperately investi-
gating the Uninvestigable. Let the reader
duly appreciate the scientific consciousness,
which has so deeply inwrought itself into the
spirit of our own age. Nor should he fail to
note that the naturalist generally becomes as

ITS MEANING AND DIVISIONS. 191

dualistic as Nature herself in whose work-
shop he is employed; he cannot help partak-
ing of the character of the element in which
he works; he has to become what he does.

But returning from our little excursion,
we have still to mark out in advance the kinds
of Life—Plant, Animal, Earth—and fore-
shadow their process. For they—Life-forms
we may briefly call them—belong together
and constitute one great movement of the
Biocosmos, the second sweep of it, here des-
ignated as particularized. Only the more
obvious distinctions can be summarized for
an outlook over the whole field; details will
be added later.

(I). Puant-tirz. This is in the most im-
mediate relation to the total Life of the
Earth, unseparated from the terrestrial
mother is the Plant, a suckling continuous
and unable to walk. Not self-centered, each
organ largely autonomous, yet with a com-
mon center which lies outside of them; hence,
too, no sensation or very little, and no self-
movement or very little.

(II). Antmat-rirz. This is organically
self-centered, the organs are subordinated to
a center which is within them, and which is
itself an organ (the brain). Hence, self-
movement or locomotion, in which the organ-
‘ism breaks for a while its connection with

192 THE BIOCOSMOS—-PARTICULARIZED.

Earth-life; hence, too, sensation, which marks
the unity of the organism. Food is not im-
mediate and elemental like the Plant’s, but
mediated, being vegetal or animal, or both.

(III.) Earru-tirzr. This embraces the to-
tal round of the individual Life of Plant and
Animal, each and all, from its earliest stage
(Protobioticon) through its entire individu-
ation till its return to its original source in
death. It is this Earth-life which sustains
the Plant immediately and the Animal medi-
ately; both come from it in different ways,
move through it on different lines, and are
taken back to it for a new individuation. Such
is the comprehensive cycle of Earth-life,
which on the one hand individuates itself
into Plant-life and Animal-life, but on the
other hand is an individual also, with its own
round of Life in birth, bloom and cessation.

In this short abstract peers forth the pro-
cess of the three great Life-forms, we hope,
or at least the suggestion that there is such
a process. The Earth-individual is the living
fountain of all individuated Life on the plan-
et; every Form that is alive points back to
this creative prototype of itself; the little
microbe as well as the huge elephant is a part
or member of the Earth-life, and as such
has the essential process of the whole. That
is, every living individual pre-supposes its

ITS MEANING AND DIVISIONS. 193

universal genetic principle, which is the fore-
going total Earth-life.

It may be added that the present field, the
Particularized Biocosmos, furnishes the su-
preme opportunity for the comparison of
these Life-forms and their manifold evolu-
tionary phenomena. There is a Plant-norm
with a double line of shapes reaching from
the lowest to the highest and from the remote
geologic past to the present; all these vegetal
shapes are to be compared and ordered in-
ternally and externally in what may be called
a comparative Botany. In like manner, there
is an Animal-norm, with its double line of
shapes reaching from the lowest to the high-
est and from the far-off past to the present;
here is the domain of a comparative Zoology.
And the science of Earth-life, Geology, is also
largely comparative, embracing the Inorganic
as well as the Organic. Thus we discern in
the present subject as a whole the Compara-
tive Biocosmos which seeks to order and
hence to unify all this diversity of particular-
ized Life according to its essential relation-
ships.

Science has by no means attained any such
general principle of biological’ comparison,
though searching for it ardently, as we see
by the many shiftings of the standard of clas-
sification for both plants and animals in re-

194 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

cent years. But the ultimate principle of
ordering the Biocosmos must, in our opinion
be psychical; indeed the present species, ge-
nera, families, etc., are not realities, but ideas
—symbols they are sometimes called. Thus
Psyche is at work now in this realm of Bio-
cosmical organization, but does not yet recog-
nize herself, and fully behold her own process
in the processes of Life.

PLANT-LIFE IN GENERAL. 195

I. Puant-Lirs.

Of the three kinds of Life-forms which are
represented on our globe, the Plant stands
in the most immediate connection with the
Earth. It is not yet separated in form from
its terrestrial mother, not yet weaned we may
say, but sucks sustenance directly from the
maternal bosom. We may deem it, therefore,
the infant in comparison with the Animal,
which is bodily separated from the Earth,
though it keeps returning to her at every
step. Still it has on the whole the power of
locomotion or change of place; it does not
cling to one spot like the Plant, but has a
limited range of spatial freedom. Thus we
ean say that the Animal is a more free being
than the Plant, and consequently more near
to the goal of the Universe, if this goal be
freedom. Mother Earth, however, has her
own spatial movements, axial and orbital, and
carries along her two living families of chil-
dren, the vegetal and animal, on her breast
through her two revolutions. Such, however,
may be taken as the first fact of Plant-life: it
is not yet spatially free of its nurse, it is still
a suckling at the source of its existence and
remains so as long as it lives. We may note,
however, that there are some seeming ex-

196 THE BIOCOSMOS-—PARTICULARIZED.

ceptions, such as the epiphyte with its roots
dangling in the air. Certain animals, con-
versely, are fixed to one place and appear to
vegetate (the sponges). Still the typical
plant has this primal character of being direct-
ly rooted in the Earth, whose three main ele-
ments (land, water, air) are its immediate
sustenance. Thus it is truly the elemental
Life-form, feeding on the Inorganic directly,
and transmuting the same into the Organic,
even if some Plants (like the Dionaea) may
be supposed to have a relish for animal food.

The Plant is a living organism, with a com-
mon center, yet this center is not specialized
inside the organism, but lies more on the out-
side, in the Earth. The result is that the ~
Plant is not self-anchored but fixed in the
soil, and that each organ, even if working
for a common end, may act quite independ-
ently, and one can often be made to take the
place of another. Thus the vegetal organism
is not a profoundly associated system of mu-
tually interrelated organs, but rather a
league (to employ an institutional parallel)
of more or less independent members, each
of which may perform under certain condi-
tions the total process. So the leaf or bud
or shoot may show itself by growth the entire
Plant. We cannot wholly deny to the organs
of the Plant a certain interdependence, yet it

at

‘PLANT-LIFE—FORMATION. 197

is relatively external; while that of the Ani-
mal’s organs is internal in comparison; mu-
tual co-operation of parts is not written so
indelibly on the limbs of the tree as on the
limbs of the horse. The life of the Plant re-
mains, therefore, a kind of child-life with its
rooted attachment to its mother; it never out-
grows infancy, for the tall Sequoia of many
hundreds of years ever remains a baby at
-the breast.

Still the Plant is alive, and has the uni-
versal process of all Life, which process be-
comes an emphatic ground of the unity and
the organization of the present stage of the
Biocosmos (the Particularized). As already
indicated, Plant-life will show the three
phases of all vital activity: Formation, As-
similation, and Generation.

I. Tar Formative Process oF Puant-Lire.
The Plant has an external Form which char-
acterizes it; everybody soon learns to distin-
guish it from all other objects, even if in
micro-organisms it is often difficult for the
trained observer to tell a Plant from an Ani-
mal. Granted that there is a field in which
the two are hardly yet differentiated, the de-
veloped or normal Plant-form is not ambig-
uous, though exceedingly varied. The orig-
inative type has many manifestations, all of
which are different. No two Plant-forms of

198 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

the same species are just alike, each has its
own individuality. Also each asserts itself
against the other, hence arises that struggle
of the individual, Plant or Animal, to exist
and to propagate itself—the struggle for ex-
istence throughout living Nature, which has
been made so famous by Darwin. Every indi-
vidual Plant, therefore, differs from the rest,
varying in form; and this variation may be
its fate or its fortune, the pivot on which
turns its sweep to death, or to the continu-
ance of life as individual or as species. So
the Plant-form has specially in recent times
become very important not only in Botany
but in Natural Science, its problem being:
Can it preserve and propagate itself not only
as type but as peculiar individual?

In this connection comes up the remarkable
experience of DeVries with his Evening
Primrose which he happened to find in a
potato field, seemingly a runaway from culti-
vation. In its freedom it was playing all
sorts of antics with its transmitted Form, of
which nearly every organ was varying from
what it ought to be by tradition; in fact, new
organs seemed to be breaking out, especially
in the shape of fasciae and pitchers, though
these might be called malformations. This
variability sported even with the length of
life; ordinarily the plant was a biennial, but

PLANT-LIFE—FORMATION. 199

could be an annual, or even a triennial. Then
each variation would breed its own, and prop-
agate itself, quitting apparently its former
changeful character for a settled heredity.
Thus DeVries obtained a number of new spe-
cies, which would keep on reproducing their
own kind. So this one Primrose seems to
have the power of generating not only indi-
viduals but species, and of passing from the
regular transmitted Homogenesis to a sudden
explosive Heterogenesis, which ejects all at
once new Plant-forms, which again become
homogenetic. Such is the Mutation Theory
(a poor designation of the fact) which to the
slow orderly Evolution of Darwin has added
the rapid catastrophic Revolution, as a stage
of the innocent paradisaical Plant-world, so
that this is getting to be as bad as man, quite
as much of a fallen soul. In fact one may
think of that Primrose of DeVries as ex-
pelled, or rather fleeing from the Garden of
Eden fixed in a kind of sacred order, to the
liberty of the potato patch, where it could
rollick in the creation of new Forms, repro-
ducing not only Primroses after the old pat-
tern, but reproducing new patterns in a free
diversity of creative energy. The little silent
flower, symbol of innocence and submission,
has, then, in its heart, too, the revolutionary
impulse, the protest against its traditional

200 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

limitations, the barrier-bursting Titanic
spirit which under a favoring environment
will break forth in a kind of volcanic up-
heaval. So we have to note the Negative in
the Psyche of the Plant, where we hardly ex-
pected to find it so strongly manifesting it-
self. Still therein it is a true child of Nature
who springs of the deepest dualism of the
Universe itself.

Viewed from another side, it may be seen
that the Plant, even the humblest specimen,
has in itself the sleeping potentiality of all
vegetal species, genera, families—yea, of the
entire vegetal kingdom. That little Primrose
started to reproduce not merely some new
specific: Forms of itself, but an entirely new
Plant-world, which must have lain ideally in
it, and have impelled it toward realization.
Yet, Time was needed, many geologic ages in
fact. But the Dutch botanist (DeVries)
came along just in its earliest stage, when it
had only taken its first step by reproducing
some fresh species. These he picked up, see-
ing his opportunity, and turned back into the
regular reproduction of like individuals by
cultivation. Thus the floral revolution was
literally nipped in the bud, and the rebel
brought back into the pre-established order
of garden life. _

So much hes implicitly in the Formative

PLANT-LIFE—FORMATION. 201

Process of the Plant, which is always taking
place in a constituted Form, usually named
its organism. This is what we shall now
study more specially.

1. The Plant Organism as a whole. Before
we begin viewing its separate parts, it is
well to look at the Plant as a whole. In its
highest forms it has the tendency to stand
erect, perpendicular to the Earth in its stem,
as if showing a certain degree of independ-
ence and self-assertion. On the other hand
many plants crawl, and others droop, unable
to support themselves fully in separation
from their source. Thus there is a long line
of Plants from lowest to highest in a gra-
dation of excellence, it would seem. Hence,
at this point rises the query: What is the
criterion of such excellence? How shall we
order and grade the Plant Organism before
us, belonging as it seems, somewhere in the
vegetal hierarchy?

Of the animal kingdom, the king is mani-
fest and generally acknowledged: Man’s or-
ganism is the highest; it has evolved to the
supremacy, even if it be no longer evolving,
as some say. Supposing that the Plant and
Animal start together far back somewhere
in the Protobioticon, they begin soon to bifur-
eate and each starts developing on its own
‘ine of ascent. The Animal in many ways

902 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

outstrips the Plant, chiefly because it has
shown the power of evolving a distinctly reg-
nant form, the human. The vegetable line
also shows in general an upward evolution;
the so-called Cryptogam (a designation often
discarded today but still useful) is manifestly
a lower organism than the Phanerogam or
the flowering plant. But what genus among
Phanerogams corresponds in the Plant world
to the genus homo in the Animal world? If
we take size as criterion, shall it be the bao-
bab of Madagascar, the banyan of India, or
the sequoia of California? Hardly; by the
sametest the elephant might be throned as the
supreme animal instead of man. The total
tree of Plant-life seems not to top out in
what is most excellent of its own, as does the
corresponding tree of Animal life. The line
of evolution through Nature into Self-con-
sciousness toward the All-Self, does not pass
by way of the Plant, which seems, after reach-
ing a certain stage, to break off and scatter.

The fact corresponds to the character of
the Plant which lacks concentration. Each
vegetal part or region is endowed with a kind
of autonomy, which will not permit a com-
pletely centralized authority like that of the
higheranimal. The Plant Organism has no true
head, as there is in it no true headship. In
like manner it has no central stomach, as each

PLANT-LIFE—FORMATION. 203

portion of the body does its own digesting.
Everywhere the Plant excretes, which is
‘known as its transpiration. A developed
single organ of heart or of lungs it has not,
yet it has circulation at every point and res-
piration also, though the latter be special-
ized in the leaves. It is evident that Plant-
Organism as a whole has not yet subordinated
its Parts, each of which insists in a manner
upon being the Whole, and performing the
functions of the same. Though an organism
it has not yet differentiated itself into co-
operant organs, with their division of labor,
and their subsumption under a common con-
trol. Comparatively speaking, the Plant is
multicentral while the animal as typical is
unicentral. Of course the lower animals in
this characteristic approach the Plant.
Doubtless the best criterion of the grade of
the vegetal Organism would be this inner sub-
ordination of the parts to the whole.

Goethe’s statement of the foregoing fact
(in his Morphology) has by no means become
antiquated in our present knowledge: ‘‘The
less perfect the organism is, the more similar
its parts are to one another, and the more
they resemble the whole organism. The more
perfect the organism, the more dissimilar its
parts to one another and to the whole or-
ganism.’’? Now it is the Plant whose organs,

204. THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

in contrast to those of the Animal, are similar
to one another and to the total body. More-
over the same principle is a criterion of grad-
ing both Plants and Animals. Goethe goes
on: ‘‘The more similar the parts, the less
are they subordinated to one another; the
subordination of the parts points to a more
perfect organism.’’ As already indicated, the
Plant lacks this subordination of the many
organs to the one central organ.

2. The Plant Organism in its dual sym-
metry. The next fact to be regarded in the
Plant Organism is what appears a double
polarity—it has two poles, opposite yet sym-
metrical. Roots and rootlets grow down-
ward, seeking the dark; branches and leaves
grow upward seeking the light. The inter-
mediate trunk embodies both tendencies: it,
as if manifesting Nature’s dualism, waxes
both earthward and sunward, with a part
unseen and a part seen. Striking is this po-
larity of the typical Plant; indeed it re-
sembles an upright magnetic bar at whose
ends above and below are raying out lines of
iron filings. Evidently vital energy here di-
vides and moves in two opposite directions,
becoming positive and negative, we can say
analogically. This may even be the work of
electricity, which is now being studied a good
deal in Plant-life by scientists. At any rate

PLANT-LIFE—FORMATION. 205

we can affirm simply from the phenomenon
that the roots are more gravitational and thus
cosmical, while the branches are more de-
eravitational and thus diacosmical. So we
have the right to think of the Cosmos and
Diacosmos, each with its own counter en-
ergy, as united and mediated in the life of
the Plant-Organism, which as alive belongs
to the Biocosmos.

This symmetrical dualism of Plant-life we
may also notice in Animal-life and Harth-life
though in wholly different forms. For in-
stance the animal is divided lengthwise along
the so-called median line into two halves
which constitute what is known as its bi-lat-
eral symmetry; each side of your body, right
and left, is symmetrically twinned to form a
rounded whole. The Plant-Organism has,
however, its symmetry between its two ends,
not between its two sides; is bi-terminal, not
bi-lateral. Finally the Earth-Organism is
likewise ideally divided along a median line
which runs round the globe, and is known as
the Equator. But in this case the separation
is not terminal or lateral, but spherical; an-
alogously we may call the earth’s double sym-
metry bi-spherical (or bi-hemispherical). The
main interest in the present case is to see the
three ultimate Life-forms, Plant, Animal, and
Earth, each dividing itself into symmetrical

206 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

halves, so as to become one in the process of
its Organism.

This dual symmetry, present in every or-
ganism which Life brings forth, may well be
regarded as the impress of Nature herself
upon her living forms, showing her inherent
dualism in all her creatures. She must be
twofold, halved to be a whole, bi-formed to be
one form. Life is indeed the unification of
the twofoldness of Nature which still remains
twofold in its outer manifestation, else it
would no longer be Nature. Life, therefore,
is always positing the two sides of Nature
in the very oneness of its process. This vital
oneness is to be identified as the Psyche now
gotten inside the Physis, ever overcoming the
dualism yet ever replacing it afresh. Such
is the round everywhere manifested in the
Bioecosmos, the outer Form of which we may
glimpse in this dual symmetry of the Organ-
ism.

3. The Plant Organism differentiated. To-
day there seems a tendency among botanists
to separate the Plant Organism into two
parts, root and shoot. Under the latter are
included the stem and branches with the
leaves. Verbally considered, the root is as
much of. a shoot as the twigs and foliage,
though the one works in the soil and the other
in the air. But the deeper objection to such

PLANT-LIFE—FORMATION. UE

a division is that the stem or trunk is ignored
in its double and mediating character between
the two extremes, or ends, for it is both root
and shoot, growing downward as well as up-
ward, nightward as well as lightward, termi-
nating in rootlet as well as in leaflet. Thus
the Plant Organism, if it be divided accord-
ing to its inner nature and process, must be
taken as constituted of three basic members
which unite into the one organic whole as
vegetal—stem or trunk, root with fibrils, and
top with branches or foliage.

The stem we put first, as it is the central
shaft from which radiate the two ends into
_ their symmetrical systems of ramification—
the one in the earthy element, the other in the
aerial. Moreover it has the tendency to be
cylindrical, in itself and also in its off-shoots
(excepting the leaf), which form indicates
that the original spherical shape of Nature,
which is so common in the bodies of the Cos-
mos, is elongated by pushing outwards in
two opposite directions. Plant-life, germi-
nating originally doubtless from primal
earth-life (Protobioticon) expands the first
seed-ball as a little round cell into the cylin-
der, which remains so characteristic of vege-
tation. Embryonically the stem is first al-
ready (the caulicle) to which the cotyledons
(seed-leaves) are attached; thus it would

208 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

seem to be the primordial source of the other
two parts (root and foliage), containing orig-
inally within itself their opposite tendencies
already mentioned, the upward and the down-
ward, or the diacosmical and the cosmical,
which tendencies it keeps active as long as
there is life. The stem is also the criterion
of the second grand division of Plants, that
of the phanerogams into endogens and exo-
gens, though the two kinds of seed-leaf are
taken as the basis for the same division (mo-
nocotyledonous and dicotyledonous).

The root with its system may be regarded
as the second member of the Plant Organism,
from which it at once springs in germination
as the primal separation. Significant is the
fact that certain lower Plants have forms
which indicate that stem and root are not yet
differentiated (in the Dioscorea for instance).
The root can be seen to have several pur-
poses, but the primary one is to fix the Plant
to and in the Earth, whereby it is anchored to
one spot, and then to start it to sucking the
maternal breast for nourishment (imbibi-
tion). Still further, the root can be the store-
house of life for the Plant. It is in general
cylindrical like the stem and upper branches,
but longer and more irregular and sinuous,
since it has to crawl and wind about in many
directions to find its aliment, which is not

PLANT-LIFE—FORMATION. 209

evenly distributed in the soil. So the leaf
and branch can be more orderly and straight
in the regular air and sunshine than the root,
which has to increase its surface by a vast
number of hair-fibres reaching out their little
mouths for water and nutriment on all sides.
Underground there can be no flattened leaf,
which has simply to extend its hand and re-
ceive directly the downpour of rain and shine.
Many kinds of roots have been described and
figured in the books; but here we need only
note the fact, so characteristic of the vegetal
principle, that any part of the Plant seems
capable of being metamorphosed, under right
conditions, into the root. We have hitherto
spoken of soil roots; but the other elements,
air and water, produce roots in certain Plants
(instances are the duckweed as water-plant
and the orchid as air plant). The same Plant:
has been known to change its root from one
element to another. Moreover the aerial
branch of the banyan, the East-Indian fig
tree, drops to the earth and takes root, chang-
ing to a new stem also. Thus we observe a
part of the Plant becoming not only another
part, but the total Plant, which even as nor-
mal is not possessed of a strong, self-assert-
ing individuality compared to the Animal.
The root, babe-like, has to take its food in
solution from the soil, and this gives to the

210 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

Plant its earthy matter, its fixed element or
skeleton, which enables it to stand erect. (Of
course many Plants do not mount, but droop
and creep). The root, accordingly, fastens
the Plant to one place, and imparts firmness
to its body; grasping with its thousand little
fingers Mother Earth, it begins to suck.

Worth repeating is the fact, as character-
istic of Plant-life, that the root can be meta-
morphosed into stem and branch, and made
to put forth leaves. The reason is that there
is no central subordination of parts or very
little; each organ is similar to the rest and
to the whole organism. Hence it comes that
each organ can so easily take the place of an-
other and of the total body. That is, the or-
gans of the Plant have autonomy and equal-
ity, but small centrality. There is indeed as-
- sociation—that of cells into the organ, that of
organs into the organism, that of organisms
into plant societies—still this association is
relatively weak and immature all the way
through, in comparison with that of the ani-
mal.

The leaf with its spreading system of buds
and branches, in other words the typical tree-
top, we arrange as the third member of the
Plant Organism as manifested in the outer
Form. Here we see the strong contrast with
the concentration of the stem which holds it

PLANT-LIFE—FORMATION. 11

up and from which it rays out on every side,
when it is free to unfold, into a rounded,
somewhat hemispherical or conical shape.
Moreover it is the symmetrical counterpart
of the root-system, which also radiates in all
directions from the stem as original center.
But the root:is all puckered mouth for suc-
tion, while the leaf is all extended hand for
receiving what falls, though it too has pores
for absorbing its gifts. The leaf has the ten-
dency to take the horizontal position at right
angles to the perpendicular stem, chiefly for
the sake of catching the sun’s rays on its
broad upper surface. By this purpose also
the direction of the branches is controlled:
they quit the central stem and spread out to
carry the leaf to sunshine. From this fact
it is evident that the branch properly belongs
to the leaf-system which separates it from
its original home, and governs its course out-
ward and upward. For it is the leaf which
is to get not only ight (as the books too nar-
rowly put it) but also heat, yea electricity;
we should add, too, chemism from the so-
ealled actinic ray; thus all the diacosmical
radiants, as well as chemical energy are taken
up by the leaf in the sunbeam. Nor is this
all: the two general fluids, water and air, be-
long in the workshop of the leaf. Thus it will
‘be seen that the leaf grapples with the whole

212 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

range of the Diacosmos, fluid, radiant, and
chemical, transforming it into the vital
sphere or the Biocosmos. The Plant, then,
largely through its leaf reveals itself as sub-
ordinating the whole separative domain of
Nature, and making it over, into the rounded
process of Life, the next higher stage. We
hail the appearance of the doctrine of helio-
tropism in recent botany, but it must be vast-
ly extended, and more deeply interpreted.
The turn of the Plant to the sun (heliotrop-
ism) means far more than its turn to light,
important as this is.

The leaf in itself forms a very interesting
and significant study of great diversity, capa-
ble of being ordered into the image of the to-
tal Plant and of all Life, yea of the Universe
itself in small. First the leaf differentiates
itself into an upper sunward surface, and a
lower shadeward surface, then it shows a vast
multiplicity of shapes, outlines, sizes, quali-
ties, so that each tree or brush may be said
to have its own leaf, and this often varies a
2ood deal on the same bush or even twig. The
kinds of venation in the leaf (paral-
lel-veined and _ netted-veined) seem _ to
indicate a great node in the evolu-
tion of Plant-life, conjointly with the two
sorts of cotyledons. In fact the leaf may be
put into the line of vegetal evolution to repre-

PLANT-LIFE—FORMATION. 213

sent the ascent of the Plant out of the first
thallus in which it is not yet differentiated
from stem and root. Sometimes it has the
motile gift like the sensitive plant, whose
caprices have hardly yet been fathomed. The
leaf has also its varied inner structure, or cell-
ular anatomy; suggestive too is its outer ar-
rangement on the stem (phyllotaxy). But
any ordering of these details of the leaf we
shall have to omit.

So we conceive the vegetal organism dif-
ferentiated into its three chief members—
stem, root, foliage—which are to be grasped
in their order and as a process. In the nor-
mal Plant-form this process is going-on all
the time. The stem pushes to the earth first,
returning to the mother after the first separ-
ation of life into the cell or into the thallus.
This perpetual movement of the Plant down-
ward or perchance backward to its origin is
ealled its geotropism, or the turn to the Earth
from which it has to recuperate by incessant
draughts of its own elements. But now fol-
lows the deeper act. From the sun sprang
Mother Earth, who thus on her part has
her remoter origin—her solar father we may
call him, to whom the Plant goes back for
radiance which the Earth cannot furnish.
- This is what has been already alluded to as
the Plant’s heliotropism. So the stem turns

214 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

about and grows in the opposite direction to-
ward its primal creative source, even if far
more removed in space and time. There can
be no doubt, however, that Sun’s provident
eifts—Heat, Light, and Electricity together—
nursed the first Earth-life, hatched the cos-
nic egg into the earliest living thing on our
planet. Now this process of origination from
sunlight all Plants have to re-enact, even if
some burrow in the soil. And the animal too
goes back to the same source. So the petty
bramble is not only born and suckled of the
Karth-Mother (in the roots), but is kept alive
and made to grow by its grandfather, Old Sol
(in the foliage). Stem, root and leaf involve
in their genesis the sun and the planet. Ver-
ily the totality of Nature is required to pro-
duce the smallest physical object, which in
turn reveals its far-off origin through its pro-
cess when this is rightly seen into.

In such a way we behold the Plant Organ-
ism rounding itself out through its three con-
stitutive members into the movement of vege-
tal life. In fact we may observe this round of
stem, root, and foliage returning into itself
when the branch of the banyan tree drops
down to the earth, becoming root and stem
as well as branch. So the top genetically
bends around into its origin and re-creates
the whole Plant without unfolding into the

PLANT-LIFE—FORMATION. 215

seed. But the foliage remains as it were one
tree-top with many stems and their roots.

Each leaf in the typical Plant, when it has
performed its function, returns to the Earth
whence it arose and restores the material
which it borrowed, thus making its final
round. Also the seed, the supreme purpose
and end of the Plant, drops back to its origin-
ative starting point and is to reproduce the
entire Organism anew in stem, root, and foli-
age. But this involves a new process.

With this differentiation of the Plant into
stem, root, and leaf as stages of the one vege-
tal Form joined into a single process, we have
come back to the Plant Organism as a whole
united in and through its divisions and differ-
ences. The parts are seen to make the total-
ity, not merely as an external aggregate, but
as an inner completeness and fulfillment.
Such is the outcome of the Formative Process
of Plant-life, which presents to us the indi-
vidual Form of the Plant, as it appears on our
-earth. Now it is this individual Form with
which botanical science chiefly deals, analyz-
‘Ing, comparing, synthesizing it in various
ways. But the natural Form of the Plant,
the science thereof, and the scientist too must
all be seen at last as parts or phases of the
same ultimate principle, that of the Biocos-
mos.

216 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

It is true that this Plant-form in the pres-
ent case was taken for granted; it was, so to
speak, something externally picked up and
looked at in its outer organization. But the
question rises, how is this Form kept going,
for it is always in vital activity? This vege-
tal Form persists in reproducing and re-con-
stituting itself, being both the worker and the
wrought; what is continually being made is
the maker. Still it has to have material for
its work; the living machine has to be fed not
only to keep the machine running, but to be
always re-making it. This brings us to con-
sider the second stage of the Plant-Organism:
its power of assimilating unto itself what is
different, of transforming Unlife into Life.

IJ. THe AsstmiuativE Process oF PLant-
LIFE. In the present stage there is a pervas-
ive twofoldness which, though overcome for
a moment is posited always anew: the Plant
as living individual versus its elemental sur-
roundings which it has to assimilate in order
to live and reproduce its Form. So the sep-
aration between Plant and non-Plant, between
the formed and the unformed, comes to the
front; the vegetal individual is now to tackle
its opposite and to transmute it into its own
organism just through that organism.

The ultimate life-unit of the Plant is the
cell, as already indicated; thus we have again

PLANT-LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 217

to take a glance at that wonderful little crea-
ture creating itself and then building itself
into its own house through association. Ver-
ily the cell is the brickmaker and the brick-
layer, yea even the brick of Life’s edifice. It
is primarily a self-contained structure, yet it
associates itself into the organs of the Plant,
which organs do not halt in their associative
feat but constitute the total organism of the
Plant. And this is not the end of their asso-
ciation, which rises to forming Plant socie-
ties, of which recent Botany has much to say.

The Formative Process previously de-
seribed cannot live on itself, but must be fed
from the outside; hence the Plant will attack
its environment and appropriate what it
needs thereof to its own use. Such are the
two sides of the conflict which now opens—
the conflict between the Plant and the world
external to it, some of which it must internal-
ize and assimilate to its own working Organ-
ism. This process goes by various names—
nutrition, metabolism, assimilation; on the
whole we prefer the last, as best indicating
the fact. For the Organism has now to take
up and make like to itself what is different
and outside; thus it continually is getting
back the strength which it spends to acquire
_ strength—and something more. In the move-
ment of the Plant, accordingly, the present

218 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

stage is that of difference, of separation, of
battle ever won and ever renewed.

On the one hand the Plant has to seize and
assimilate earthy matter, water, and air, all
of which are heavy and gravitate, and so may
be regarded from this viewpoint as the strict-
ly cosmical contribution to vegetal life. On
the other hand the Plant must employ and
assimilate heat, light, electricity, and chem-
ism, making its own the energies which de-
gravitate and are diacosmical. How the Plant
unites in its process of assimilation these
two basic elements of Nature (Cosmos and
Diacosmos) and makes them constituents of
Life (Biocosmos) is to be seen more fully
later. Here, then, the Inorganic, in its two
great stages 1s transformed into the Organic.
Hence also organs begin to appear with their
organism, which is now the vegetal, the first
and less complete, not well centered (as is the
animal). It has no sensation (or very little);
it does not feel itself, or determine its own
process but is determined thereto from the
outside. Still it has its round of assimila-
tion: the organs give out their energy to re-
gain what they give out.

The Plant gets its food and its force from
the outside, food from the Earth and force
from the Sun as radiant. The Animal on the
contrary gets its food and force from the in-

PLANT-LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 219

side, consuming the Plant and thus assimilat-
ing inwardly what has been already assimi-
lated outwardly from the Cosmos and Dia-
cosmos; that is, the Animal feeds on vegetal
life (and certainly on some animal life too).
But the typical animal needs also the outer
elements of the earth (water and air) as well
as of the sun. (the radiants and chemism)—
needs both the Inorganic and the Organic.

The function of the Plant, therefore, in
Assimilation is to transform Unlife in its
elemental forms to Life, that is, to the primal
vegetal Life. Its first act must be to appro-
priate and impart its food—Alimentation;
then this prepared food must be circulated
through the body—Distribution; finally there
is the continual repetition of the Plant-form
externally—Growth.

The twofold character of Assimilation in
the Plant may be noted further in its two op-
posite directions: downward for earth with
air and water (cosmical), upward for air
and for light and the radiants specially (dia-
cosmical). The two extreme organs of Assim-
ilation (root and leaf) direct themselves to-
ward the two opposite sides of the inorganic
universe, seeking to bring them together into
the living individual, or into the unitary pro-
_cess of the Biocosmos. The stage of Assimi-
lation is, accordingly, the stage of the pitched

9920) THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

battle of the Organic with Inorganic, the lat-
ter being in its two main forms, which are
pursued and assailed and appropriated by the
aforementioned two opposite members of the
Plant, root and leaf, which show in their many
branchings the ceaseless striving to get at
their antagonists.

1. Alimentation.. This in general starts
with the Inorganic in its two forms, matter
(terrestrial) and energy (solar), and trans-
mutes them into the Organic in its earliest
form as living protoplasm. It must be con-
fessed that this very suggestive process which
is really a transition from Unlife to Life is by
no means well understood in modern Bot-
any. [Evidently the two constituents of the
inorganic world, cosmical and diacosmical,
matter and energy, the static and the dynamic
are joined together and made to live through
a mediating principle, which usually is said
to be chlorophyll, the green substance in the
leaf of green plants, and in other parts of the
vegetal organism. This life-giving process,
as set forth in the recent text-books, bears the
very inadequate name of photosynthesis—in-
adequate, since there must be also a thermo-
synthesis, and an electrosynthesis, as well as
chemism. Indeed a chemical decomposition
takes place, that of carbon dioxide whose oxy-
gen is given off into the air, while the carbon

PLANT-LIFE—ASSIMILATION. DAA

is retained and unites with the ascending
water to form the so-called carbohydrates (as
sugar, starch, and also the proteids). These
are known as organic substances, since they
are products of life, of Nature’s own labora-
tory. Also they are the food-stuff of the
Plant manufactured by itself out of the afore-
said raw materials. But this cooked food ‘is
still to be digested and vitalized into what is
called vegetal protoplasm, which is to be car-
ried to and incorporated with every living
portion of the Plant. Such is the general out-
come of the work of Alimentation, which may
be taken as the first stage of the total process
of Assimilation: the given outer elements are
transformed into a living food-supply, and
thus assimilated to the living organism,
though not yet organized into it actively.

The aliment of the Plant being thus ob-
tained, it must next be distributed through-
out the organism. This is done by means of
a distributing circulation, which has a num-
ber of streams running through the entire
vegetal body on different errands.

2. Distribution. In the Plant there is no
central heart with its pumping power of cir-
culating the blood; still there are in it various
kinds of movement of various fluids. The as-
cent of the sap is probably best known; but

botanists also speak of the circulation of the

999 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

protoplasm, which, however, must first be ox-
idized—decomposed and set on fire by oxygen
taken from the air. This is the act of Res-
piration, for Plants in their way breathe
(through the stomates) and aerate the vegetal
protoplasm. That is, through Respiration, °
they set free the energy which results from
burning their stored carbon, turning this
again into the carbon dioxide which they at
first decomposed in Alimentation through the
so-called photosynthesis. In the one case the
earbon dioxide was taken from the air and
decomposed, in the other case it was recom-
posed and sent back to the air. Thus Res-
piration undoes the work of Alimentation in
order that the Organism may employ for its
own use that imprisoned energy which came
originally from the Sun with its diacosmical
radiants. Here we see the double action of
the Plant: it throws off oxygen in one pro-
cess and takes it up in another; also it takes
up carbonic oxide in one process and throws
it off in another; thus we behold a twofold and
counter round of circulation of these two
gases. The purpose of this significant double
arrangement is to catch and chain up first the
force from the outside universe by Alimenta-
tion, and then to loosen it and to distribute it
wherever needed in the Organism by circula-
tion.

PLANT-LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 293 |

Likewise there is known to be a double
movement of water, ascending and descend-
ing. In this connection is to be noticed Trans-
piration, the process of throwing off water in
the form of vapor from the surface of, the
Plant, especially from the leaves. Thus flow-
ing streams of fluid continually rise through
the Plant like an artesian spring, though the
cause of this uplift is still under discussion.
On the other hand water is always being taken
up by root and leaf.

The Plant aliment being thus seized from
the outside world, cooked and distributed to
the organs, which obtain thereby the energy
for doing all this work (seizing, cooking, dis-
tributing), what next? Does the Plant-
organism continue to make the same old vital
round when it is once done growing? Now
the fact comes to light that the Plant in a
sense never gets done growing; as to its or-
ganism it is ever the unfinished and unfinish-
able, yearly the exogen adds a new layer to
its body on the outside, though it be centuries
old; in the endogen a similar repetition oc-
curs on the inside (by means of the so-called
vascular bundles). So we may say that the
Plant is ever striving to get beyond itself,
seeking to reach an end by continual addi-
tions to itself. Thus it seems to be growing
an infinite series. About this growth a few
words.

294 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

3. Growth. The Plant, having shown the
ability to release its stored energy and to dis-
tribute the same throughout its organism, can
now grow, push beyond its given bounds, and
thus manifest its limit-transcending impulse
as far as this extends. Some Plants keep on
reaching out beyond the preceding annual
limit, increasing in height and girth for a
millennium and more. Still the organism
cannot break over its typical form or charac-
ter; a hickory nut will not spring up into an
oak tree, it assimilates itself to its transmitted
norm, even if this slowly changes from gen-
eration to generation, as Darwin has shown.
Of course there has evolved an enormous di-
versity of Plant-life in the many millions of
years that may le between the Bacterion and
California’s lofty Sequoia, which is prob-
ably not the latest vegetal evolution on the
globe. Still the individual specimen, be it
large or small, follows the norm of the spe-
cies; in its growth it realizes its foregone
idea, so that we at once identify it as the
fulfilment of its type or ideal pattern. Growth
involves also the self-movement of Plants,
which, however, has many other phases.

Out of the germ the organs grow, each of
which likewise attains its normal limit. The
plant, therefore, organizes itself through
erowth, differentiates itself into its co-oper-

PLANT-LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 29°5

ant members as it waxes into its full norm.
Noteworthy is the fact that the Plant has the
tendency to reproduce the organs of which
it has been deprived, wherein it is quite dif-
ferent from the animal, at least the higher
ones. Rootless stems will send out new
roots, and stemless roots will put forth stem
and leaf. This indicates the lower organiza-
tion of the Plant, of which each part is able
to be the process of the whole, not being dif-
ferentiated too deeply from the same. There
is likewise in Plant-life a periodicity of many
kinds, in part externally dependent upon day
and night, the cycle of the seasons, tempera-
ture, ete. But Plant-life has its inner period-
icity of birth, maturity and cessation lasting
a few hours in some Algae and many hund-
reds, perhaps thousands of years in some
trees. Here again the vegetal individual as-
similates itself to the norm of the duration
of its species. But whence comes this species
which seems to mould each plant after its
foreordained type? On this question a large
amount of recent biology has turned.
Through growth the Plant reveals its pro-
pulsion to attain the universal form of its
kind, to be one with its genetic source; this
is its supreme Assimilation. But it remains
a striving externally directed; the concentric
layers of the oak, yearly added one after the

296 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

other, show that the tree has a mighty aspira-
tion for something beyond its reach which it
seeks by piling step on step; every year it
acknowledges failure, but never fails to make
the fresh attempt with the coming spring. Its
organism is not strictly governed from with-
in by an established central authority, like
the developed animal, which has an organ-
controlling organ in its organism. Such self-
direction the Plant cannot have through lack
of such an organic center. Indeed those ex-
ternal concentric layers continually added to
the oak are pushing outward for aught which
it has not but longs for, namely, this inner
center which the higher animal Life pos-
sesses. Thus the Plant never attains its end;
if it did it would no longer be Plant; still it
never gives up its pursuit; if it did, that
would destroy its vegetal character. The
Plant has been made the symbol of many
things; but its best symbolic suggestion is
this undying aspiration, ever disappointed
but ever revivifying. So that maple under
my window is sending forth an eternal sigh:
‘¢T Jong to have a brain like you, or even like
your dog.”’

Plant language, however, is very differently
translated by different translators, and so
we pass on to say that Growth is the highest
stage of Assimilation which herein not only

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 9297

rehabilitates old tissues and organs, but re-
produces new ones of both sorts. Thus even
in and through Assimilation we begin to
glimpse the fresh-born individual. The an-
nual layer around the oak from top to bot-
tom is In a manner a new tree with stem, root,
and branch; still it embraces its maternal
body so closely that it cannot separate and be
an independent oak. Thus in Growth the

Plant is continually reproducing itself as a
- part of itself; it re-bears its own form out-
wardly but not inwardly, and encloses itself
in this new external form of which it remains
the internal part. Assimilation has complet-
ed its round when it has assimilated the outer
world not only into the old given organism
but into a new one which includes the old. So
Assimilation of the Plant has largely re-made
what it started with, has re-embodied its first
body, yet as a part of that body.

But the next step is the reproduction of the
new individual as free, completely individ-
uated, with his own organism distinct from
that of his parent. This is the act of Gener-
* ation, which is now to find its place in the
ordering of the Plant-world.

Iii. Tue Generative Process oF PLant-
LiFe. The Plant has the power of reproducing
itself not only in parts observable in Growth,
but also as a whole—the total individual re-

998 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

creates itself as total. Thus Growth from its
movement of expansion, turns back to the be-
ginning and starts the Plant over again in a
new individual. Such is in general, the sweep
out of Assimilation into Generation; the lin-
ear tendency we may conceive bending around
to the circular. Or we may consider the pre-
ceeding transition as that between the two
sorts of vegetal reproduction: the one re-
produces the organism already given, the
other reproduces it new-born; or we may say
reproduces its reproduction. Assimilative is
the one sort, generative the other. The liv-
ing individual (here as Plant) recreates its
life and starts over again, transmitting its
creative energy, of which it becomes the ve-
hicle and which has continued through all
Plant-life, yea all Life in the Universe. This
persistence of genetic energy passing from
individual to individual through many gen-
erations is the germinal or reproductive con-
tinuity which the biologists are now specially
investigating. Assimilative reproduction dies
with the death of the individual, generative
reproduction may be deemed relatively im-
mortal, being transmitted in the cell or cells
(as has been supposed) of the primal creative
life-stuff of the planet.

We are also to see that the Generative Pro-
eess of the Plant returns to the Formative,

=,
ut

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 299

which is the first appearance of the Plant in
its Form or outer manifestation. Thus the
vegetal cycle is completed, the last Process
goes back to the first and reproduces that.
The physical reality of this round can be
noted in the seed which on the one hand is
the final outcome of the Generation, but on
the other is the starting point of the Forma-
tion of the individual Plant. The seed in its
round thus shows the vegetal organism re-
turning into itself through its three main
Processes (Formation, Assimilation, Gener-
ation), and thereby completing its cycle of
life. Both have something very significant in
common: the Plant-child receives from its
Plant-parent the ability to make that same
vegetal round in about the same time, start-
ing and ending in the seed. Such a power is, -
therefore, continuous and persists, being su-
preme over the rise, bloom, and cessation of
the individual Plant, and therein suggesting
a limited immortality.

The thought also should be dwelt upon that
there is a recurrence of the same Plant-form
in the main, or of the ideal model after which
the organism seems to shape itself. We may
conceive it as the universal or creative type
of the Plant, which is always individualizing
itself in the special instances; it has been
named the idea matrix of all members of the

230 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

same species (or better, genus, which is con-
nected with genesis, generation, etc., in that
primordial Aryan root gen to beget). When
we say that a certain Plant belongs to this or
that species, there hovers before us doubtless
vaguely the ideal norm thereof, to which we
mentally compare it and under which we sub-
sume it. Instinctively we seek for this gen-
etic archetype which manifests itself in indi-
vidual Plants and orders them, being the true
source of classification. Species are indeed
many and the Plant-norm has diversified it-
self prodigiously in the past ages; still it is
relatively the persistent principle in the veg-
etal organism, though it too be subject to a
gradual evolution.

With the development of its Generative
Process, the Plant stops its growing outward,
and turns back inward upon itself as it were,
and rounds out its total growth into the seed
which contains potentially the whole Plant,
concentrating the latter’s previous forthright
energy toward special parts and projecting
the same into a new entire individual. It is
true that the old Plant, after a period of rest
and recuperation, will start again its growth
by accretion, for that is the vegetal character.
The oldest tree continues adding its annual
layer of new sapwood; it never gets its
growth, it always remains young in a part,

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 234

and fails not in reproductive power. The an-
imal is different, being more internally direct-
ed, not growing into old-age by outward addi-
tions of youth to his senile body.

Analogies between Plant and Animal have
been often drawn. Oken deemed the brain
of the Plant to be the flower with head erect
in the air. Others have maintained that the
vegetal head was rooted in the soil where was
the mouth taking its food and drink. Really,
however, it is contrary to the nature of the
Plant to have a central brain in control; rath-
er each part or organ has its center and can
become the total Plant. Interesting is the
comparison of the sexual division of the one
flower into stamen and pistil to the Ego sep-
arating itself into subject and object which
reunite. <A kind of outer self is thus the Gen-
erative Process of the Plant, as the Process
of the Ego is generative of the new thought.
Undoubtedly there is a psychical side in the
Plant, as there is everywhere in Life, and
also in Nature. The ideal continuity of the
vegetal type is in me, or subjective; but it is
also in the Plant or objective; if it were not
mine too, I could not know it. My Psyche is
what communes with and recognizes the
Psyche of Nature.

The Plant, since it is quite autonomous in
its organs and thus relatively multicentral,

939 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

has naturally many centers of Generation;
each part or organ in fact can reproduce the
whole individual. Hence rises the question
about the different values of these different
kinds of vegetal propagation. [Fiven the sex-
ual process of the Plant is practically confined
to one individual, though there be dicecious
fertilization. Thus vegetal Generation never
quite frees itself from vegetal Assimilation,
both being largely in the same organism and
therein organically connected. To the com-
plete sexual diremption of Nature the Plant
never attains, though striving for it, and giv-
ing outer manifestations of it in the parts of
the flower. Vegetal Generation remains im-
plicit in the one individual, never getting fully
explicit in the two individuals (like the typical
animal). So the Plant as generative simply
returns upon itself, and makes itself another
like itself (or nearly so), for the offspring,
being thus limited to the one individual in
origin, must incline to be one-strained (not
two-strained, as the animal). But the various
kinds of propagation of Plants will differ just
in this regard, and Nature will help break
down the vegetal limit, as in the previously
mentioned case of Mutation. In a sense we
ean say that the Animal is not so self-suffi-
cient as the Plant, since in its case, male and
female are not one individual; but just this

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 233

limitation is the source of the Animal’s great-
er diversity and higher character. Practical-
ly, then, the Plant-world is born and stays
hermaphroditic, though with many variations
from low to high—the highest being the outer
appearance or floral realization of the sexual
idea.

Accordingly the Generative Process of
Plant-life we shall look at in the following
stages: single Generation (asexual), double
Generation (sexual), total Generation (the
entire line of Plant-life generated in time and
at present existent). Thus we may catch a
glimpse of the original Plant-norm taking on
its millionfold shapes, or perchance the veg-
etal prototype clothing itself with reality.

1. Single Generation of Plant-life. We
may repeat once more that vegetal Genera-
tion is not centralized, just as little as the
whole organism of the Plant is centralized in
one organ. Both facts manifest the same
basic vegetal character—lack of organic
unity, be it in the sphere of self-re-
production or of self-direction. Hach mem-
ber can become the center of the whole, which
is thus largely decentered. Generation is ac-
cordingly, multicentral in the Plant, though
confined to the various parts of one organism;
~ each part under proper conditions is endowed
with generative power. That is, Generation

934 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

in its present aspect is of one kind (asexual),
and springs from a single organ or part of a
vegetal individual. Thus we name it Single
Generation (uni-parental). Hence it is also
called monogenetic, which word hints its
derivation from one parent and not from two.
Another term applied to this sort of Gener-
ation is the word vegetative, an unhappy
usage, since digenetic or bi-parental propaga-
tion belongs also to the vegetable, even if in
a more superficial way; while on the other
hand monogenetic or vegetative Generation
can be seen in the lower animals.

Still the reader who loves the thought of
the Plant as well as the sight of it, will not
fail to reflect that its genetic continuity is
transmitted through single Generation as
well as through double. The Plant-norm is
perpetuated in one way as well as in another;
the specific idea or type keeps re-embodying
itself in the generative process, though the
individual continues to perish. The Plant
hands down two things: its living but evanes-
seent finite shape, and also its eternal power
of shaping itself anew—its mortal and its
immortal portions. The individual vanishes,
but individuation eternizes. The product is
mortal, the creative energy is immortal.
This latter seems to have been given at the
start, from the original genetic sources and to

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 295

be still preserved in the Earth-life, from
which the Plant draws it directly for gener-
ating the individual. Now this means of
Generation in the Plant is not concentrated
into one kind, but varies organically. Still
the Plant’s reproduction is essentially limit-
ed to the one parent, though often with strong
protests which indicate at least its aspira-
tion for a higher birth.

Accordingly the reproduction of the vegetal
individual can take place in a variety of
ways without the conjugation of the floral
sexes, stamen and pistil. Indeed it lies in the
character of the Plant, that each part, prop-
erly separated and environed, will produce
the whole. This fact is seen in the develop-
ment of layers, cuttings, grafts; bulbs, buds,
rhizomes, even leaves will propagate the
entire organism of which they are members;
in fine root, stem, and leaf, will reproduce one
another and all together in the total Plant.
Assunilative reproduction may be halted in
its outward repetition and turned about into
generative reproduction; the growth of one
part may be transformed into the growth of
all the parts. Each organ of the Plant is not
fully centralized and subordinated to a com-
mon head, but has the tendency to be autono-
mous (like the cluster of the ancient Greek
_ city-states).. Thus the one organism easily

936 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

breaks up into as many organisms as there
are organs; even the single cell has that
power in certain Plants (possibly in all, if the
right conditions be found).

Such is the asexual propagation of the veg-
etal individual, whereby the one parent is sim-
ply repeated in its progeny; the same body
reproduces itself indefinitely, a kind of quan-
titative repetition of the one unit. Still even
in this seemingly uniform reproduction sur-
prising variations may occur and have been
recorded, indicating that also in the vegetal
body far-off ancestral traits can lie dormant
till favorable conditions may cause it again to
spring forth, to the surprise of the botanist.
DeVries maintained that vegetal variation
was not the slow movement which Darwin so
strongly emphasized but might be sudden and
catastrophic, producing a new species at a
single leap. Still asexual generation is in
oeneral, repetitive of the parental form which
it originates, and monotypal (hence the use
of the word monogenetic). But the sexual
dualism is also found in Plant-life.

There is an old discussion concerning the
sexuality of Plants, which was at one time
questioned. Then again this was accepted,
but regarded as quite superfluous, since its
place could be filled by so many substitutes.
But hybridisation, especially the experiments

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 237

of Mendel, have shown strikingly heredity in
the Plant from both sides. Also its sexual
propagation brings forth characters not ob-
tainable by other methods. Still in the Plant
sex has by no means reached its destiny. It
has, however, something to say, to which we
may now listen.

2. Double Generation of Plant-life. The
reproduction of the Plant is now bi-parental,
although the two parents may not be two sep-
arate individuals, but two sexual organs or
two sets of organs in the one organism.
(Hence called also digenetic in sundry bo-
tanical books). Thus living Nature has be-
gun to manifest in outward shapes her deep-
est dualism, that of sex, which, however,
drops back into unity in the individual off-
spring, though the latter may become many.
Our Biocosmos has pushed forward to its
supreme separation, which it is always over-
coming, yet always reproducing. For the
living individual is born with the sexual di-
remption upon him; the higher he is, the pro-
. founder the chasm, which he still has to
bridge in order to continue his kind. But
floral sexuality is the first quite playful, inno-
cent appearance of sex. We might call it
paradisaical.

Two kinds of cells, male and female now
appear in the Plant, neither of which (as a

928 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

rule) is capable of separate development, but
must be fused together in a common nucleus,
from which springs the seed and thence the
new Plant. One may well ask: What is the
purpose of this second more complicated,
more circuitous Generation?

In the first place two parental characters
begin to unite themselves in the offspring—
paternal and maternal. Even though the
stamen and pistil be of the same flower, and
hence of the same root, stem, branch, and
leafage, the seed combines the two-fold ten-
dency of all life, that of father and mother,
which exists united in every individual Plant
‘and comes to expression in the double floral
organs—the supreme genetic manifestation
of the vegetal organism. Then the seed prop-
er, the great storehouse of food both for
Plant and Animal, is the distinctive product
of sexual Generation as contrasted with asex-
ual, which often hag as its object to call forth
the seed-making act with its fruit. More-
over the seed is Nature’s own work of self-
completion in the round of vegetal organiza-_
tion, which is concentrated in the seed. Rel-
atively the asexual process is lower organi-
eally, or more artificial and accidental in the
higher Plants. Also we have the right to
think that the vast variety of the vegetal
world springs largely from sexual Genera-

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 239

tion, in which the children inheriting from
both parents, differ from each. Gradually
thus the grand diversity of Plant-life has
evolved and is still evolving.

Now comes the curious fact that the flower
seeks to differentiate its two sexes as much
as possible for the purpose of fertilization.
Often the pollen is barren on its own flower,
but fertile on a different flower of the same
species. To some Orchids their own pollen
is poisonous, and _ self-pollination causes
death. Peculiar contrivances of Nature
have been pointed out by which the pistil
avoids its own stamen. The two organs
often mature at different times so that each
seeks its counterpart not at home but else-
where in another flower (the so-called dichog-
amy). Again, some Plants produce on the
same stalk both sorts of flowers, the self- .
pollined and the other-pollined, the first be-
ing smaller, lower, seemingly less developed
than the second. Finally there is the com-
plete separation of the two sexes into two
different households (dicecious), each sex
having its own Plant. Pollination now oc-
curs through more external and more remote
means—wind, water, birds, insects, even
snails, ete.

_ The loves of the flowers have been celebrat-
ed by poets and lovers; but quite as certain

240 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

are their antipathies. It seems that the whole
flower-world has the bent to separate the
sexes as far as possible externally by dis-
tance and internally (we may suppose) by
character. The stamen on a different tree
must be different from the stamen on the
same tree and in the same flower with its
pistil, though both trees belong to one spe-
cies. Heredity has had a far wider field for
its development in the first case. The flower
appears averse, like man to the marriage of
sister and brother, though both flower and |
man have sometimes permitted it.

It has been noticed that the very lowest
plants, some of the Alge and also the Bac-
terion, though propagated ordinarily by the
simplest fission, break out often into what
resembles the sexual organization, even if
this be of little or no use to the Plant.. But
thus it shows its impulse. We may call it a
longing for the completed sexual form of it-
self, which comes to realization only in the
higher plants, yea in the higher animals, for
the Plant never fully transcends its asexual
generative limitation. But in its striving for
such an end it leaves a long line of shapes
eraduated by their approach toward the per-
fect flower, which is always a generative
manifestation, ending in the seed. To be
sure, the perfect flower is still a problem;

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 241

possibly it is yet to be evolved, not so much
by Nature as through man’s agency. The
crossing of species and even genera, for the
purpose of improving the breed, has become
a significant branch of the vegetal Biocosmos
cultivated by persons whose genius seems to
be in a born intimacy with the creative Plant-
type. Some men are apparently endowed
with flower-souls so sympathetic that they can
elevate and partly humanize the vegetal or-
ganism (so we may consider the Dutchman
DeVries, the Swede Hjalmar Nilsson, and the
supereminent one, the American Luther Bur-
bank of California). Far-reaching indeed is
the commingling of breeds (hybridisation) ;
through it perchance we are on the path to
the Super-plant. Nor can we omit the reflec-
tion that in a similar way the commingling of
the human races, of course with proper se-
lection, is to evolve the perfect specimen of
manhood, that Super-man, about whom we
hear a good deal of prophecy in these days,
and with whom must come of course the
Super-woman. Possibly such a Plant will be
required as the food for such a Man, so that
both will appear together. Not quite so il-
lusory seems that educated edible spineless
eactus of Burbank, which is to turn Earth’s
. deserts into a garden and double the food-
producing capacity of our globe.

242 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

But from such speculative outlooks, which
have their rights, we may turn to the actual
Plant-world as it unrolls before us, or rather
mounts from the humblest form to the high-
est.

3. Total Generation of Plant-life. Jvolu-
tion has left its emphatic impress on Botany
as on the other sciences. One result is that
the entire Plant-world is graded upward on
an evolutionary line which has a bottom, but
seemingly no top. The foot of the ladder in-
deed rests upon or rather pushes down into
the primordial life-stuff (Protobioticon)
which, though hypothetical, is the necessary
pre-requisite and creative source of all suc-
ceeding Life, vegetal and animal. For it is
the germinal fountain-head of living individ-
uation, the original home of all vital forms,
even of the smallest cell, which comes forth
already organized from this elemental plastic
reservoir of living things. Here les the
transition from the Inorganic to the Organic,
into which the whole science of biological evo-
lution plunges backward, as its indispensable
postulate, even if speculative. Only Psyche
can say anything about it as yet, though
Physis is also there and will in time get to
talking about itself, voiced of course by the
scientist.

This same elemental life-stuff is the arena

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 243

as well as the origin of the primal differenti-
ation into Plant and Animal, which seems to
occur with the transition from pre-cellular
Life into cellular. This stage is still theoreti-
eal, the coercive demand of thought; yet in
the earliest organisms it becomes almost vis-
ible. For instance, the slime-mold known in
science as Myxomycetes, sometimes classed as
an animal and sometimes as a plant, and
sometimes as neither, appears to be one of
the living things nearest the point of bifur-
eation into the two kingdoms. It is primi-
tively cellular or seems to be becoming so;
its very diversity would indicate a lack of in-
dividuation in such semi-organic material,
there being at least 300 species according to
De Bary. Such is the next neighbor to the
origial hfe-slime on its way from Unlife to
Life—a kind of neutral or double plant-ani-
mal (Phytozoon) which we may take as the
best instance of this transitional stage. For-
mation, Assimilation and Generation, which
become so distinctive as the bifurcating lines
of Plant and Animal evolve, quite blend to-
gether in these early protoplasmic shapes just
getting individuated. ?
The present field has long attracted the
attention of biologists who have given to it
various names. The best known designation
is probably that of Haeckel who calls these

244 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

neutrals Protista (an insufficient rubric by
the way, since it apples to non-vital things
as well). Moreover it is sometimes called
the third kingdom of Life out of which the
other two fork. Now this pivotal parting of
the ways is what we are next to see, if it be
possible. In other words the double-natured
Phytozoa are to spht into their two elemental
constituents, which are named the Protophyta
and the Protozoa, or the first Plants and the
first Animals. The latter line of Life-forms
we shall pick up hereafter, when we come to
the animal world. Here, however, we may
add that the two samples of earliest bifurca-
tion are usually considered to be the Bac-
terion as first plant and the Amoeba as first
animal, both of them moving almost on par-
allel lines of evolution. Thus Biology takes
its double start in many a text-book and re-
mains double to the end.

But having gotten our first Plant and with
it the first faint indication of the Plant-norm
(Protophyte), how shall we organize the
overwhelming multiplicity of the Plant-
world? Perhaps the best start in running an
organic line is to divide (after De Condolle)
the entire mass of vegetation into the non-
vascular and the vascular (without and with
circulatory organs for carrying fluids) even
if we have later to change partly this divis-

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 245

ion. This is the greatest node in the vegetal
kingdom, often called the widest chasm in it
by botanists, and it lies between the Mosses
(Bryophytes) and the Ferns (Pterido-
phytes). In the Formative Process it is the
transition to the leaf, stem and root of the
Plant which have not yet been differentiated
in the previous forms—Alge, Fungi, Mosses.
But more specially an inner vascular system
appears for the purpose of distributing food
and fluids through the organism—all of which
means a great change in the Assimilative
Process. In the Generative Process there is
also a considerable advance, as we see in the
fern-leaf which bears the spores, the latter re-
peating the embryology of the thallus and the
moss in its development. Though occurring
far down among the less showy, because
flowerless, crytogams (now a rejected title in
botany) this is the largest leap in the Plant-
world proper, though probably the gap will
be lessened by fresh discoveries.

For the sake of a deeper synthesis of liv-
ing Nature we may compare the present di-
vision of Plants into non-vascular and vas-
eular with division of animals into non-
vertebrates and vertebrates. The corres-
pondence is striking, and has been repeatedly
noted, while the attempts at bridging the
chasm have been various and are still going

244 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

on. But the prime difficulty in both cases
hes with the first designation which is merely
negative (non, not); hence the strong effort
to bring the non-vascular realm into a posi-
tive order. Thus arises the division, quite
general in today’s classification, of the non-
vascular Plants into Thallophytes (Thallus-
plants) and Bryophytes (Moss-plants), both
of which are antecedent stages of the Fern-
plants (Pteridophytes). But the latter and
the whole succeeding higher Plant-life are
vascular, that is, have true organs; their
cells have reached the point of an associated
cell-organization. A thallus is the primitive
Plant which is not yet differentiated into
stem, root and leaf, though it often shows
the strong impulse to put forth these mem-
bers; it is a lump of life unformed but trying
to form itself, in which the Formative Pro-
cess of the Plant is implicit, not yet realized,
but struggling. The Thallophytes make a
large group with many species, which take all
sorts of shapes suggestive of the definite or-
oans of the higher Plants. The chief interest
of the thallus is that it is prophetic of the
whole coming vegetal kingdom, being a piece
of plastic material in whose manifold vari-
ations are foreshadowed (by the artist
Psyche) the future shapes of the Plant-world.
The two chief classes of Thallophytes are the

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 247

Algae, green with chlorophyll and hence cap-
able of preparing their own food, and the
Fungi which have no chlorophyll and hence
are parasitic on other organisms. The fa-
mous Bacterion is a Thallophyte, a fungus
parasite, unicellular, capable of enormous
multiplication by simple fission, and in some
of its forms is the smallest of extant organ-
isms, being unseen by the microscope though
known to exist as a cause of disease which
may be counteracted by antidotes.

So much for the thallus, that prophetic
little blob of life-slime, the primal Plant pre-
figuring in its way all the rest, being too the
individuated starting-point of the whole line
of vegetal evolution, as far as science now
sees. The next great group, the Mosses (Bry-
ophytes) still keep the thallus, but in a state
of decided transition, especially as regards
the Generative Process. For sex now begins
with organs, male and female (antheridium
and archegonium), yet accompanied with a
sexless individual. Here the curious fact ap-
pears: the sexual produces the asexual and
the asexual produces the sexual—which fact
is known as alternation of generations. This
dual Generative Process is very significant,
reaching forward to the permanently sexed
_ higher Plant, and then dropping back to the
more or less simple fissiparism of the Thallo-

248 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

phyte. So we may regard the Mosses (Bry-
ophytes) as the dual or separative stage of
the Plant-world, judged by the highest eri-
terion of its permanent existence, namely
Generation. It will be noticed that the Gener-
ative Process is adopted as the supreme
standard for ordering the ascending evolu-
tion of Plant-life; since the introduction of
this method, Botany has taken a new depart-
ure.
But now we must make a fresh transition,
namely to the third stage of the vegetal king-
dom. Here the striking outer manifestation
is the appearance of the corm as the Plant-
unit of form, instead of the thallus which has
prevailed in both the preceding divisions
(Thallophytes and Bryophytes). What is the
significance of the corm in this total evolution
of the Plant-world? It means that the fun-
damental vegetal form has now come to man-
ifestion im its triple members—stem, root and
leaf—and will stay through to the end. The
thallus had no such differentiation, though it
showed many pushes toward it, many prophe-
cies of it, many an impulse to reach it—but
on the whole in vain. At last the corm comes
forth quite fully formed in its three members,
though it too will evolve a good deal in the
future. Still it remains and thus gives a
chief criterion for the third and last grand

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 249

division of Plants—the vascular Cormo-
phytes (or the corm-plants). It may be here
added that the corm in its present sense is
an explication and fulfilment of the thallus
which is the first stage already considered;
to this we may conceive it as a return, which
is also an unfolding of it to its purposive end;
that is, the corm realizes and fixes to per-
sistence the many fleeting intimations of
stem, root and leaf, which are found scatter-
ed through the numerous varieties of the
thallus. In fact Nature has everywhere these
prophetic hints, and the whole of it is one
great prophecy of the completed Psyche: such
is truly its poetic side.

The word corm in the foregoing sense was
first employed by Endlicher, though it had
been used previously in Botany with a differ-
ent meaning. In Greek it signifies literally
a stem, with branches and roots lopped off,
which therefore belong to it naturally. The
term with its group is approved by the fa-
mous German botanist and writer, Professor
Strasburger of Bonn, in his text treating
of general morphology, but is strangely
omitted by him in the place where it is most
needed, namely in the systematic ordering of
the Plant-world. A puzzling omission, yea
inconsistency of the learned scientist, but not
unparalleled. The demarkation of this su-

250 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

preme group, or even the need of it seems
not yet to have penetrated our Anglo-Saxon _
botanical brains, English and American.

The outcome, however, we may now put to-
gether: the total Generation of Plant-lite
shows three grand divisions—Thallophytes,
Bryophytes, and Cormophytes; these also
form a process together in which we may
well catch a gleam of Psyche as the ultimate
orderer, who shows herself in the largest
sweeps and lkewise in the minutest cells, of
Nature.

The Cormophytes (De Candolle’s Vascu-
lares) henceforth form the center of botanical
interest, and they too have a_ subdivision,
which also is seen to be threefold. These are
the Pteridophytes (Ferns in which the seeds
or spores are developed but not yet separ-
ated from the leaf); the Gymnosperms (in
which the seeds are separated from the leaf,
but unenclosed); the Angiosperms (in which
the seeds are enclosed in their distinct house
or seed-vessel). It #s evident that here the
stress 1s upon the seed (or spore) by means
of which the individual plant reproduces it-
self and so persists as species through time.
This seed is, therefore, its essentially genetic
principle, its participation in creation itself,
of which every Plant is a little living dot.
The seed-world, including grains, fruits, ber-

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 251

ries, nuts, ete., is thus the vast storehouse of
Life on which animals feed, ever renewing
their organic existence, and plants likewise
get sustenance thence. So arises this in-
creased care of Nature for protecting and
preserving in the seed her generative power.
The Angiosperm seems to return upon the
fern-leaf and to transform it into a_ seed-
house whose walls now guard the precious
contents inside; whereas in the fern (first
stage of the Cormophyte) the leaf was quite
independent of the seed, the master of it more
than the servant, though this relation seems
already reversed in the fossil Pteridosperm.
The seed in general has prepared for man his
assimilative lhfe-stuff directly, and also indi-
rectly through the lower animals. But the
seed must get its store through the Plant
from the vast reservoir of Earth-life, which
man cannot bite off immediately. At least
not yet; possibly the time may come when he
through science may be able to tap the primal
fountain of Life without the mediation of the
Plant-world. But for the present the little
vegetal cell has to individuate all life-energy
for the animal, as far as we can now see.
The Angiosperms are the culmination of the
Cormophytes, hence of the Plant-world. They
are a third stage or division again, and indi-
cate the highest evolution of vegetal life,

952 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

though they too will show their own evolu-
tionary ascent. The Angiosperms are sup-
posed to contain more than 125,000 species, a
number, probably thirty times greater than
all the other Cormophytes combined. The
most useful, the most beautiful, the most ad-
vanced Plants, from the human point of view,
are embraced in the present division; also
they are the most conspicuous and self-dis-
playing. A salient phase of their total char-
acter is just this manifestation; it may well
be deemed that the floral soul, hitherto quite
implicit has now come to _ self-revelation.
Hence they were called Phanerogams by the
older botanists, who in a number of ways
were closer to Nature than some modern ones
(of the University Laboratory) who are try-
ing to drive the name out of the science. It
may be granted that it is not easy to define,
What is a flower? over which question bot-
anists have larruped one another and their
much-enduring readers. Yet the prime fact
is that the whole Plant-world has now flow-
ered; hitherto dumb it has attained a kind of
language; hitherto vegetally unconscious, it
has now come to a kind of floral consciousness
(though different enough from the human).
Indeed we may put together for the sake of
comparing the two great kingdoms, the vege-
tal and the animal, the corresponding rungs

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 953

of the two evolutionary ladders. In this case,
the Angiosperms and the Primates can be
regarded as correlatives, or partially so, in
the ascent of Life-forms.

Here it should be noted that the Plant-
world like the Animal-world is found to be
subject to evolution, though this part of Bot-
any has lagged somewhat on account of its
many difficulties. Still there can be seen in
general the rise from the thallus to the flow-
er, which is the great fruition. Also the geo-
logic past reveals a successive ascent of
Plant-forms, mounting from the eophyton (if
it exists) of the Laurentian up to the Meso-
zoic when our earth, hitherto mainly green,
began slowly to flower forth, possibly along
with the budding man whose consciousness
also was inflorescing. It would seem that
Earth-life in that pivotal time was likewise
passing through a similar stage to those of
man and phanerogam—a stage of early self-
manifestation. According to the theory of
De Vries, that first flower might have been
‘“a sport,’’? a sudden saltation: out of some
backward cryptogam toward floral perfection.
So, too, man has been accounted for. But we
have to think that both cases must go back to
Earth-life as the ultimate source of such mu-
tations.

Thus the Plant has its historic evolution

954 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

through the ages, from its earliest germ to
the present highest form—this is often called
its philogeny. But it has also its embryology
or its individual development from the germ
likewise to its completed growth—this is
known as its ontogeny, which moves on a sig-
nificant parallel with the aforesaid philogeny.
The third form of vegetal evolution is the
ever-present total Generation of Plant-life
from the germ to the highest Phanerogam.
All three lines of the evolution of the Plant
move in different ways toward the common
end which is the Angiosperm in its supreme
flower.

This brings us to the great drawback in the
domain of the Angiosperms: the lack of any
satisfactory ordering. The central difficulty
in our opinion pivots upon the large family
or tribe known as the Composite, which the
botanists have not been able to put into any
suitable place in the total Plant-world. The
Angiosperms aredividedprimarily into mono-
eotyledonous and dicotyledonous—which di-
vision takes as its criterion the seed with its
embryonic leaf, which may be one or two. But
the seed of the Composite (usually ranked as
dicotyledonous), considering the many flow-
ers which grow out of it in a single head,
should be polycotyledonous, as are the seeds
of certain Gymnosperms, such as the pine.

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 255

This fact, ideally true, does not, however,
show itself in the form of the cotyledon.

Now the point upon which the chief stress is
to be laid, is that each Composite flower is no
longer a single flower but an associated group
of flowers. Such is the unique fact now risen
to view: the floral individuals in their turn
have advanced to association in one body,
which, ‘however, preserves the individuality
of each flower that in this relation is called
a floret. The whole is surrounded and unified
by its own corolla and calyx, which have like-
wise their own individual character, and
which form the peripheral ray-flower. Thus
we behold an actual union of associated indi-
viduals in the vegetal kingdom, whose last
and highest act is just this. We may call it
a true federation of flowers with its unitary
bond (involucre) enclosing, protecting, and
conjoining the federated individuals, each of
which may be a complete flower, having its
own form and law, we might say. its own
sphere of sovereignty. Such is in general the
Composite flower (a more appropriate title
would be associated, or even federated) withits
significant union of many into one (e pluribus
unum). Our most striking flowers are con-
tinually bringing this fact before our eyes
in the blooming season: the golden-rod, the

256 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

sunflower, the chrysanthemum, the dandelion,
the thistle, ete.; each manifests the underly-
ing principle in its way, according to its own
individuality—the petulant thistle always
ready for a fight with swords drawn, the flaunt-
ing sunflower always begging for a caress
from its sun-god, the modest daisy quite
shrinking from a glance into the admirer’s
face. Yet all of them are associated, having
many florets in the one flower. Indeed just
this association gives a vast new field for the
development of floral individuality; there is
no telling what new forms and new characters
may be developed from such a floral associ-
ative power. For relatively this act has just
begun, the confederacy of flowers has but re-
cently appeared in the Plant-world.

It is agreed by botanists that the Com-
posites are the youngest of the Angiosperms,
which have been already designated as the
youngest of the Cormophytes; that is, the
last plants to flower, in the movement of the
geologic ages, are just now the flowering
plants (Angiosperms), and the most recent
birth of the latter is the Composite flower.
Again the comparison will come up: the asso-
ciation of men into the federal State is so far
the final outcome and crown of the political
evolution of historic time; in a similar man-
ner the evolution of the floral world has

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 257

reached what we may call a federal flower,
which is its present culmination.

The Composites are not only the highest in
rank and the youngest in years, but also the
largest in numbers of all the flowering fam-
ilies (the Angiosperms). It contains accord-
ing to the most recent estimate under my
eye (1911) at least 12,500 species. It is, how-
ever, not well defined or even described;
hence the limits of the total group and its
salient character have not been distinctly
seen. Its supreme conception must be that
of the associated flower; other traits, though
important, are subordinate. It is inept to
classify primarily the Composites by the co-
tyledon, as dicotyledonous. Its essential eri-
terion is that of association, to which there is
a gradual rise from the simplest flowering
plant. Such a view, however, breaks down
the whole cotyledonous classification of the
Angiosperms, which should be graded and
ordered by their approach to their supreme
form in the Composite group. Moreover, as
the Phanerogams (or Angiosperms) have
evolved to the point of manifesting their
character just in their flowering, this must be
what is associated, namely the flower. So the
true criterion of ordering the Phanerogams
drawn from their essential nature should be

258 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

the evolution of the stage of flower-associa-
tion.

Without going into details we may offer
here a tentative arrangement. (1) The evo-
lution from spiral to cyclic flowering. ‘The
simplest flowers are ranked externally about
an elongated axis in a spiral (like leaves).
This linear order unfolds into the round. (2)
The evolution of the cyclic single flower to the
associated flower. This has many gradations
which are represented in many families. (3)
The evolution of the associated flower (Com-
posite) within itself, which also shows numer-
ous stages, or degrees of associative (or fed-
erative) excellence up to the supreme flower ;
which flower, however, is a problem.

We may here interject a little personal
theory as to the reason why the Composite
have not been adequately treated by the Euro-
pean botanists who have of course taught the
American. It is that the federative con-
sciousness has been wanting. For the scien-
tific mind participates in the social and insti-
tunal order of its nation and age, and is in-
deed trained by the same in its deepest cre-
ative character. Our feeling is, as we look out
upon the flower-world with its profound sug-
gestiveness, that the Composite flower is the
true floral representative of the Federal
Union.

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 259

But the Composite is a very large family,
containing more than twelve thousand spe-
cies, as just stated. Which is the supreme
species? What flower shall we crown as
queen of the floral kingdom? Some have
chosen the sunflower, others the golden-rod,
still others the thistle, which has a high
inner association, and externally an _ all-
sided military armament coupled with ready
pugnacity. Still there seems to be no decided
supremacy anywhere, we find nothing in the
Plant-world to correspond to the superiority
of the genus homo among animals. As pre-
viously indicated, the super-flower is yet to
be evolved, perchance by some Burbank with
his new art of controlling and improving flo-
ral evolution.

Such, then, is in brief the organization of
total Plant-life, of which we may here give
a short synopsis. The first ordering is rep-
resented by three stages which are (A) Thal-
lophytes, (B) Bryophytes, (C) Cormophytes.
These last branch out into (I) Pteridophytes,
(II) Gymnosperms, (III) Angiosperms,
wherein the Plant-world has flowered. This
flowering division unfolds into the before-
mentioned forms: (1) axial, (2) cyclic, (3)
associative. So the entire Plant-world may
-be likened to the tree (one of its shapes)
springing from unseen depths into the visible

260 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

trunk which sends forth leafy green branches
that finally top out the whole in a many-col-
ored flower-life.

Nor should we fail to note the correspond-
ing realization of the associative idea through
many ascending shapes from the primal cell
to the highest flower. That primal cell is it-
self organized as the starting point of pres-
ent science; first is the association of cells
into organs, then the association of organs_
into the whole organism of the flower, finally
appears the association of these floral organ-
isms. into a kind of corporation or institution,
which is still a flower, with many associated
florets, each of which is a complete organic
individual within itself, yet engirdled and
fortressed without by another floral organ-
ism which unites them inwardly and protects
them outwardly. Thus we find two floral sys-
tems in the Composite (and sometimes traces
of more) yet united into one doubly associat-
ed flower.

Another phase of vegetal association may
be here noted in passing. The terrestrial
elements, water (or its absence), soil, air
(wind) are causes of a varied grouping of
Plants from low to high. Also the radiants,
heat, light, and electricity determine what are
often called Plant societies. In other words
the various diacosmical energies of Nature

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 961

influence the conjunction of vegetation in a
given territory. As there are diverse societies
of men, so there are diverse societies of
Plants, which fact has given rise to a new
branch of botanical science known as ecology.
Water will produce one kind of plant-town
(Hydrophytes), dry land another (Xero-
phytes), and so on.. The swamp, the forest,
the meadow have each its own vegetal com-
munity, which is composed of many sorts of
individuals.

But the supreme association of Plants is
to grasp them as a whole, evolving in all their
variety and gradation after their common
underlying norm, which can best be seen in
the evolutionary line of the total Generation
of Plant-life. It may be said that the entire
vegetal world has now flowered and seeded,
and thus come to its fulfilment. It has vital-
ized the Cosmos and the Diacosmos, convert-
ing them into the Biocosmos, at the first life-
stage thereof. But all along we have seen the
Plant as purposive, as striving toward an end
beyond itself. It shows itself finally as means
for something higher, which is witnessed
when the animal takes it as food and thus
brings it to fulfil its destiny. Accordingly
the animal in its origin and evolution begins
to dawn upon our vision. But this throws us
back to the starting-point, to that original bi-

262 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

furcation of the life-stuff into Plant and Ani-
mal, of which the first and most immediate
line has been traced in the foregoing account.

It should be stated, however, that the evo-
lutionary succession of Plant-life, as just
given, has been sometimes questioned. Re-
cently the declaration has been made that the
Bryophytes (Mosses) are a kind of relapse
from higher forms, as they occur only in the
later strata, as faras known. Even more sur-
prising is the statement now heard that the
monocotyledons are younger than the dico-
tyledons, be it a forward or backward move-
ment of Plant-life. This view has the ten-
dency to undermine the cotyledon as the es-
sential criterion of ordering the Angio-
sperms. Fossil botany is beginning to supply
some missing links like the Pteridosperms, in
which the fern-leaf bears a true seed, not a
spore like the fern of today. One Plant, a
sort of yew called the Ginkgo (Maidenhair)
has survived from the Paleozoic and Meso-
zoic when its distribution was world-wide, in
a single species now found in Japan and
China only as a cultivated Plant and sacred—
which fact has probably preserved it from
extinction, for it hardly belongs to the flora
of our day. Thus a vegetal product of Car-
boniferous condition has crept down the ages
iu a Solitary example, and has succeeded in

PLANT-LIFE—GENERATION. 963

living with the much later Angiosperms in
the fierce struggle for existence which has
wiped out so many of those oldest Gymno-
sperms. Perhaps the chief reason why the
Gingko tree has been preserved is that it bore
an edible fruit which is still sold in the mar-
kets of China. This quality of it was doubt-
less appreciated by the primitive man who
may uave interfered in favor of it as a food-
producing Piant, against the young and more
vigorois Angiosperras wa.ch had already be-
oun to flower seemingly with the early human
flowering.

Many of the experts in fossil Botany are
now saying that there is no certain geologic
record of non-vascular Plants, which appear
to have no power of perpetuating their forms
in the rocks. The history of Plant-life on
the globe would then begin with the Cormo-
phytes in which the vascular system is first
unfolded. Here lies, we may note again, that
widest chasm in the Plant-world, as botanists
declare, which may yet be bridged over by the
discovery of intermediate forms.

But already the Animal has appeared in its
own norm as distinct from the Plant, and has
evolved on a somewhat parallel line to our
time, with its own characteristics. The Com-
posite flower we have placed in the highest
rank, as it is no longer merely an isolated in-

964 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

dividual but is an association of many flow-
ers, having a specialization within itself of
stations and duties, for the outer floral band
or bands can show a different form and fune-
tion from the inner florets. Still they are one
community—a communal flower with a kind
of communal organization. Then each seed
of each part will bring forth the total flower ;
indeed the asexual cutting may reproduce the
Plant fully sexualized, thus each portion,
even the cell, has in it the process of the en-
tirety—has in it the generative or enduring
element as well as the assimilative or mortal
element, of the vegetal organism. Still in the
Composite, we must here observe, the center
of protection and union appears on the out-
side, in the enclosing band (involucre) which
holds the community together. Thus in its
highest manifestation, the flower must be
deemed to have its unity external, it 1s com-
bined or associated from without, hence its
protection is quite passive, it cannot strike
back or even get out of the way.

But now we are to consider that living or-
ganism which in its typical form has its cen-
ter within, organized and controlling. With
this thought we may pass to the Animal,
which is next to be considered.

ANIMAL LIFE IN GENERAL. 265

II. Awnimat Lire.

If we notice the animal before us, we ob-
serve that it has the power to break its im-
mediate connection with the Earth, though
it soon resumes that connection. It can cut
loose from gravity in a moment of effort, but
always comes back again. The dog lifts his
foot, yet can put it down on another spot;
bringing his act in relation to the physical
universe, we may say that he has a limited
control over the Earth’s attraction, he can
degravitate even if he soon re-gravitates.
The animal body is thus able to separate from
the terrestrial body, its elemental source, and
to renew its spatial relation thereto; it can
replace itself in space.

Herein the Animal is different from the
Plant, and this we may deem their primal
difference. The Plant is fixed in its fated
spot of Earth, the Animal has relatively spa-
tial freedom. Gravitation is the unitary prin-
ciple of the total Cosmos; but the Animal can
break from it for a moment, and defy it a lit-
tle. This is his primitive separation, in which
he asserts his earliest individuality even
against the primal cosmical law. The Plant
eannot perform any such act of separation;
it remains practically unseparated from its

266 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

source, the Earth-mother, even if it grows and
strives in the opposite direction, toward its
Sun-father. So much is suggested by the
locomotion of the Animal: it can reproduce
its position in spite of the mechanical deter-
minism of the Cosmos. Or we may say that
the position of the Animal in space is medi-
ated by itself, while that of the Plant remains
immediate, and keeps its appointed spot, not
being able to re-appoint itself to a new posi-
tion.

Such a power pre-supposes in the Animal
an inner organic self-control; the organism
has to be self-centered in order to lift itself
and move about; all the organs must be di-
rected from within by one organ more or less
centralized; in fact, animals are graded by
the possession of this power. Plants on the
other hand are essentially decentered within;
each organ is practically autonomous, and can
be, under certain conditions, the entire Plant,
both in assimilation and reproduction. In the
animal organism then, each organ is properly
a member of the whole and cannot take the
latter’s place, being subordinate and not
autonomous — not independent but interde-
pendent. The boundaries between the two
sides, however, are not precipitate, but very
gradual. Here again we should note the
fact of separation in the Animal; it has its

ANIMAL LIFE IN GENERAL. 267

own center as distinct from that of the Earth;
its body being material, is heavy and still
gravitates; from this point of view it has
two centers: one of its Unlife and the other
of its Life.

With this organized central principle of the
Animal is connected another characteristic:
sensation. The typical Animal feels in each
part of its organism, because this is organ-
ically centralized in the brain and the nerves
which radiate to every dot of the bodily
periphery (efferent), then turn around and
come back on a different line (afferent). The
general center is thus specialized into local
centers thousandfold, each of which is a lit-
tle brain with its two sets of nerves united
ultimately with the central brain. When one
of these special centers is stimulated, this
stimulus is at once generalized by the central
organ, and the entire organism participates
in the stimulus. The process of the one small
part is thus elevated into the process of whole,
which is the act of sensation. The single
member, being pricked with the point of a
needle, causes the entire body to feel that it
too is pricked; what hurts anywhere hurts
all over. The animal organism centralizing
and so universalizing each particular organ,
however minute, within its own periphery,
is sensitive, as it can sense each locality af-

268 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

fected on its surface. The Plant, having no
such organic center and hence no such power
of centralization, cannot make general what
affects it, and hence has no general sensation,
but only a partial one, in proportion as each
vegetal organ may be a partial center. Thus
it may be acknowledged that Plants have a
limited and local sensation, as we may ob-
serve in the Sensitive Plant. To be sure,
Animals differ much in this regard, accord-
ing to the degree in which their organism is
centralized. The cycle of sensation always
sweeping from circumference to center and
back again is what emphatically individual-
izes the animal organism, rounding it out in
a perpetual process within itself and against
its environment, which it posits as distinct
from itself and separated. Thus the animal
body within its sphere is a self-determining
unit, yet keeps up a continual clash with ex-
ternal determination, from which it cannot
wholly escape, especially as it draws thence
its sustenance. Sensation is indeed a kind of
consciousness, not yet internalized but on the
way thither: its two sides fall asunder into
separate organs which, however, return into
each other, though externally, through the
nerves. The process of the Psyche is at
work in sensation, though not yet through
itself purely, but incorporate in the body’s

ANIMAL LIFE IN GENERAL. 269

members. So, if sensation be a kind of con-
sciousness, it is not yet conscious of it, not
yet conscious of its consciousness, but rather
of its outer organism—Psyche having not yet
won its own form.

The Animal, having through sensation in-
dividualized itself as a whole in a continual
process, will proceed to individualize in detail
everything else that it does. It takes its food
by bits, its air by single breaths, its water by
mouthfuls. Thus the elements needful for its
life do not flow in upon it in natural masses,
but are first separated, divided up, individual-
ized by its special organs. Internally the
same process is continued till in the chemism
of the body the ultimate unit is reached, the
atom. But the Plant has not this peculiar
trait, or less decidedly; it does not breathe,
drink, eat in morsels, but uninterruptedly, or
nearly so. Its relation to Nature is more
immediate and unbroken, while the Animal
breaks Nature to pieces before accepting it,
and individualizes it more completely from
its first seizure to its last assimilation. The
Animal through its decisive individuality
tends to make all that it touches individual
like itself—that is its primal assimilation. It
dares tackle and appropriates in its own way
the primordial forms of the Cosmos, indi-
vidualizing Space (in its locomotion), Time

270 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

(in its periodic food-taking and otherwise},
Matter (in its various aliments). So too the
Cosmos is being broken up into self-active
units in the Animal.

The Animal feeds on the Plant and also on
the Animal; that is, its food is not immediate
and elemental like that of the Plant, but medi-
ated, already organized. On the whole the
Plant has to go in advance and prepare a
green world for the Animal, which assimilates
what has been already assimilated. The Ani-
mal is thus a second life which depends on
a first life for its complete appropriation of
the Earth and Sun, of the Cosmos and Dia-
cosmos. Still the Animal cannot do with-
out the immediate elements, such as air and
water, nor dispense with the immediate ra-
diants, as heat, light and electricity; that is,
it has also a vegetal character; in fact, the
Animal is all-three phases of Nature—Matter
(as being gravitative) and Plant as well as
Animal, which last is the purposive outcome
or perchance the aspiration of the other two.

Another distinction les in the realm of
sleep. The Plant is always dormant, even
it has stages of dormancy. It cannot fully
separate itself from its immediate relation
to Nature, especially to the Earth, and be-
come awake. Of course, when the sun with-
draws, it may take a period of rest or have

ANIMAL LIFE IN GENERAL. O71

a diversion of activity. The tree cannot lie
down like man and go to sleep, for it is al-
ready asleep; that is, it is already in imme-
diate communion with the Earth-life. So the
Animal mediates its repose—sleep we may
call a mediated repose, which alternates with
the waking state. The Animal in sleep un-
centers itself, gives up that centralized indi-
viduality and returns to its primal creative
unity with Nature. This is signified in its
prostrate position, which no longer resists
gravitation but drops back into the original
oneness of the Cosmos. It closes its eyes and
all the senses, which take a fresh dip into
that creative life-stuff, out of which they were
originally differentiated. Thus in the waking
struggle the Animal becomes exhausted and
must return in sleep to the primordial reser-
voir of vital existence for a new draught.
Strange, but every twenty-four hours the Ani-
mal must be re-born vitally. It goes back for
- a spell into the womb of its All-Mother Na-
ture (not into that of its particular mother)
where it is individuated afresh, apparently
in every cell, which must be the ultimate seat
of fatigue. Now the Plant never loosens its
hold on the breast of Nature but keeps suck-
ing, with possibly a light nap occasionally;
it never gets fully differentiated into waking
and sleeping; it never fully breaks its con-

a2 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

nection with the life-stuff, till the tie is ex-
ternally broken by death, though day and
night make some change in the Plant, since
the Earth-life is halved into a continual pro-
cess of sleeping and waking by terrestrial
rotation. The unborn Animal sleeps and
feeds plant-like; it is passing through its
vegetal stage, a kind of phytozoon on the
way to the complete bifurcation of Plant and
Animal, which hardly takes place before
weaning. Sleep is, therefore, the animal’s
daily physical regeneration seemingly from
Life’s protoplasmic sources; the whole course
of its evolution it has to re-enact every day,
if it is going to live. Man has to lie down
and embrace the bosom of his All-mother at
full length, becoming an infant again, yea a
Plant, till he touches the life-giving sources of
the whole vital world, we may suppose. Re-
born of the creative Universe daily is his liv-
ing cycle in each round of the Sun, with whom
he in his way sets and rises. Thus the act
of the Animal individuating itself for hun-
dreds of millions of years, has to be re-enacted
by man with every diurnal whirl of the Earth.
His whole line of living evolution he has to
re-evolve in bed, or at least recuperate, other-
wise he stops and goes back to the elements.

Significant is the fact that the Animal
evolves the eye, which has the power of posit-

ANIMAL LIFE IN GENERAL. 973

ing the objective world as distinct and exist-
ent, through the mediation of the hght-waves.
Thus the dualism between subject and object
is no longer merely implicit as in the lower
animals, but has become explicit, realized
through vision, which produces this division.
The eye makes the separation between the
seen and the seeing, though it reaches not to
the self-seeing, the higher act of the Ego.
When the eye sees not only the glassy pool
but also sees itself mirrored in the same, it is
a kind of outer Ego, self-beholding indeed,
but altogether on the outside—a forecasting
dream of the real Ego thrown upon the exter-
nal world.

Akso the Animal evolves a voice as it ad-
vances into its higher stages, and in corre-
spondence with its voice a more fully organ-
ized ear. The two organs are in fact coun-
terparts, symmetrical if not in form at least
in purpose, and conjoin their separate pos-
sessors In a common feeling, however slight.
Thus the Animal not only has sensation with-
in the organism but can throw it out, can utter
it to another organism which thrills in re-
sponse to the same sensation, whereby the
two become one in a degree and are associat-
ed. The self-movement of the living body is
concentrated in a single organ, the vocal
chords, which vibrate the sensations of pain

274. THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

and pleasure to other living bodies that par-
ticipate in them through sympathetic throbs,
being thus fused together into a community
by means of feeling. The voice, accordingly,
is a great instrument of association already
far down among the animals; but its destiny
is to rise to articulate speech which in so many
ways associates human beings, and is itself a
wonderfully organized or associated product.
Language makes the community of souls pos-
sible through communication (or what makes
several individuals common), and is itself the
community which mediates the members of
the communal organization, and finally is to
make them conscious of the same through
its utterance. The thoughtful reader will nat-
urally think back to the beginning of Nature’s
association in the cell and follow this ever-
advancing principle in the organ, in the or-
ganism, in the community of organisms both
of Plant and Animal, till he reaches man’s as-
sociation in institutions, which have by no
means yet reached their final evolution. In-
deed man is hardly yet aware of his institu-
tional heritage, but must soon become so, if
he is to save it from the anarchic forces now
at work. Here, however, the main interest
is to see the evolution of the voice in the Ani-
mal as the chief medium of Nature’s higher
association,

ANIMAL LIFE IN GENERAL. 215

The Organism of the Animal becomes sen-
sibly heated even to itself, in distinction from
the organism of the Plant, though the latter
too has its heat-scale. The normal tempera-
ture in man is usually placed at about 99 de-
grees (I’.), from which any considerable devi-
ation is unhealthy.. Other mammals vary
somewhat from this norm; it is highest in
certain birds, reaching 112 degrees (F.). The
heat of the animal body is simply a result of
chemical combustion; from this point of view
our organism is but a chemical laboratory
maintained at a certain degree of heat neces-
sary to compose and decompose the various
constituents of life; too much or too little
heat would destroy the process. This ther-
mal equipoise is maintained within by the
higher animals both in the hotter tropics and
in the colder arctic regions.

Biologists put stress upon what is called
a morphological distinction between the Plant
and the Animal: the former has a membrane
or coat of cellulose (with some exceptions),
the latter has no such coat (with some ex-
ceptions). Not much anchorage can be found
in that distinction. A common physiological
character is that both take food and trans-
form it through chemism into function partly
-and into waste partly, the latter being thrown
off as excretion. This process is often called

276 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

metabolism. The humblest unicellular Ani-
mal has already some kind of mouth for in-
gesting food, stomach for digesting it, vacuole
for ejecting waste. The Plant has the same
general process, but requires different aliment
and employs different organs. This vegetal
food is mostly liquid and inorganic; still there
are not a few Plants which live on decayed or-
ganisms (saprophytes); organic life feeds
also the parasitic and insect-catching Plants.
Suggestive in this connection is the dual
character of the Huglena, an infusorian. Its
assimilative apparatus is double, both that
of the Plant and of the Animal, and it can
employ either or seemingly both. It can take
earbon dioxide and mineral salts by means of
its chlorophyll, like a Plant. But it has also
a mouth, gullet, stomach and vacuole, like an
Animal. Which is it, Plant or Animal? Nat-
uralists divide on the question. It is to be ob-
served that this true amphibian (which word
means double-lived), is not the early phyto-
zoon, in which the Plant and Animal are not
yet differentiated, but the bifurcation has
taken place and the two lines have developed
into pronounced difference. Yet in the pres-
ent case these two lines, Plant and Animal,
unite into a single living thing with a double
organism, conjoint twins of Plant and Ani-
mal. Such a bi-corporal life seems unique
but has its suggestion for what 1s coming.

ANIMAL LIFE IN GENERAL. 277

The human body has its vegetal assimila-
tion of liquid nutrition in certain organs,
which can be used for preserving life when
the stomach is incapacitated. Already it has
been noted that man’s organism has its Plant
character, present but subordinate, which it
is to transcend in order to be truly itself. The
question arises: Can the Animal lapse to the
Plant? Whatever science may say to such a.
metamorphosis, poetry has celebrated it re-
peatedly. Virgil introduces it in a striking
passage of the Aeneid, where the human Plant
is made to speak and also to bubble blood,
though fixed in earth. Dante picks up the
same incident and employs such a transfor-
mation as a punishment for the sin of suicide
in one of the circles of Inferno. The Euglena,
however, stands as the instance of a double-
bodied Plant-Animal in the order of Nature.

It is difficult to draw a fixed line between
Plant and Animal in form or function, for
Nature has drawn no such line. Their differ-
ence is sometimes demanded when no differ-
entiation has yet taken place. That is, the
difference must first evolve, then it exists and
ean be given. When Plant and Animal are
evolved into their typical forms, their dis-
tinction is Just what has hecome manifested.
Jn like manner the definition of Life is re-
fractory till it defines itself or evolves itself

273 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

as distinct from Unlife. Still we have to
think what Life with its various shapes is as
a stage of total Nature, and formulate it just
in its evolutionary aspect, which indeed man-
ifests the lurking Psyche in the Physis,
whereof much has been already said.

At present, however, we are to set forth
the basic process of Animal-life, which pro-
eess will also be seen to be psychical in its
primordial source. This process will have
the three stages which we have already no-
ticed as forming the round of every living in-
dividual—Formation, Assimilation, Genera-
tion. Life has inherently this triple move-
ment, be it vegetal, animal or telluric. Asa
living thing the individual has Form, and
keeps forming itself after one and the same
general pattern; but in order to form itself
and thus retain its Form, it must also have
Assimilation, which appropriates and makes
like to itself the external and unlike. But
this external world with which it grapples
in Assimilation, is far vaster and stronger
than it is, and will in time assimilate it the
other way to Unlife unless it can reproduce
itself in a wholly new individual, yet of its
own kind—its offspring. Generation thus
rises to reproducing not merely the sin-
gle individual within its own organism, but
a line of successive individuals through time,

ANIMAL LIFE—FORMATION. 279

manifesting therein a deathless element. <Ac-
cordingly the Biocosmos must show these
three processes of Animal-life in some detail.

I. Tue Formative Process or ANIMAL
Lire. .As we are here at the start ushered
into the presence of Form, we ask whence
eomes such shaping power? The question
earries us back to the primordial individua-
tion of the Life-stuff (Protobioticon), when
the earliest living Form must have appeared
on our planet. We have often noted how Na-
ture, being the absolutely separated stage of
the Absolute, carries out to the last degree
of fineness her principle of separation, which
is verily her deepest creative character. Such
is the ultimate ground of individuation in the
widest sense, inorganic as well as organic,
and it is this individuation of Nature which
gives Form, finally the animal Form, which
still further culminates in the human Form.

That which first catches the eye is the
Form of the animal, and this is what charac-
terizes it externally, and puts it within cer-
tain limits or outlines not to be essentially
changed. Every species has its basic Form,
into which each individual of it falls, taking
possession of it naturally, in his own right.
Undoubtedly this Form varies, no two indi-
viduals of the same species are alike; then
also there are abnormal variations, mon-

230 THE BICCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

strosities in which the mould appears to be
broken in places. Still Nature pours every
living individual, Plant or Animal, into its
fore-ordained matrix, within which it has on
the whole very slight freedom of transforma-
tion; its external shape is fated. The human
Form with all its differences is fixed on a
common model, which without question has
evolved, from lower animals; indeed scientists
are correlating it more and more not only
with monkeys but with fishes and even with
worms. Such we may deem the primal Fate
of Nature: she impresses outer Form upon all
animate existence—truly her first act of in-
dividualizing Life. Man has to submit and
to accept his Form as imposed; but he can
ask the question: Will he ever be able to
wrest this power from Nature and to build
his own outer Form in correspondence with
his inner freedom? It is said that this pres-
ent Form of his is the highest visible manifes-
tation of Nature, incorporating a gleam of the
Divine Idea, and thus bringing to appearance
the Beautiful. Or we may say that this hu-
man framework is the All-Self (Pampsy-
chosis), revealed in the supreme shape of Na-
ture. Hence its importance in Art, wherein
it is taken to manifest the Godlike.

While in this way the Animal Form is fixed,
it is internally very active, always reproduc-

ANIMAL LIFE—FORMATION. 981

ing itself. As living it must be re-making it-
self incessantly. Each organ and indeed each
cell is ever bringing forth the whole organism
which brings it forth. Every part is both
means and end, the maker and the made, with-
in its round of existence. So far it may be
deemed self-end; still it is not the finality, it
too must be subsumed under something high-
er, being a link in the great evolutionary chain
of Nature, for the entire chain must be sub-.
sumed.

The Animal Form has also its periods of
time stamped upon it indelibly—birth, youth,
maturation, decline; thus it has its temporal
as well as its spatial limits, both of which it
posits through itself. Such we may deem the
leading fact in this sphere: Form is imposed
on the organism from without by Nature, but
must be re-imposed by the organism itself
from within—Nature’s gift must be continu-
ally confirmed anew by the recipient, who has
to make over into his own his external de-
termination. The fateful Form must, there-
fore, be always reformed and renewed, if it
is to live; to be sure, man can destroy his
life at a stroke and turn his organism back
into the elements. He can play suicide and
become anarchist to himself. In his universal
revolt against all Form transmitted or in-
herited, he may conclude to direct a blow at

239 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

his own Form, which has been thrust upon
him by Nature without his consent, and thus
to crown his negative career with his own
final negation.

In such manner the Form of the Animal is
cast in the mould of the species; each individ-
ual being nearly, yet not quite, the same. But
this slight variation of the individual accumu-
lates with the lapse of many generations, and
makes new species; indeed all the diversity of
animal Forms is now traced to the one pri-
mordial Form out of which have evolved the
rest. Thus the individual, if time enough be
given, can vary his mould of Form, though
he cannot break out of it; he is seen to be a
kind of Fate-compeller even within the limits
of Nature. Darwinism has therein given a
new emphasis to the individual. But to this
slow variation of Darwin has now. been added
the sudden catastropic variation of De Vries
(the so-called Mutation), in which the individ-
ual may beget not merely another of the same
species, but of a wholly new species.

1. The Animal Organism as a Whole.
We are first to take a glance at the animal
Form in its entirety before proceeding to its
external parts. Choosing man as the typical
Animal toward which all Life has evolved, we
observe his erect posture—the result of a long
development in which the extremities (leg and

ANIMAL LIFE—FORMATION. 223

foot, arm and hand), have become differenti-
ated into separte organs. The biologists of
today are trying to obliterate the distinction
between Bimana and Quadrumana on anatom-
ical grounds; still the outer Form asserts
itself and stands up. That is, it degravitates
more and more through its inner force, rising
from the earth, and seemingly therein less
fated. But the animal body restores the line
of gravity (in walking and leaping), it re-
eravitates; thus it shows the power of locomo-
tion, of change of place, in distinction from the
Plant, which is rooted to one spot, though it
too is often erect, and has a limited power of
self-movement. The animal Form moves as a
whole and localizes itself, occupying a new
space, while the Plant is localized externally,
and fixed in the same space.

Thus the animal Form has attained a cer-
tain inner supremacy over itself and shows
a Will, yes Free-Will, even if incipient. Self-
active from within we see the animal begin
to be, and thus it has a center from which the
total Form is ruled. The Plant is, on the
other hand, inclined to be multicentral, with-
out due subordination of its parts; each organ
tends to be the whole of which it is but an
organ. Here again we may recall Goethe’s
-aphorism: ‘‘The subordination of the parts
points to a more perfect organism.’’

984 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

To be sure, there is a long line of these or-
ganic Forms of the Animal from the micro-
scopic unicellular blob of plasm, up to the di-
versely associated multicellular Organism.
Still each of these Forms has its inner organ-
ization, even if at first largely implicit, till at
last animal Form seems to have become fully
explicit in man, and to have quite exhausted
its trans-shaping power (see preceding pp. 39-
41). The plastic possibilities of the original
Life-stuff have been realized to their highest
Form, it would seem, unless man himself can
take Nature in hand and give to her a new
lease of formative power. Hitherto she has
simply evolved for many millions of years her
own line of organisms in Plant and Animal,
according to her own instinct. Or we may
conceive that the sculptor of the long gallery
of animals, who is none other than Psyche,
finds no longer her plastic material adequate
to her needs, and must transform the very
Life-stuff furnished by Nature. Whispers
concerning something of this sort are already
in the air.

It is declared that invisible Life in general
is greater quantitatively than visible, and that
Forms of the unseen Animal outbulk the seen.
Moreover this world of animated Forms is in
a perpetual war with itself, the unicellular
specially with the multicellular and organized.

ANIMAL LIFE—FORMATION. 225

Indeed our organism begins and ends with a
microbe, and thus the Form of the higher Ani-
mal is a vast organization of Forms out of
which it is evolved and to which it is resolved.

The universe as Pampsychosis has its
counterpart, but still its part, in the multi-
verse of Nature, whose fundamental trait is
this individuation of Forms, which thus reach
down to the bottom of creation. But next
we shall take one of these typical organic
Forms of the Animal and watch it dividing,
that is, forming within itself.

2. The Animal Organsm in Its Dual Sym-
metry. That the higher animal is halved
lengthwise and that these halves are clapped
together into the one living organism with its
process, has been observed by most people on
their own bodies. This is known as bi-lateral
symmetry, which is so prominent in the hu-
man organism, wherein Nature seems to be
pushing her dualism to its extreme embodi-
ment in order to make the completer unity of
Form. A _ perpetual interchange and coales-
cence are going on between these opposite
yet symmetrical parts, ever overcoming their
separation, yet positing it again. The fact
suggests, indeed adumbrates, the psychical
process of division and return, though it is
not yet the Ego. The conceived line of de-
marcation is called the median line, halving

286 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

the organism fore and aft into its two sym-
metrical sides, and therein duplicating wholly
or partially many organs of the body. This
bi-lateral symmetry becomes less pronounced
as we descend in the scale of the animal world;
seemingly it evolves with the ascent manward.

The Plant divides otherwise, though it too
has its symmetrical counterparts, separating
and growing upward and downward, at the
ends not at the sides—which we may call bi-
terminal symmetry. Moreover it strives out-
ward, in root and branch and also in stem,
spreading from its germinal center toward
the external elements. But the two halves of
the animal organism, even while growing out-
wardly, turn inwardly to each other and form
their organic unity, centripetal rather than
centrifugal, determined from within more
than from without. Manifestly the Animal is
getting self-centered within its own Form,
though it as a whole has to obey gravitation.
This organic concentration of the Animal cul-
minates in its central organ, the brain, which,
however, still shows the bi-lateral division in
its two lobes.

In addition to this bi-lateralism the organ-
ism of the Animal has its dorsal and ventral
sides, very different from each other, indeed
not symmetrical. This difference is not pro-
nounced in the lower animals, though it has

ANIMAL LIFE—FORMATION. 287

begun. The vertebral column determines es-
pecially the dorsal part and protects it pass-
ively, while the fleshy ventral part has active
protection (arms and feet, senses, ete.). Again
we see that Life unifies Nature’s twofold-
ness; the outside is dual, but the process is
one. We shall find that bi-lateralism reaches
some of the bodily organs and not others; the
eround of such a distinction is suggestive and
will be touched upon later, when we have seen
the prime organic differentiation of the Ani-
mal Form.

3. The Animal Organism Differentiated.
From the foregoing dual formation of the Or-
ganism we return to the latter as a whole for
the purpose of considering its constituent
parts—Trunk, Extremities and Head. Now
each of these parts has its own bi-lateral sym-
metry, though they are not symmetrical with
one another. The three are constituents of
one animal Form which is continually repro-
ducing itself through nutrition. Each has its
own character and connection with total Life:
the Trunk is in general directed inward and is
more vegetal, the Extremities are directed
outward with power of self-movement and are
more animal, the Head is the rounding out of
the organism externally and internally, being
_ directive and self-directive, and so is in itself
more mental. Thus the human organism is a

988 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

resumption of all former Life, even that of the
Plant, on which it largely feeds, a kind of re-
capitulation of vital forms from the proto-
plasmic starting-point. What a museum of
antiquities is dug out of our body by the evo-
lutionist, far more varied and older than
those of Troy and Mycenz! And still the ex-
cavation is going on with new discoveries.
Thus the Formative Process of Animal Life
returns to its very beginning and re-enacts
its whole evolutionary history in each individ-
ual, which physically bears in itself what its
race has gone through and transcended. The
Form is the storehouse of the archives of its
past; so much we ean see, even if the record
has just begun to be deciphered. The outer
differentiation of the animal Organism just
cited indicates three great stages of Life’s de-
velopment which are now organically united
in the one process of the Animal as a whole.
At present, then, we have to consider this
outer differentiation which helps us organize
first the animal Form—Trunk, Extremities
and Head. Now these, in contrast to bi-lateral
symmetry, may be deemed a division cross-
wise rather than lengthwise, the threefold in-
stead of the twofold division—the arm being
somewhat refractory, having evolved to a
member distinct from the leg. Of course we
have in mind the typical human organism, to-

ANIMAL LIFE—FORMATION. 229

ward which all living shapes are advancing
and which is their explanation. These parts
cannot be called symmetrical, not any two of
them, but rather the contrary; their relation-
ship is far more internal than external. It
should be added that their order is signifi,
cant; though the head is on top, it is not first
in an evolutionary or psychical succession; the
Animal starts with a trunk in the cell, or for
example, in the Ameba; the head proper
comes last. So we think of this triune se-
quence of the divisions of the animal Form
as Trunk, Extremities and Head. In the
present sphere the main correspondence be-
tween the Plant and Animal lies between the
Trunk of the one and the Stem of the other;
both are in the middle, both are one and un-
divided in form, both show a cylindrical ten-
dency, both separate into limbs downward
and upward, out of both evolve the other two -
parts. The Trunk of the Animal and the
Stem of the Plant were originally one and
probably undifferentiated in the primal ele-
mental Life-stuff (Protobioticon), in which
their germinal separation must have taken
place into Protozoa and Protophyta (for
example, into the Ameeba, the unicellular ani-
mal and the Bacterion, the unicellular plant,
though biologists still differ about these char-
acteristics.) Here we again remind the reader

290 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

that this earliest Life-stuff is an hypothesis
(like Ether) ; also its first differentiation into
Plant and Animal has never been witnessed,
“and probably will require other means for its
detection than the microscope—-perchance a
new sort of spectroscope.

These three parts of animal Form have had,
accordingly, a very significant evolution, both
separately and together. The Trunk even in
man remains nearest to the vegetal form and
character. Respiration, Digestion, Circula-
tion, which take place in the Trunk of the hu-
man organism belong to the Plant also, which
has not the Head with its controlling brain,
nor the controlled Extremities. In fact it took
ages of evolution for the rising Animal to
throw off the Plant-form. After the Protozoa
there is a long line of living shapes which
though animal in function are more or less
vegetal externally—sponges, star-fish, echino-
derms, even some of the mollusks. These may
be well designated as the transitional Plant
animals, being animal in essence but plant in
appearance. It would seem that animal Form
was of far slower evolution than animal Life.
The first living thing to develop out of the
original Life-stuff was probably a Plant,
which differentiated in time self-movement
and sensation and became an Animal, though
preserving relatively its own shape. The en-

ANIMAL LIFE—FORMATION. 291

tire lower orders of Animals indicate still
such a condition, and there is no reason why
the evolution should not be going on now, even
if we may not be able to detect it at some
points, especially at the beginning.

At each of these parts we may take a sep-
arate glance, not forgetting that they belong
together physically, yea psychically in one
process.

The Trunk, then, is to be taken first, being
still a kind of enlarged cell both in shape
and function, a huge sae containing the or-
gans of Assimilation which have been evolved
from the earliest activities of the cell. Bi-
lateral symmetry is stamped upon the Trunk
externally, but not to the point of separating
the two sides, which still make one concrete
form. Internally the twofoldness of the Or-
ganism manifests itself in many gradations,
even to the doubling of the organs, which,
however, co-operate symmetrically (for ex-
ample, the lungs). Still many of its organs
are single. The Trunk is more the vegetal
part of the human Organism; like the Plant
it has its controlling principle outside of it-
self; that is, its organs have their final seat
of authority in the Head with its brain. Will
the human Trunk, having reached its present
stage after wons of development, perchance
from the original'Plant-cell, undergo still fur-

992 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

ther development? The remorseless logic of
Evolution would seem to demand that all Life
be hurled into its seething process; man’s
body is to continue its transformation in the
future as in the past. Some have thought that
it is already completed, having risen so far
from its first protoplasmic stuff; but who is
going to ery halt to Evolution?

The Trunk is, accordingly, the primal most
elemental part of the human Form. As the
Plant largely sustains the Animal, so the seat
of sustenance in the body is its vegetal por-
tion, the Trunk, which is thus the purveyor
for the higher activities of the brain, in due
obedience to the same. To be sure, the Trunk
with its nutritive purpose can get the upper
hand of the whole Organism, and subject the
Head, the master. But that is sickness, physi-
eal or moral, or both.

Next we are to see the implicit and undivid-
ed doubleness of the Trunk dividing and be-
coming twain, indeed two sets of twains in the
two kinds of paired Extremities, which shoot
off from the Trunk like roots and branches,
though directed from a new center, the brain.
The Trunk of the Animal is the stem of the
tree, whose leaves are now internalized as
lungs, and whose roots are also inside as in-
testines. Even the human Trunk cannot re-
move itself, so vegetal is it, but has to be

=~

ANIMAL LIFE—FORMATION. 293

moved by the feet and hands, which have in
themselves a stage self-movement and so are
distinctly animal, being controlled directly or
voluntarily by the central organ.

The Lower and the Upper Extremities they
are usually called, as they shoot out from the
lower and upper sides of the Trunk. Bi-lat-
eral symmetry of the one member now be-
comes two-membered, doubly so; each side
rays forth separately above and below. The
bond which held the double Trunk together
seems to break, and from each of its four
corners it throws a limb. At this point the
vegetal nature of the animal Trunk is again
suggested, though the root and the branch
have undergone a unique evolution into the
leg with foot and the arm with hand. Of these
the former still steadies and connects the
Trunk with the earth, though not fixing the
same therein; the latter still extends its flat
leaf-like palms, though with the added power
of grasping.

The hand was once taken as. the distinctive
mark of the human species (hence called Bi-
mana), in contrast with next lower species of
animals. The hand and the foot in their sep-
arate forms are connected with the erect posi-
tion of man. From the beginning of the ani-
mal Form, it must have had the impulse to-
ward elevating its head and standing upright.

994 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

Various reasons of utility may be assigned
for the change, but the chief ground is the
ereater freedom, toward which the Animal
and indeed all Nature are ever evolving, by
increase in self-controlling and therewith in
other-controlling. A second differentiation
of the Extremities is into fingers and toes,
and in case of the hand specially the third is
seen in the thumb and digits, which distinc-
tion is slightly indicated also in the foot.

In general the principle of separation and
differentiation characterizes the Extremities
which have separated from the Trunk and
have become external to it, though still
attached to it. So they in accord with their
principle keep on separating till the two arms
unfold into a difference of their own as right
and left. Herein we may see that the Plant
with root and branch is not only homologous
but remotely kindred, possibly ancestral.
Thus the Upper Extremities carry differentia-
tion considerably further than the Lower, and
are much more versatile in their activity, not
having to carry the organism (like the legs),
but to mediate it in great detail with the outer
world, being relieved of the heavy, burden-
bearing work. The arm (especially the right
one), is a skilled, light-moving workman,
while the leg is a muscular, strong, but plod-
ding day-laborer.

ANIMAL LIFE—FORMATION. 295

Peculiarly is the Hand the quick and con-
fidential servant of the Head even in the mat-
ter of gesture, which often tells or emphasizes
what the brain is doing. The one indeed is
an outer echo of the other and sometimes has
to take its place in the language of signs (for
instance, in the ease of deaf-mutes and of
Southern Italians). Thus the Hand becomes
a great instrument of association. Indeed
automatically the Hand thinks with the
orator, the actor, the performer on a musical
instrument—a second brain-center. But there
must be a first center of the kind, in fact the
center of the entire system, to which all these
differentiated Extremities return for control,
and which returns into itself for self-control.
So we come to consider the third part of the
Formative Process of the Animal, which can
only be the Head.

This is in shape and character the concen-
tration of the human organism, indeed of all
organisms from the humblest to the highest.
It moves toward rotundity through the Verte-
brates, even through the Primates. The body
becomes sphered in the Head, centralized and
rounded off in one of its parts, which is the
seat of control, not merely of its own organ-
ism but of all Life. If we conceive the total
Plant-world and the total Animal-world as
one huge living thing, it would have the hu-

996 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

man Head which it has evolved as its ruler.
To be sure all Life would be thus a many-
headed beast, 1,700,000,000 such heads being
on our earth according to statistical estimate.

The Head is, accordingly, the opposite of
the Extremities, which are the separated,
the decentered element of the animal Form,
and which are specially directed from the
brain. They have the prolonged cylindrical
tendency even to the fingers’ ends; their outer
shape is thus like the Trunk, only more
lengthened and lengthening. But from the
drawn-out cylinder we pass to the concentra-
tion of the sphere, the Head, which is the em-
bodied center of the total body, containing the
central organ of the whole organism. So we
conceive the circuit of the animal Form in its
triune order—Trunk, Extremities, Head—
suggesting outwardly the inner Process of the
Organism, and more remotely of the Psyche,
which stamps itself even upon the external
shape.

The Formative Process of Animal-life, as
it unfolds through the individual and organ-
izes itself in him, we have now witnessed in its
outer manifestation, which is also the reality
and the impress of the inner type or norm.
The final shape, the Head, we may well deem
not only the topping-out of the animal world
but of the entire Biocosmos, in a new kind of

ANIMAL LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 297

sphere—a form which recalls the total Earth-
life and likewise the microscopic beginning,
the cell. The Head we may think as clapped
on a tree-trunk (vegetal), which throws off
self-moving limbs in the Extremities (ani-
mal), which, however, are directed from the
top (mental). Such is the pyramid of Forms
from base to apex which we may see in the
human organism, a re-incarnation of the total
line of evolution from start to completion.

The Process of the animal Form takes the
organism in its immediate appearance, as
space-occupying; but in-this appearance is to
be seen the external manifestation of the in-
ner idea of the Animal. Now this Form is
something given, already made; so we ask
what makes it or forms it, putting it into this
pre-established mould or type? Animal-life
which keeps re-forming itself, must be con-
tinuously sustained from the outside. This
brings us to a new Process of Animal-life, the
second.

IJ. THe Asstminative Process or ANIMAL
Lirr. The first fact which strikes us in this
new stage is its specialization into a large
number of organs. The living organism is
now organized in the greatest detail. Life in
order to seize and assimilate the outer world
employs an enormous variety of implements,
which we at present have to, classify accord-

998 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

ing to some principle of unity. This is, there-
fore, peculiarly the field of organic separ-
ation of the animal body, which may be taken
as sort of workshop or laboratory with a
vast diversification and refinement of appara-
tus. Still the unitary principle of the huge

establishment must at least be striven for,
and perchance we may glimpse the process
of the whole and of its leading parts.

Evidently the Form of Life in order to
keep itself alive must take and appropriate
what is different from itself; it has to tackle
the external world, and in its way conquer
the same. Here then, enters the stage of dif-
ference, of conflict—the separative stage of
Animal life, which we call Assimilation in its
widest sense.

The Animal assails Nature in her three
kingdoms—inorganic, vegetable and animal,
making them over into its own self as or-
ganism, which thus gets the power of main-
taining its ever-flowing circuit of bodily re-
production. The Animal assimilates the ele-
ments—air, water and some earth; but its
chief food is the Plant, thus assimilating
what has been already once assimilated and
transformed from the elements into life. Still
further, the Animal assimilates the Animal
often, thus feeding upon a double previous as-
similation, that of both Plant and Animal.

ANIMAL LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 999

Edible meat has both these characters in it,
and when it is eaten, one may suppose that
it has the tendency to impart the special pow-
ers of Animal-life with increased efficiency,
for instance sensation and self-movement, and
doubtless volition. Purely Plant-consuming
peoples would seem to be more like the Plant,
with its single assimilation. The carnivorous
animals are fiercer, have more will-power than
the herbivorous. Animal evolution moves
through flesh-consumers, that is, the consum-
ers of food already doubly assimilated. If
the first living thing was a Plant, there must
have come the stage when the Plant began
already to devour the Plant and thus to turn
Animal. Possibly this has something to do
with that primal differentiation of Life into
Plant and Animal, or the transition from one
to the other in the primeval protoplasm.
Accordingly man (unless he be a vegeta-
rian) in his appropriation of the external
world for sustenance, takes up the unassimi-
lated element, the once assimilated vegetable,
and the twice assimilated animal. All three
he transforms into his body in order to live;
he cannot now be nourished by the Inorganic
alone, as the Plant is, yet with some special
exceptions; nor on the Plant alone as some
animals are; nor on flesh alone; he has prop-
erly to go through the whole process of the

30) THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

Life-world as to diet in its ascent to him-
self, with its three assimilations, the last one
being his own. Thus man already eats large-
ly pre-digested food; nature for millions of
years has been preparing his table, and so
to speak cooking his dinner of meat and veg-
etables. Man’s nutriment is, therefore, the
result of wons of evolution; seemingly start-
ing from that first push out of the Inorganic
to the Organic. Also his organs of Assimil-
ation have been adjusted to his gradually
evolving diet, and have evolved in proportion.
Each human organ has, accordingly, its evo-
lution, which can often be traced backward
through the line of animals to the protozoon,
perchance even into the protophyte. In the
simple act of eating his meals, man partakes
of the total development of the living things
of this earth, he appropriates to himself a bit
of Life universal.

It may be stated here that Assimilation as
now used, means the reproduction of the same
organism as already given and existent, not
the reproduction of another organism or a
new individual. The latter belongs to a dif-
ferent Process, that of Generation. The term
reproduction is often applied to both Pro-
cesses, the assimilative and the generative,
and must be employed with care to avoid am-
biguity. Still the thought of Life’s repro-

ANIMAL LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 501

duction is itself double, being on the one
hand the renewal of the body within itself
(self-regarding), but also the renewal of the
body in a different individual (other-regard-
ing). Thus we see Assimilation and Gener-
ation tied together both in word and thought.

The association of cells into the organ has
been repeatedly noted in the previous account,
and their peculiar power of adjustment. But
here the remarkable fact is the association
of organs into the highest organism of Na-
ture, correlated and co-operant in one living
body which, however, in its turn will show
the same associative principle. Animals form
societies, not merely those of one species but
of different species, till man enters and caps
the associative gift of Nature with his social
institutions. Beginning with the cell animal
life has shown a never-ceasing push for as-
sociation; and the same has been already no-
ticed in the Plant-world. This inner bent or
propensity of all Life—What is it? Whence?
Whither? Already we have challenged the
work of that unseen Psyche lurking in the
seen forms of Physis everywhere and driving
it forward step by step toward an end—truly
the end of all Nature, which is to transcend
Nature. |

At present, however, the vast organic va-
_ riety of animal Assimilation is before us for

802 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

some kind of ordering, which may carry a lit-
tle hght through this chaos of particular or-
gans. In the preceding process of animal
Form, we specially characterized the Trunk
in its outer relations; but now we are to see
it as the chief seat of inner Assimilation,
vegetal in shape and function. It is the part
which ingests and digests and distributes the
material brought to it from the outside, work-
ing internally and immediately through inter-
nal organs. Such is the first stage of what we
here designate as the assimilative Process
of Animal-life, its most direct, immediate
phase, making the outer and different into the
inner and similar. But now comes the oppo-
site act of Assimilation; it produces also or-
gans directed outwardly, which have to meet
the hostile external world with both defense
and offense—warding off its attacks as well
as seizing a portion of it for food. But this
is not all: the organism, to be directed out-
wardly for its own end, must be centralized
in an organ, the brain, which directs inward-
ly as well as outwardly, and which thus be-
comes the center of the Organism as self-
directed, which term expresses its supreme
attribute in the present field.

We may in brief recapitulate the three
stages of the Process of Assimilation: the
Organism as inwardly directed (1) as out-

ANIMAL LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 308

wardly directed (2), as self-directed (3). The
work of each of these stages embraces a num-
ber of organs which likewise must have their
processes larger and smaller. Here only a
few of these can be given, since they are spe-
cialized almost to infinity. But at present
we are to grasp in advance the sweep of As-
similation: from seizing and swallowing the
object to sensing it with vision, from a real to
an ideal appropriation of it, from assimilat-
ing it destructively with mouth and stomach
to assimilating it constructively with the eye,
which is also an assimilative organ of the
higher animal. Such is the middle or medi-
ating process of Animal-life, which we shall
now set forth in its more obvious factors.
1. The Organism Inwardly Directed.
Taking the human body in the work of As-
similation, we observe that its primary direc-
tion is inward from the outside; it turns from
the external world to its own fabric with some
article of food, which is pre-supposed, is got-
ten, and is internalized into the living struc-
ture. Such is its immediate dominating fact,
that of sustenance, which it cannot obtain
from itself permanently, but must seize and
appropriate as its other, as its opposite. The
unicellular organism is practically all stom-
ach, which has a certain ability to make itself
into other organs according to its need, being

304 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

implicitly the whole of them. The immediate
material taken is not entirely used; it is ana-
lyzed, separated into the useful and useless,
the latter being finally thrown off as waste.

First in order comes the Digestive System
in its entirety, which embraces a flexible line
of organs strung along and connected with
the alimentary canal, through which the food
passes from stage to stage undergoing many
changes, as if in a chemical laboratory. The
mouth starts with the first act of division
which the teeth continue, till mingled with
saliva the first pulp is formed and driven
down the esophagus. In the stomach the
echyme is prepared by additional processes,
and then follows the chyle, a milky mass
which the intestinal absorbents separate, tak-
ing up the nutritious part and passing it into
the blood, while the non-nutritious part is
rejected. Physiologists say that the proteids
and sugars (carbo-hydrates) are stored first
in the liver whose automatic action turns them
over to the blood gradually, as they may be
needed; while the food-fats pass by their own
line into the blood. At any rate the end of the
Digestive System is attained when the prod-
uct of all its manifold organs is turned into
the circulation.

The next fact, accordingly, is the distribu-
tion of the digested aliment to the every point

ANIMAL LIFE—asSIMILATION. 305

of the organism, which feeds on it. This is
done by the Circulatory System, whose chief
function is to divide up and to apportion what
it receives from digestion. Two fluid mate-
rials are poured into it: the newly digested
chyle and the old venous blood. There seems
a tendency to duplicate the organs in this
system, in contrast with single organs of the
Digestive System.

Circulation starts with the lungs in which
aeration of the blood takes place; this gets
oxygen and can burn, releasing force like the
heat of coal. Then this fire-bearing fluid
(temperature normally a little less than 100
degrees) 1s pumped by the heart to every
part of the body through the arterial pipes.
Passing into and out of the capillaries quite
extinguished, some of it returns to its source
for a new oxidation through the air.

-The blood is constituted of a watery part
(plasma) in which float three kinds of solids:
corpuscles, red and white, and the so-called
platelets. The white corpuscles, under the
name of phagocytes are now regarded as the
standing army of the organism, whose duty
it is to assail and destroy the intruding foes,
especially the bacteria who are always mak-
ing incursions. Sometimes one side and
sometimes the other is defeated with the cor-
responding result of health or disease. Also

306 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

the white corpuscles perform the function of
police ‘and remove all disturbing substances.
Malarial fever is produced in the blood by a
parasite which comes from the bite of a cer-
tain kind of mosquito (anopheles). The aver-
age man contains about six quarts of blood.
Noteworthy is the fact that the organs of
circulation, lungs, heart, blood-vessels, have
the tendency to be double in correspondence
with the bi-lateral symmetry of the whole
body. On the other hand the organs of di-
gestion have the tendency to be single (stom-
ach, pancreas, spleen, liver though lobed, and
the intestinal canal, though of several sizes
and forms). Digestion is a more primitive,
vegetal function than circulation of the blood.
Also the digestive organs seem on the whole
less amenable to the central organ (brain)
than the circulatory, in which fact the Plant
is again suggested. The word circulation im-
plies the circular movement, which is in de-
cided contrast with the digestive movement.

Connected with the round of the blood is
the lymphatic circulation, which starts in the
eapillaries with the watery part of the blood
(plasma), and floats in a perpetual bath the
cells of various tissues, bringing to them nour-
ishment as well as carrying off their waste.
The lymph is always accompanied by some
soldiers, the white corpuscles (the aforesaid

ANIMAL LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 307

phagocytes), for the evident purpose of at-
tacking any foreign trespasser, bacterion or
other assailant, who may be met with on the
way. The lymphatic vessels, after completing
the round of the body are collected into two
main ducts which empty into the jugular
veins, whence is repeated the cycle through
the blood, capillaries and lymph. Thus the
Circulatory System as a whole is composed
of three parts, arterial, venous, lymphatic.
The perfect blood, flowing to the capillaries,
does there its work, and is separated into its
venous and lymphatic parts, each of which
in its way returns to the primal perfect
blood by a new distribution through lungs,
heart, arteries. Such we may call the process
of circulation whose function is to distribute
in its round the store of sustenance prepared
by digestion. The Circulatory System is
thus a kind of middle-man or mediator to the
Organism, strictly producing no food, though
cooking it over, and then carrying it to the
consumer. Compared to the social order, di-
gestion is the farmer, while circulation is the
merchant. Indeed the farmer gets his food
products from the elements, while digestion
gets them from the farmer chiefly.

Finally is the Execretory System which has
to clean up and carry off what is called the
waste of the body, to eject the rejected mate-

308 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

rial. This waste is mainly composed of worn-
out tissues, ashes from the incessant combus-
tion going on, gases from the chemical labora-
tory in every part, refractory portions of
the original food, various secretions for help-
ing the work of cleansing, and then a flush
of water oozing at every pore. Here we see
the primal sanitary police established by Na-
ture, but to be sharply looked after by every
man who cares for health and working-power.
The body has a marvelous instinct of getting
rid of its own filth, but needs also intelligent
help from the brain. Every organ probably
has some ability to excrete its own offal, but
the organism has its special officials for this
business, chiefly the lungs, kidneys, intestines,
skin, all of which have other duties also. It
will be noticed that the social Order, espe-
cially the City, with its Board of Health and
system of sanitation, with its sewers, gar-
bage carts, sprinkling, ete., has simply objecti-
fied into an institution the working of the hu-
man Organism. Associated man takes his
instinctive cue from the association of or-
gans in his own frame-work.

With the Excretory System the Organism
directed inwards, which started with inter-
nalizing the external world or a part of it,
has now turned outwards, and thrown back
into that same external world what it has not

ANIMAL LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 309

wanted. Thus the complete cycle of Diges-
tion, Circulation and Excretion has rounded
itself out, having in general come back to its
starting-place. The fluids, gases and solids
excreted by the body will be again subjected
to Harth’s process, and transformed to the
elements which may once more be wrought
over into Plant and Animal. in fact the
whole body is destined to be restored to the
elements from which it was taken.

Such is the first stage or act of the Assim-
ilative Process of Animal-life, in which the
Organism is directed inward, till it finally di-
vides its appropriated material, and throws
outward what it cannot use. Thus the in-
ward-turning Process has begun to turn out-
ward, and will demand and create its own set
of organs for completing the work of this new
direction. Moreover a new character will be
developed by this second stage of Assimila-
tion, less internal and self-dependent, more
subordinate to an outer central control, and
hence more deeply associated with the total
Organism, with which it is more directly and
completely connected. Less able to live an
unseen inner self-contained Plant-life, it will
turn more to action, being the direct instru-
ment of a centralized will.

2. The Organism Outwardly Directed. Al-
ready we have noted the Extremities (arnis

310 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

and legs) as a division of the external Form
of the human body, whose members sprout
out of the four corners of the Trunk. The
latter is the chief seat of the preceding Pro-
cess of inner Assimilation, which takes place
inside; but now that same Trunk sends forth
limbs which are largely employed in the work
of outer Assimilation. Such is the present
counterpart to what has gone before. Indeed
that inner Assimilation is quite helpless
against the external world which must be
seized and appropriated, and which must be
euarded against in its assaults upon the Or-
ganism. Thus we come to the continual
pitched battle between Life and Unlife, as
well as between Life and Life in the grand
struggle of individuals for a share of Life.
In this realm of external conflict, the first
organ is one of protection, the enveloping
wall of the fortress—the skin which is direct-
ed outward in a passive defense, yet also di-
rected inward as already noted. Next we
place the skeleton with its bones, the upholder
of the Organism within and without, for of-
fense and defense. Finally the muscles form
the system of ropes which direct the bones
and the whole organism in its varied move-
ments within and specially without in loco-
motion. These three organs or rather sys-
tems of organs, while they have also their

ANIMAL LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 311

internal relations, tend to externalize the in-
ternal, to meet the incoming world, in defense,
attack and appropriation. These points we
may draw out a little.

The outermost part of this external stage
of the organism is the Skin, or the corporeal
integument, close-fitting and protecting the
naked tissues underneath. It is in many re-
spects the contrast to the Bones in the pres-
ent division of Assimilation; it does not hold
up but holds in; still it has likewise a non-vital
element, especially in the nails and hair, and
it sloughs off the outermost cover of itself.
Thus the Skin divides into an inner layer
(dermis) vitally organized, and an outer layer
less vitally organized and wearing away into
the inorganic part (epidermis).

The Skin besides its protective character,
is both absorbent and excretory, and it is
capable of a little round of nutrition in itself
with mouth and stomach. But outwardly it
is the dividing surface between the organism
and the elements; it outlines the individual
body in the world, holding and defending all
the other organs. Among mankind it is
colored variously, and this color of the skin
is the chief outer mark of the distinction of
races.

Next in this sphere we place the system of
‘the Bones—the framework of the Organism

312 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED,

which is the solid basis for all movement of
the soft parts outward, and by which they are
borne along. Also it contains and protects
the inner organs with a surrounding rampart.
The human shape it holds upright, and there-
in suggests the evolution from the lower ani-
mals. Moreover the Bones are the earthy
portion of the body, though somewhat organ-
ized.

The skeleton gives the division already
noted in the outer shape—Trunk, Extremities,
Head—two hundred and six bones being usu-
ally counted in the body. Thus it is chiefly
what determines the external Form. But it
has evolved, so there is something determin-
ing it—evolving it toward an end. The skele-
ton thus becomes an important criterion of
evolution, especially the vertebral system with
its skull.

It is the skeleton which must evolve into
the upright posture and carry the body as a
whole with it, which otherwise would fall to
the earth in a mass’ The skeleton is what
rises up in opposition to gravity; the earthy
matter is organized against the earth in a de-
gree, and to this new earth the rest of the
body clings. So far then the organism de-
gravitates, obeying its own center, yet as a
whole it still gravitates. Significant is it to
see the skeleton evolve in the lower orders

ANIMAL LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 813

into existence, then rise from its horizon-
talism (or subservience to gravitation), to
perpendicularism. But is this last the final
form?

The Trunk is on the whole the least pro-
tected part, the head is the best protected,
the Extremities dre the active protectors as
well as the assailants. Still the skeleton can-
not work of itself, the bony fortress must be
manned with a working garrison.

The immediate movers of the Bones are the
Muscles in which are stored the energy for
such purpose. To every bone are attached
two or more muscles for directing it back and
forth and perchance otherwise. Five hun-
dred and twenty-six skeletal muscles are
found in the human body. Now this muscular
energy does not start and go of itself ordi-
narily; it is stored and has to be kindled, like
a piece of coal; or it must be oxidized, when it
too gives off heat. Blood is the agent.

But the control of this process lies in the
nerves which penetrate these numerous mus-
cles everywhere, some of which, especially
those of the Extremities, are under the con-
trol of the will, while others are involuntary.
Thus the Muscles are an intermediate prin-
ciple, the directive implement of the whole
organism, which we may liken to a system
of pulley ropes; these must have something to

814 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

pull, and also something to pull them in turn
—a still higher directive agency.

The Muscles connect the Skin with the
Bones locally, and are protected by it from
the oxygen of the air which is to reach them
through the lungs and blood. The Skin thus
prevents the Muscles from taking fire on the
outside and then burning up without the or-
der of the central authority, which is brain
and nerve. So the skin is the excluding
agency, limiting not only to form but to func-
tion, turning the organic process inward,
shutting off the process outward.

Through the Muscles the Organism has
now gotten a directive energy, which is dis-
tributed to the organs of the body, but which
especially lays hold of the Bones and works
them in accord with a purpose. The Muscles
are the laborers who indeed perform the task,
but who have to receive their commands from
a higher authority, with its system of messen-
gers going and returning. Therein the Mus-
cles pre-suppose a new directive center, which
must likewise have its seat in an organ.

At this point, then, the Organism directed
outwardly in Assimilation comes to its limit,
and organically through the nerves of the
Muscles passes over into a new field. It is
seen to be under direct control of a superior
power which must next be sought. Meanwhile

ANIMAL LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 815

we can look back and observe that Skin, Bones
and Muscles form a whole with its process in
conflict with the external world. They are
the defenders, upholders and providers of the
citadel of the individual which must be pro-
tected and nourished from the outside realm
of Nature. Still such action is not automatic
and involuntary like a great part of the Or-
ganism inwardly directed. Next we must as-
cend to the fountain of this new directive
energy.

3. The Organism Self-directed. We have
now reached the control and centralizing ac-
tivity of the total Organism—the Nervous
System, with Brain and Spinal Cord. Hith-
erto there has appeared a multiplicity of or-
gans which we have sought to co-ordinate in
our thought; but now they are to be co-ordi-
nated by one of themselves; that is, all the
different organs are to be unified, and this un-
ification is to be the work of an organ. From
the center the lines or nerves run out into
every minute part, to the corporeal periphery,
and then they return to the center; thus a vast
number of circuits going and coming are in-
terwoven through the body. The Nervous
System is a System of Cycles separating from
and returning to a common point which con-
trols them all, and through them the other
parts of the Organism.

316 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

This is, therefore, the universal organ pen-
etrating everywhere within its sphere, and
yet a particular organ too, whose function
is to unite all the particular organs, to sub-
ordinate their particular separative charac-
ter, and therewith its own. We may call it
the organ of all organs; specializing visibly,
it must also visibly universalize all special-
ized organs, including itself. This double
part it has to enact, yea to organize sensibly.

The Nervous System with the Brain directs
the outwardly directed and the inwardly di-
rected organs of the body, and directs itself
therein. So we see the perpetual round of
nervous action whose image is realized in the
above-mentioned cycles. As every point of
the Organism in its separation must be hunted
up by a nerve and joined to the center, there
arises the surprisingly large number of
nerves in the human body—499,500, some
have estimated. But the very object of this
enormous differentiation is to overcome dif-
ferentiation, to bring back all these differ-
ences to unity. Still this has to be done out-
wardly, materially, by an organ; thus the
Nervous System with the brain is the high- »
est visible manifestation of the Universal in-
corporate; or it is the Psychosis materialized,
as far as this can be brought about. Note-
worthy is the fact that the seat of the psychi-

ANIMAL LIFE—ASSIMILATION. S17

eal Process indicates or pre-figures in outer
form so closely just that Process.

So we have the Directive or Administrative
System of the Organism, which directs the
directed inwardly and outwardly, and is both
along with itself. These three Systems con-
stitute the complete process of Assimilation,
which keeps pouring the outer world into its
mill and working it over till it be transmuted
into the mill itself, which becomes thus self-
working and self-active, getting the food
which enables it to get such food, assimilat-
ing the unassimilated till this assimilates
also. The stages of self-direction with the
corresponding organ may be summarized as
follows:

(a) Self-direction organizing itself in its
special organ The Brain, which consist of the
Cerebrum, Cerebellum, Medulla.

(b) Self-direction, reaching out to the rest
of the body and controlling it—Spinal Cord
with two lines embracing the inner and outer
(peripheral) organs.

(c) Self-direction reaching forth to the
world outside the organism and ideally get-
ting control of that (or assimilating it), as in
the sense of vision. This is a return to the
previous externa] world, but not to use it as
aliment for the body.

(a) The Brain is the organized center of

318 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

its own Directive System, and of all the other
Systems of bodily organs. But the Brain
too is still further organized of System with-
in System, refining itself more and more to-
ward the Psyche, which is the final creative
point of Assimilation. Still its bi-lateral sym-
metry is ever present, the inerasable stamp of
Nature—the outwardly separated parts be-
coming one.

This separation is likewise indicated in the
two kinds of matter of which the Brain is
composed—the gray and white, or the outer
and inner, which, however, coalesce in a kind
of medium. The gray matter is made up of
nerve cells mostly, while the white matter
which underlies the gray is constituted chiefly
of nerve fibres, which grow out of the nerve
cells.

First in order, the Cerebrum, co-ordinates
all the manifold lesser co-ordinations with
supreme authority, with Will. It directs the
rest of the directive organs—it is the direction
of direction, and hence ultimately it is the self-
directed, and imparts that characteristic to
the whole organism. In the Cerebrum is the
supreme turning-point from the sensory to
the motor power, from inwards to outwards,
from afferent to efferent nerves. These are
composed of two distinct kinds of cells, to
which is added the third kind called associa-

ANIMAL LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 319

tional—-connecting cells of the Cerebrum,
which alone has been estimated to contain
more than nine thousand million cells—the
very image of infinite particularity unified
through association, or made universal though
still in a particular way or organ. The Cere-
brum may be deemed the creative prototype
of all human association, being itself so com-
pletely associated in its minute cellular divi-
sion.

The Cerebellum is supposed to be the seat
of the co-ordination of the actions of the mus-
cles and of other organs. Many muscles have
to co-operate in walking for instance; then
again the muscular System requires respira-
tion for instance, which has its primal auto-
matic control in the Medulla. The Cerebellum
is composed of white and gray matter, like
the Cerebrum, but somewhat differently ar-
ranged, having not so much an originative as
a regulative power. An animal deprived of
its Cerebellum cannot make its muscles co-
operate to one end, although these may show
irregular movements. The many muscles re-
quired to give a sudden leap must be subordi-
nated for the single act: this subordination is
the work of the Cerebellum, which is in its
turn subordinated and has to obey the com-
manded purpose. Thus it is double, govern-
ing in one direction, yet being governed in an-
other.

32) THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

The Medulla has chiefly control over the
functions of the inward-turning organs of the
Trunk (lungs, heart, stomach, ete.). It works
automatically from within, not reflexly from
without (reflex action properly starts inward
from the skin). Also it works continuously,
not subject directly to the Will. Still it does
not act independently for it too is associated
with the rest of the Organism. In general the
Medulla is in control the vegetal part of the
total System, whose action lies inside the tho-
rax and abdomen, and cannot be interfered
with by volition. Thus it is generally recog-
nized as the co-ordinating center of all invol-
untary activity, or of the Organism inwardly
directed in Digestion, Circulation, Excretion.
It contrasts with the Cerebellum which co-or-
dinates mainly the outward-turning organs
which have the battle to fight with the external
world for food and defense and so must be
under direct control.

Putting these three parts of the Brain into
an order, we see a return upon the whole or-
ganism, of which the Medulla is the co-ordi-
nation of the inward-directed part, the Cere-
bellum of the outward-directed part, while the
Cerebrum is the co-ordination of these co-or-
dinations, and likewise of its own or of itself.
Here then we may see the primal seat of or-
ganic self-direction, which has three phases or

ANIMAL LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 394

eycles; the self-direction of the Cerebrum, of
the total Brain, and of the total Organism.
Still the latter is nof governed directly always
from the three brain centers, but has its own
center, a sort of second or subordinate Brain
situated almost wholly in the Trunk itself.

(b) This secondary System of centralizing
and directing the Organism or parts of it, has
many ramifications, but may be looked at
in three main divisions—the Spinal Cord, the
so-called Sympathetic Nerve, and the Nerves
proper, or the Neural differentiation, which
embraces the peripheral System on the sur-
face of the body. The general character of
this secondary System is meditational, lying
as it does between the immediate organs of
Assimilation and the supreme organs of con-
trol. In fact the whole sphere is one of intri-
cate division and specialization; the Nerves
are indefinitely specialized for each little part
or purpose. Every region of the body’s sur-
face has a different degree and kind of sensa-
tion for instance, and this is a neural differen-
tiation.

The Spinal Cord has the double duty of re-
flex action and at the same time of transmis-
sion of the stimulus to the Brain. It is itself
a reflex center of afferent and efferent nerves,
yet is also connected with and subordinate to
the cerebral center, to which likewise there

‘999 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

must be a going and a returning. The Spinal
Cord is cleft lengthwise by a fissure which
quite halves it, the two parts being united by
a little neck of gray matter, while the white
matter lies on the outside of the cord. The
motor fibre from the nerve is what makes the
muscles contract.

The two lines of the Ganglionic or Sympa-
thetic System have to do with the viscera, the
inward-turning organs. They branch from
the spinal nerves near the spinal column and
form a row of ganglia on each side of the
body, and the two rows unite in one ganglion
at the pelvis. They resemble two knotted
ropes suspended on each side of the spine and
tied together below—an inner and outer spinal
cord controlling inner and outer organs of
Assimilation. Hence there is a sort of dupli-
cated Spinal Cord, the outer being protected
by its bony walls. These nerves are respect-
ively called the cerebro-spinal and sympathe-
tic Svstems. The main ganglionic line divides
into subordinate groups of ganglia forming
an intricate network known as plexuses (for
instance, the solar). Crawfish and insects
have chiefly the ganglionic System and thus
indicate a starting-point of nerve evolution.

The work of the Nerves proper in the Or-
ganism has been often compared to that of
the Telegraphic System with its thousands

ANIMAL LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 399

of wires penetrating every portion of the
country, and combining it into centers small
and large, whereby the minute interecommuni-
cation of part with part and of these parts
with the whole is brought about. The nerves
are accordingly the means of the complete as-
sociation of all the separated members of the
body, even to the cell, interconnecting every
point in the Organism with the series of lower
centers, till they reach the seat of supreme
authority. The cranial nerves go to the Brain
directly, as they lie nearest, but the vast mul-
titude of the other nerves show a gradation
of control, a kind of hierarchy, which orders,
correlates and unifies the corporeal activities,
internal and external.

The great fact, then, of the large popula-
tion of Nerves is Association, which is here
realized in its highest organic potence. Tak-
ing the cell as the least and final indviduation
of Nature, billions of units in one Organism,
the Nervous System as a whole is what co-or-
dinates and associates them. The preceding
secondary Brain, as we may call it, embracing
the three Systems—the Spinal Cord, the Sym-
pathetic Nerve, and the Neural Differentia-
tion ramifying in all directions and individ-
uating as if in correspondence with Nature
herself—has now completed its mediation,
‘outer and inner, has connected the outside

824 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

or superficial as well as the inside or visceral
parts of the Organism with the Brain which,
as self-directed, is the seat of all other direc-
tion. At this point then comes specially the
relation of the Organism to the outside world.

(c) This relation (say of man’s body to its
environment) varies much, and hence differ-
entiates itself variously in the Organism,
whose differences in this regard have long
been known as the Five Senses, which have
seemingly evolved from the simple primal
cell-sense, one as yet and not very pro-
nounced, though certainly manifested. So the
nerve-ends of the bodily periphery become
specialized in the course of long evolution for
adjusting the Organism to external condi-
tions. Again rises the question as to what
ultimately works this transformation. In
general it would seem that the Nerves are
most susceptible to this evolutionary power,
being the chief means of vitalizing into the
highest forms of Life the lower and even the
non-vital forms. It is Psyche again overcom-
ing the vast separation of Physis and restor-
ing the ultimate One.

This field we may call Sensuous Assimila-
tion, in which the outer world is taken up into
the central Brain through the Five Senses
(sometimes more are given). This furnishes
knowledge or ideal Assimilation, not ali-

bes

ANIMAL LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 825

mentation or bodily Assimilation, which, how-
ever, the same center controls. The object
now begins to be assimilated to the Psyche
directly, not to the Organism—one begins to
know. Touch is the Sense of immediate con-
tact with the external object, and varies much
in different parts of the body. Next we have
Taste and Smell, which sense the object dis-
solved in liquid or air, but still in contact with
special organs of the body. Finally Hearing
and Sight are Senses of the object at a dis-
tance, but taken up through waves of air or
hght. Theoretic, constructive, ideal Senses
they have been named from this attribute.
Thus the realm of the Five Senses with
their sensations concludes the process of the
Organism as self-directed, starting from the
Brain and reaching through the Nerves to
the outer world and then through the Nerves
returning to the Brain. Such is the cycle of
organic self-direction which, however, is but
a stage of the larger cycle of Assimilation,
which cycle, beginning with its immediate act
of biting and digesting food, winds up with
assimilating the object ideally and at a dis-
tance as in sense of sight. Thus we conceive
the assimilative Process to extend from swal-
lowing the object to knowing it—from a real
to an ideal Assimilation—the latter returning
to the world not for physical but mental food,
perchance to find the Psyche therein.

326 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

At this point is concluded the second stage
of Animal-life, the assimilative, which has
unfolded itself in three main processes: the
Organism inwardly directed then outwardly
directed, and finally self-directed. All these
processes have the same general object: to
transform the outer world into the inner Or-
ganism which does the work of transforma-
tion. But now the opposite has to show it-
self: this inner Organism makes itself outer
or another; from transforming an object into
itself, it proceeds to transform itself into an
object. It not merely assimilates but gener-
ates. In Assimilation the Organism has re-
produced itself within itself; in Generation
it has reproduced itself in another. In the
one case there is appropriation, in the other
there is impartation. We may call the first
ease self-regarding (individualistic), the sec-
ond is other-regarding (altruistic).

We may conceive Generation to be Assimil-
ation turned about and rounding itself out to
a whole; the Organism assimilates itself to
a new entire Organism assimilating. This is
the inherent logic of the transition: when the
principle of Assimilation is applied to itself,
or made universal, it can no longer one-sidedly
subsume the object under itself, but must also
subsume itself under the object; the Organ-
ism, from making the object like to itself,

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. 327

must pass to making itself like to this object,
or generating another like to itself. The thing
assimilated is transmuted into the thing as-
similating.

Thus we may again see that reproduction is
of two kinds: assimilative and generative, and
can be regarded as forming a bridge of tran-
sition from one to the other. In the first ease
it overmakes the world into itself, in the sec-
ond it overmakes itself into the world. Thus
in the last instance the Organism gets to be
a kind of world-maker within its sphere; it
recreates itself creating, and so manifests
what is now known in biology as genetic con-
tinuity. This fact in its organic manifesta-
tion is what must be next set forth.

Ill. Tur Generative Process or ANIMAL-
Lire. The present stage, as the third in the
movement of Animal-life, reveals itself as
a return to the Formative Process already
set forth. The Form of the Animal was there
(in the first stage) taken up as something
given or pre-supposed; but now that given or
immediate Form is to be seen bringing forth
itself in a kind of self-mediation, reproducing
itself through organs. So Generation goes
back to Formation, ever re-forming the body
of the Animal according to its pre-established
norm, of course with some variations. The
‘Generative Process, accordingly is a phase of

828 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

that creative individuation, which belongs to
all Nature, is indeed the very soul of Nature
sprung of her primal separation from and in
the All. For we may deem Nature the Multi-
verse born of, yet remaining in, the Universe.
Hach living unit has this universal power (or
power of the Universe) of separating itself
into many individuals. So far back we trace
Generation, to its primal source, which must
be the Generation of all Generation, in which
the Animal as genetic individual participates,
thus showing itself to be an organic member
of the supreme original Totality—the Part
sharing in the Process of the Whole.

The Animal likewise has its norm or ideal
prototype transmitted from individual to in-
dividual, which fact is realized in the vast
repetition of shapes, each of them being a sort
of copy of the originative norm. Every Or-
ganism as genetic has an immortal part which
is Just this animal norm and which it hands
down to its offspring. Still every individual
has a mortal part; it is pre-formed, limited,
fated, transitory; it goes through its fixed pe-
riod of birth, maturity, decline, decease. Yet
it has the power of re-making and projecting
this individuality through time indefinitely,
and thus has an eternal element.

So the Organism through Generation keeps
reproducing the pre-established Form of the

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. 829

given species, or more remotely the original
Animal-norm itself. That Form seems super-
imposed upon every living individual, whence
comes it, and what does the act? It is one
phase of the total manifestation of Nature as
individuated or separative. Yet this individ-
ual as Organism insists upon not remaining
merely individual but also upon sharing in
what created it, that is, in its own creation.
So it becomes generative, turning back to its
genetic source; what makes it, it must make
likewise. Thus it breaks over its individual
limits, reaching backward and forward in pro-
creation ; it makes itself universal organically
(not spiritually). Even our body longs to
burst its barrier of Form (in its genetic de-
sire) and to re-make its own Form.
Assimilation, having satisfied one sort of
appetite, begets another, its counterpart and
complement. The Organism in its assimila-
tive stage has reproduced itself as something
already given and existent; but now it seeks
to reproduce its own reproduction. In As-
similation the Organism takes for granted
in impulse its own origin, but now it pushes
to originate just that origin; it can not stay
a part of itself, but must be the whole of its
process, must instinctively seek to be univer-
sal. Though already born, even the animal
body is not content therein, but proceeds to

330 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

re-bear its own birth. Such is the supreme
desire of the body: it feels itself a part and
is unhappy till it integrates itself; or it feels
itself in prison, till it breaks out and recon-
structs its prison; it is a slave in Assimila-
tion, but is free in Generation (or relatively
So).

As the relation between the assimilative
and reproductive processes of the animal Or-
ganism is the most significant of this whole
sphere, we may employ still another set of
categories to designate it: potential and
actual. The Organism in Assimilation re-
newing its own ready-made tissues, is po-
tentially creative or reproductive; it re-
news itself as old, as given, as unseparated
within itself. But when it renews itself as
a new individual it is really new, creation is
actual, reproduction is realized in the separ-
ated Organism which is no longer merely po-
tential in the first Organism. The Generative
Process is thus the true realization of what
Life assimilates, completing such Assimila-
tion into a whole. Even the body will totify
its own hunger, and altruize its selfish crav-
ing.

These expressions suggest a higher sphere,
the social order of man. The socio-economic
institution springs from the need of nutrition
and assimilation in the human organism; yet

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. — 9)

it is when taken in itself, an institutional or-
ganism, the association of many individuals
for the purpose of satisfying their basic or-
ganic wants. Civilized man does not gratify
his bodily needs immediately, but through the
association with his fellow-men. Already we
have noticed the association of all the organs
into the organism, and of. the cells into each
organ, so that Nature gives not only the hint,
but the instinctive propulsion to human asso-
ciation. In like manner the fundamental con-
cept of Ethics is suggested by the organic ac-
tion of Assimilation and Generation, though
_ both are to be subordinated in the still higher
. ethical relation.

The culminating work of Life as or-
ganic is the generative Process of the high-
est animal, whereby this reproduces the Form
of itself in a new individual. It is thus self-
begetting, propagates itself through duration,
and in a way eternizes itself. We may say
that the Animal now breaks out of its own
fixed and otherwise impassable limits of Space
and Time—its bounded shape and its periodic
life—and posits itself in new limits of Space
and Time. Thus it transcends those prima!
elemental restraints of Nature (Space an
Time) and to a degree determines them /
its purpose. We may here conceive the Ani-
mal as going back to its first given Form and

332 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

’ re-forming that, and thus re-making its first
appearance (see the above Process of Animal
Form).

Looking again at the foregoing Process of
Assimilation we note that, though it repro-
duces its own given body, it cannot reproduce
its starting-point, it cannot recreate its total
self. The outcome of Assimilation is to re-
produce all the separate organs of the body;
but now the Animal must advance to the re-
production of this reproduction; the individ-.
ual as a whole (not merely in its organic
parts) is to be reproduced and to unfold
through its period. The Animal as complete
is not only to generate itself as begun but also
as beginning—which is the true generation.
To assimilate simply is to patch up the old
individual with fresh fibres, but to generate
is to reproduce just this individual able to
assimilate and to generate. Or we may say
the organism having assimilated must at last
eome to re-make itself assimilating and gen-
erating. :

So there are two reproductions, that of the
already given organism and that of the as
yet ungiven organism; we might call them
the subjective and the objective reproductions
—in the latter the Animal reproduces itself
completely as object. We can also categorize
them as the assimilative and the generative

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. 333

reproductions of the Animal. With another
set of terms already mentioned we can reflect
upon them: individualistic and altruistic. As-
similation proper subordinates the outside
world to itself—it is Nature’s selfishness;
Generation subordinates the individual to the
other—it is Nature’s altruism, which still fur-
ther develops in the Animal as parent. So
the Animal is to remain not merely this living
individual, but is to make itself genus, the
creative type of its kind—not only individual
but universal.

The animal individual, from having been
the total Process in itself, which it was in
Assimilation, is now to become a part of the
Process only, one side of it or one-half of
it, which is the case in Generation. The dia-
lectic of Assimilation demands that it be sub-
jected to its own law, that it be assimilated,
and also by another individual. But this
other individual too has to obey the same law,
and be assimilated while it assimilates. From
this point of view each animal individual both
assimilates and is assimilated by its other,
which must be its symmetrical counterpart
organically, or of the opposite sex. This mu-
tuality of assimilation is characteristic of the
eenerative Process in its very germ, in the
two conjugating cells.

The two sides of bi-lateral symmetry for-

334 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

merly united in one body, are now separated
into two bodies which are still symmetrical in
Generation. The dualism of the organs of the
one organism which was so prominent in As-
similation has passed over into two organ-
isms, of two opposite but symmetrical sexes.
The animal individual in order to reproduce
itself as individual must be taken back to its
source, must be dipped afresh as it were into
the original fountain of its being, through one
of the opposite sex. It has to begin over
again from its germinal cell, and evolve as
a new individual, assimilated and also assimi-
lating. Thus it shares in both sides, or in-
herits, as the saying runs, from both parents.

Thus the organic dualism which is so deeply
imprinted on the one body, breaks into two
bodies, which, however, return to the one body
in the offspring. Each individual through
the other participates in the total Process,
shares in the Generic, the Universal, the self-
creative All. Over the individual is the genus
which subordinates him in order to re-create
him as individual who is, therefore, not in
himself generic. The absolute genus (the true
summum genus) is the Pampsychosis, far
above the natural or organic genus; through
the latter the individual can only reproduce
himself again, not being the genus as such,
or as self-creative. The self-dividing and

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. 995

self-returning One which does not fall asun-
der into sex is spirit, the Ego. Here the
fact may be noted that Darwin’s famous book,
Origin of S'pecies,is really seeking for this one
generative Process of living individuals,
Plant and Ainmal, in their vast diversity. To
be sure, such is not his conscious purpose;
he will show the cause or source of variations
of Species, not the source of Species itself,
which indeed calls for the primal individua-
tion of Life. Species being given, he investi-
-gates how and why it will vary. But this in-
vestigation cannot stop till it reaches to the
origin not only of Species but of Species-
making, in fact of Nature herself. Still the
work of Darwin was epoch-turning, since it
threw the age upon the thought of Evolution,
though not original with him, and led up, of
its own inherent logic, to the still deeper prob-
lem: Does Evolution itself evolve, or is it
done with itself?

But this question, discussed elsewhere yet
rising to the surface here and everywhere,
must now be set aside for considering the
Generative Process of Animal-life in its spe-
cial ordering. As in the case of Plant-life,
we shall look at it in its three main aspects:
single Generation (asexual), double Genera-
tion (sexual), total Generation (or animal
Generation as a whole, in its entire line of

336 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

descent from its start and at present exist-
ent). Thus the original Animal-norm may
be’ seen manifesting itself in its uncounted
shapes of which we are ourselves one, just
that one which glances back in time and over
in space, and orders the whole by a universal
principle which strives to be harmonious with
that of the Universe itself:

1. Single Generation of Animal-life. When
we see the one Amoeba polypodia divide with-
in itself and become two individuals, both be-
ing alive and the child not distinguishable
from the parent, we witness doubtless the
simplest form of animal Generation, that by
fission. What makes it divide? Such is its
nature, we ordinarily say, and therewith let
the matter drop, having swallowed a little
isolated fact. Still we are not satisfied, and
no amount of science, which stops with the
separated fact, however small or great this
may be, is going to quench our thirst for what
lies behind the external phenomenon and
causes it to appear. That tiny act of micro-
scopic fission is a phase of the total Universe
and must show itself such just in such a work
of separation, which in its way is creative,
and shares in primal creation. The microbe,
self-dividing and thus individuating itself,
not only reflects but also re-enacts the All
which does the same thing. The exceeding

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. 337

minuteness as well as the simplicity of the
act make it the more impressive, as it seems
to interlink and unify in a lightning flash of
thought the extremes of the Universe.

The foregoing may be taken as an instance
of single Generation in its simplest stage.
It is mostly called asexual, as sex is not yet
involved, or monogenetic (R. Hertwig calls it
monogony as distinct from sexual amphig-
ony). The chief fact is, Generation now takes
place through a single organism, which here-
in has its strong resemblance to the Plant-
world, and hints their primal unity, ere Ani-
mal and Plant had yet bifurcated. Again we
should note that the new animalcule has in-
herited an undying portion in its framework,
though it as distinct individual should live
only a few moments; by mere fission it propa-
gates itself, and this generative act is an im-
mortal spark of original creation. The norm
or type of Animal-life endures in the deed of
Generation, though its manifestation in the
body is very finite and transitory. The crea-
tive energy is what immortalizes: Forms van-
ish in Time, but the ultimate Form-maker
not only persists through Time, but re-moulds
Time itself after his own pattern. So we have
to conceive the lowest infusorian, a mere dot
or blob of protoplasmic life-stuff, but still self-
generative, as participating in the one fun-
damental energy of creation.

‘338 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

The generative division of the Animal is
most commonly crosswise, but it may be
lengthwise or even oblique. Still another
form of uni-parental Generation is that of
budding, which again recalls the Plant. In
the lowest animal organism, each part has
the tendency to produec the whole body under
certain conditions. There is as yet no decid-
ed centralization in a head and brain, even if
there be a limited self-movement. Still these
living sacs or globules often dart out into
something like trunk and extremities; they
seem to improvise the organs of a higher ani-
mal, according to the need, and then take the
same back into the common receptacle. In-
deed the Ameeba would appear to be a poten-
tial man, the plastic possibility of the fixed
organs, which evolution is to make persistent
‘in the lapse of the ages. Still we have again
to ask who is the artist working in this so
formable body of the microbe, and shaping
it evidently to an end? Already we have
noted it struggling in fitful outreaches toward
a higher organization—wherein may be felt
again Nature’s deepest aspiration to advance,
even to advance out of itself.

In this field of single Generation or asexual
reproduction are many grades in which may
be observed the approach toward the com-
plete sexualization of reproduction, Two

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. 8389

cells of an infusorian often seem to couple
though they are just alike as far as can be
seen. Then dimorphism appears in which
two different cells are observed to conjugate
for reproduction. The so-called parthen-
ogenesis is single generation (or uni-paren-
tal), but some biologists claim that it is a de-
generate reproduction from sexual cells, hence
a lapse. Undoubtedly single Generation
(monogenetic) is most common in the lower
animals, such as the worms and celenterates,
while it is lacking in the higher orders. More-
over, as the animal rises’ in the scale, there
takes place a differentiation between the
body-cell and the sex-cell, which act also
shows a gradation. The cells of Generation
become differenced from those of Assimila-
tion, and are stored up in their own special
organ. The animal which is still in a vegetal
stage is propagated by budding; its tissues or
its cells must possess both kinds of reproduc-
tion, assimilative and generative; it is still
a plant-animal (phytozoon). Outer bodily
growth can turn into a new individual, which
fact indicates a low, or vegetal, or purely as-
similative stage of the animal organism, not
vet evolved to the fully generative stage.
When the animal is practically all stomach,
procreation is a product of digestion—the
generative principle has not yet developed

840 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

into its own organs. In the higher animals
it is noticeable that bodily growth usually
ceases with sexual maturity—the Plant turns
into the Animal, and adds no more layers. On
the other hand even in the lower Vertebrates,
such as the fishes, growth in size continues
long after their sexual maturity, probably in
many cases to the end of life, wherein the
backboned animal still resembles the Plant.
Perhaps the most striking transition be-
tween asexual and sexual reproduction is seen
in the. so-called alternation of generations.
For instance the jelly-fish, Bogainvilla
ramosa, is on the one hand an asexual polyp
which produces by budding the sexed medu-
se, which in turn produce the asexual polyp;
the sexless parent brings forth the sexed off-
spring, which now bring forth the sexless
erandchild, whose offspring are again sexed.
Such is the alteration between the asexual
and sexual principle in the same animal,
which seems to be struggling out of the Plant,
yet ever dropping back into it as regards re-
production. Single or uni-parental Genera-
tion pushes up for once into double or bi-par-
ental Generation, but cannot maintain it with-
out a dip backward into its previous life-
form, where it rises again. Other kinds of
alteration between single and double Genera-
tion have been observed (for instance in the

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. 841

Crustaceans). But we shall pass now to the
latter.

2. Double Generation of Animal-life.
From the foregoing account we may observe
a striving of the animal toward a complete
dual sexuality, in which the separative ten-
dency of Nature would seem to culminate.
The difference of sexes in the higher animals
and especially in man shows the physical
world evolved to its last chasm, which, how-
ever, is to be bridged by the generative deed.
It is no wonder, then, that the biology of to-
day has brought forward with so much indus-
trious research and experiment the problem
of Double Generation (getting now techni-
cally to be named amphigony), and has traced —
it into the primal genetic cells of male and
female. Generation has thus become cellular,
in accord with the dominant biological task
of the time. The study of the behavior of
the sexual cells (spermatozoon and ovum) is
pursued in great detail with a singular fas-
cination as if the scientist himself expected

the next moment to witness his own genesis.
Of course this moment has not yet arrived,
and probably will not under the microscope;
but in the meantime we have learned many
other things. In this connection we may cite
an authoritative formula of Professor Hert-
wig of Munich: ‘‘Sexual reproduction is a re-

342 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

production by means of sexual cells.’’ But
here again we have to ask for the origin of
this origin, for the source of this cell-sexing,
or of sexuality itself. Can we find any ground
why Nature bifureates itself anew into the
two sexes in order to reproduce the individ-
ual? We perceive it to be a separation which
takes place in both the vegetal and animal or-
ganism, and which evolves by many grada-
tions up to the final diremption between the
human male and female.

We have often had to turn back to the fact
that Nature is inherently separative, and in-
dividuates itself by the necessity of its origin.
Now this act of double or bi-parental Genera-
tion is one method of Nature’s individuation,
that is, of reproducing the living individual.
Thus sexuality is an organic manifestation of
Nature’s original creative energy; through
the sexes man (and indeed all Life) goes back
to the primordial fountain of the Universe as
self-generative and shares in that—whereby
he too becomes self-generative, of course or-
ganically. Sex, then, as active is the process
of Nature’s individuation in one of its phases,
that of creating sexed individuals in the off-
spring. The Universe as universal must be
self-creative, whereof the sexual process has
to be deemed a manifestation; thus the ani-
mal may be said to universalize itself, of

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. 343

course not spiritually but naturally. Sex, ac-
cordingly, taps the genetic reservoir of total
creation for its creative energy, though this
be only a little drop trickling down into the
individual. And it may be here added that
the individuation of Nature comes to its most
intensely expressed dualism in sex—in the
two mutually sexed individuals whose func-
tion it is at last to overcome this dualism.
For in sex the individual feels his insufficiency
as a whole, feels his halfness, so to speak and
will integrate himself with his other half.
Thus even the organism has the impulse to
totalize itself, or within its sphere to make
itself universal, especially by going back to
its own beginning (say in the cell) and repro-
ducing its origin—transforming itself from
the generated into the generator of the gen-
erated.

The living individual as animal comes in
the course of its development to challenge its
own origin as something given, as something
imposed upon it externally, in which it took
no part. Having had no hand in its own cre-
ation, it grows to be reactionary to the coerc-
ing law of its own being; it will not passively
remain the made, but will be the maker of
itself as made; it will ascend to the fountain
of its own existence, and there will make it-
self over, will re-enact the law of its own gene-

344 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

sis. Such is this deep-seated impulse of sex:
it compels the individual as animal to return
upon his forced or fated origin, and to re-
originate himself in a new being; thus he
rounds himself out to a complete whole and is
the genus, taking up into himself his own pre-
supposition, prescribing his own prescription.
It is a symmetrical fact with Nature that the
youth, having gotten his growth and reached
the age of puberty—that is, having passed
from his time of Assimilation to that of Gen-
eration also—begins to turn against the trans-
mitted order in the Family and even in the
State; he kicks against the prescribed limits
environing him on every side; he will chal-
lenge, if he does not assail, the whole institu-
tional world in which he was born. He will
not be satisfied till he have a hand in regulat-
ing the regulations which regulate him; he
must at least help make the law which he
obeys; he must become self-legislative not
only morally but also institutionally, if he is
to escape from his negative, anarchic condi-
tion. The institutions of our country make
the youth legally self-governing at his major-
ity, when he has attained the maturity of Na-
ture and is questioning the traditional order
imposed upon him, when even his organism
is challenging its own origin and seeks to be
re-born out of itself in a new birth.

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. 345,

The man is not consulted whether he shall
be born or not; life is super-imposed upon the
individual without his knowledge or consent,
so he aspires for a kind of organic freedom
in Generation. The individual alone can as-
similate but not generate; in order to reach
the creative function of his own individuality,
he requires another individual, symmetrical
im sex, that each may subsume or assimilate
the other, and thus both be present in the
third, the offspring. Thus the spacious prov-
ince of heredity unrolls before us, into which
stream ancestral contributions by the million.

The basic character of the sexual Process
in animal Generatior has been already out-
lined. The individual man, simply living for
himself through assimilation, is not the whole
process of himself, but the half, the one side
which must find its completing half in the op-
posite sex. Desire is the manifestation of this
halfness, which longs to be the whole. The
sexual individual, being inadequate to his own
immanent kind of species as self-created, is
impelled to his sexual counterpart, needing
it to assimilate him to his beginning and to
recreate his starting-point as the new indi-
vidual. He integrates his halfness and is
taken up into the total process in which two
sexual halves become one, the creative one—
the genus above both as individuals. But

346 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

the half can rise to be the whole only for a
moment in Nature, then it drops back into
itself again, into the previous dualism—it
cannot universalize itself as persistent and
thus be Spirit, but remains Nature. Still it
reproduces its own Form, and on this side
returns to the given Form, to the type, in the
new individual, which is still a half and sexed,
and which will show the same natural inade-
quacy and limitation which has been seen in
the parents.

Thus the generative Process of Animal-life
winds up in an endless series of transitory
individuals, children of Time’s succession, in
which they begin and cease. But while the
individuals rise and vanish, the species or
the norm persists and evolves into the mul-
titudinous diversity of shapes present and
past. Here we may again add that from this
point of view the two sexes as separate are
only potential, a possibility, which becomes
reality in the genus embracing both or in their
generative unity. Parenthood even in the
realm of Nature re-unites the separated in-
dividuality with its Creator.

The animal as generative we may call a liv-
ing Universal, not a spiritual; it rises to par-
ticipation in the creative fountain-head tran-
sitorily, then falls back into its own individual
separation. The animal satisfies its hunger

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. 347

and thirst, but therein has not really satisfied
itself or its deepest necessity, which is to re-
make itself as a whole or to objectify itself as
a living individual. In Assimilation the Or-
ganism is a vast laboratory, in which the
chemist recomposes himself while decompos-
ing himself, so that Chemism here does not
fall assunder, as it does in the Diacosmos.
Still such chemist has not only to assimilate
his Organism, but to generate it as the high-
est end of Nature. Now the result of Gener-
ation on our planet has been a series of indi-
vidual forms trailing through time down to
the present. This series as a whole must also
be considered.

3. Total Generation of Animal-life. Evo-
lution has brought out into strong relief the
whole line of Animal-life; in fact biology in
its dominant evolutionary trend has largely
dealt with the Animal as a more pronounced
living individual than the Plant. Total Gen-
eration would include the entire result of the
generative Process of Animal-life; it views
the creative norm of the animal realizing it-
self not merely in a single individual, but in
the completely ordered kingdom of shapes.

There are three phases or lines of this
realm of total Generation. (1) The present
existent forms of the animal world from low-
-est to highest are to be graded into system

348 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

with its nomenclature (species, genera,
classes, families, tribes, ete.). (2) The past
forms of the animal world, as revealed in the
geologic ages, are to be set forth in their evo-
lution, which shows the existent fauna aris-
ing in time. (3) The present individual or-
ganism (say of man), in its genesis from its
earliest stage to its last, is seen re-evolving
the animal shapes of the past from their start,
recapitulating the historic rise of the whole
animal world in its own growth as individual.
Now all three of these lines of development
have the common movement: they start far
back in the pre-cellular life-stuff, rise to the
uni-cellular status, and then conclude in some
form of cellular association. Such is their
unitary principle of evolution which indeed
underlies the million-fold grades and shapes
of animals and plants—those now being, those
having been, and those getting to be. For
this reason the science of the cell (Cytology)
lies at the basis of Biology and unifies its
countless variety of forms. (See the preced-
ing exposition of Cytology, pp. 130-160.)
Accordingly, if we wish to take a total sur-
vey of Animal-life as generated, we must go
back to the conception of the elemental life- _
stuff (Protobioticon) both vegetal and animal,
to which we assign the primal differentiation
into Organic and Inorganic. In this pre-cel-

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. 849

lular material takes place the bifurcation into
Plant and Animal ,each of which moves out
of this common starting-point on its own
line. The biologist is still observing minute
organisms which seem to be almost neutrals
in this no-man’s-land (see account of the
Myxomecetes on a former page). The poten-
tial plant-animal (phytozoon) now splits, or
rather unfolds into its two possibilities, one
of which we may eall the first plant (proto-
phyte), and the other the first animal (proto-
zoon). Samples of each sort may be taken
in the Bacterion and in the Amceba.

We have now gotten our first Plant and first
Animal, and have reached the epochal fork-
ing of all organic life into its two ascending
lines of living individual forms, each of which
henceforth moves on its own distinct path.
The stages of this primordial Earth-life are,
first, protoplasmic, and, secondly, phytozoic,
which last stage differentiates into Plant and
Animal. Already we have traced the evolu-
tion of the early Plant (protophyte), through
its various gradations to its highest forms.

Now the same thing is to be done for the early

Animal (protozoon). But just here is the
need for a wast new class, the third, embrac-
ing all the animal forms after the protozoon.
Naturalists often give to this class the name
of metazoa, which include all the higher ani-

350 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

mals, those which are above the so-called
gastrula stage, and have attained the true
cell with its associative forms. (A completer
designation would be metaprotozoa.) In like
manner there should be a corresponding divi-
sion of Plants, the metaphyta (or better,
metaprotophyta), embracing all above the
protophyta. But this term, as far as our
knowledge goes, has not been used.

But at present our task is to classify the
metazoa, which embrace quite all that we im-
mediately see of the animal world, the sphere
of its associated cellular life, its varied multi-
plicity of forms up to man. The problem of
classifying and naming these Forms has al-
ways been present to the observer, and such
attempts have their history, their consider-
able evolution, say from Aristotle down to our
own day. How shall the vast variety be in-
ter-related and by what criterion? Tribe,
class, order, family genera species are some
of the names by which the ever-widening
groups have been designated. Hach individ-
ual animal is thus co-ordinated with every
other animal, from least to largest. We take
a common catfish and eall it a vertebrate;
thus we have conjoined it in a group with
all the upper animals, and contrasted it with
all the lower. So in the one individual be-
fore us we are to see the whole animal crea-

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. 851

tion. In recent biology two other very sig-
nificant processes have sprung out of this
line of animal Forms, known as ontogeny
and phylogeny (already described).

In the creeping lizard we may easily see a
prophecy of the human organism with the
latter fully developed before us. Indeed the
homologies of man’s organism have been
traced back to the protozoon. But what fu-
ture development of the animate Form does
man’s organism prophesy? Or is with it the
chapter of organic development closed? Are
there in him any glimpses of that ideal Form
toward which the entire line of animality
seems to be moving? The front fin of a fish
may prophesy the foreleg and paw of a cat,
which member heralds the toes of the ourang-
outang, while these forecast the human fin-
gers—but what do the latter prophesy? Can
any scientist point out a hint of what is com-
ing? The question has the implication that
man, having become conscious of evolution,
may have henceforth to be consciously evo-
lutionary. Is he to take Evolution out of the
merely unconscious instinct of Nature, where
it has lain hitherto, and to direct it by his
self-conscious reason? Some maintain that
the human body has reached its limit of com-
plete Evolution; others say that our organ-
ism contains many undeveloped organs which

352 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

in the future are to attain their completion.
Still again we hear that Evolution has passed
out of Nature (Physis) and is henceforth to
have its chief seat of activity in the Psyche
which is to continue in its sphere the work
of association already begun in the cell. (See
preceding pp. 37-53.)

The ordering of the animal kingdom in the
present field (metazoa) is just now passing
through a transitional state of confusion, es-
pecially as regards the larger divisions. The
older classification into Invertebrates and
Vertebrates has been undermined, and there
is no system to take its place. Still the Ver-
tebrate, though reduced from the first rank
to the third rank in scientific gradation, main-
tains its authority. That is, the Vertebrate
is now subsumed under the Chordate, and
this again under the Segmentate, and this
again under the Metazoa. The difficulty °
seems to be that the naturalist has not yet
come upon the ruling, or perchance the crea-
tive principle of classifying the diverse shapes
of the animal world. Enormous has been
the advance in the special study of individ-
uals, varieties, species; but with this develop-
ment of specialization, the science of today
shows a lack of generalization. Still the
reader ought not to be set down wholly in
chaos. What we have been able to think out

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. 953

for ourselves in this field, we shall throw
into the following brief summary. Of the
Metazoan system we make three divisions.

A, THe PLant-anrtmats ‘or . Phytoids,
which must be carefully distinguished from
the previously mentioned Phytozoa, in which
there is as yet no differentiation. But the
Phytoid is decidedly an animal in function,
though in form it is like a plant, and is often
named from this resemblance (as the crenoid
or sea-lily). These animals we place first and
lowest, since they have not yet fully gotten
rid of the vegetal formative process, which
they have in common with the Plant. Thus
they must be considered to stand nearest to
the primal bifurcation of the life-stuff into
Plant and Animal. Such are the sponges,
star-fishes, echinoderms (once known as radi-
ates, now called chiefly coelenterates). We
may also observe that Phytoids are in the
process of getting rid of their vegetal form,
which likewise has or may have a skele-
ton (as can be seen in the star-fish). Indeed
the skeletal criterion of classification may be
conceived to run through the whole gamut
of Animal-life from the Phytoids to the Ver-
tebrates, though sometimes it is not so easy
to find.

B. Tue Motuvusks may be put next as the
intermediate or transitional stage, though

354 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

there is a good deal of doubt about their posi-
sition in the line, the systematists ranking
them diversely. Examples are the oyster,
snail, cuttle-fish. The vegetal form has dis-
appeared, and a distinct bi-lateralism has
arisen; but the Mollusks are not yet seg-
mented into successive rings, like the worm
(see next division). The skeletal arrange-
ment is variable: sometimes inside (cephalo-
pods), sometimes outside (bivalves and uni-
valves), sometimes quite non-existent. It
would seem that in the mollusks the skeleton
is in its uncertain stage, but on its way to its
articulated form which culminates in the ver-
tebral animal.

C. Tue Srementates, beginning with the
worms and reaching to man who is included.
This division is based upon the so-called seg-
mentation of the animal organism, its skele-
tal arrangement being a series of concentric
rings of more or less rigid material. The In-
vertebrates of this sort Cuvier called Articu-
lates .though he excluded the well-articulated
vertebral column of the higher animals; pos-
sibly he could not think of man’s skeleton
with that of a worm or insect. Such articu-
lation we may conceive as a return to the
Plant-animals (Phytoids or Anthozoa), and
as an association of a number of them into a
new organism, which still shows their original

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. 955

more or less circular units. This division we
shall subdivide in the following manner.

1. Worms, represented by the annelids, or
the ringed earth-worm.

2. Arthropods, or the joint-footed insects,
spiders, myriapods, crustacea.

3. Chordates, in whose body the notochord
or primal backbone appears (cartilaginous),
which begins to connect the articulation. Of
this class (or sub-tribe) there are several
less important divisions till the highest and
most important portion of the animal king-
dom is reached in

Tuer VERTEBRATES.

This is now classified as a division of the
Chordates, which in turn come under the
Segmentates, which in turn come under the
Metazoa, which again form one of the main
divisions of the animal world—a position held
not very long since by the Vertebrates. This
may be taken as a sample of the present ten-
dency to revolutionize former classifications.
Still the conception of the Vertebrate and the
word also hold their place in science as well
as in literature. The term belongs to La-
marek (1797), though the conception existed
before him; in fact it has been traced back
to Aristotle, who, however, takes the blood

356 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED,

as his criterion and not the bones of the ver-
tebral column, making the division into blood-
less (invertebrate) animals and_ blooded
(vertebrates with their four classes—fishes,
amphibians with reptiles, birds and mam-
mals). It may be added that there has been
a recent attempt to take the blood in its cor-
puscular constitution as the criterion for a
new classification of Animals, which, in its
way is a return to the work of ancient Aris-
totle.

But when it comes to putting into order the
four (or five) classes of Vertebrates—the
fish, the reptile, the bird, and the mammal—
the modern anarchy of science breaks out
afresh with illuminating discord. The main
point is to arrange these so prominent and
well-known animal shapes into new divisions
which will not only show their differences
(which are plain enough), but their deeper
inter-relations. Among the many attempts
to re-classify the Vertebrates, we may here
set down that of Huxley as probably the best
known, beginning with Fishes: (1). Ichthy-
opsida (fish-looking) in which the Fishes and
Amphibia are joined. (2) Sauropsida (liz-
ard-looking) in which the Reptiles and Birds
are brought together by anatomical homolo-
gues. This conjunction which seems now so
strange, is well-certified by evolution in the

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. 357

geologic ages. Hspecially the Archaeop-
teryx, a fossil reptilian bird of the Mesozoic,
appears to furnish the best sample from which
the differentiation into Reptile and Bird took
start. But there are many other extinct speci-
mens of the same general kind known as
pterosauria. (3) Mammalia (udder-bear-
ing). Here the skeletal criterion is dropped
and the method of alimentation for the young
is taken. The difficulty with the classification
of Huxley is that it has no leading principle
of ordering the Vertebrates. A desperate at-
tempt to cling to the bones as the standard is
seen in the little-known divisions, Lyrifera
(Fishes and Selachians), Quadratifera (Rep-
tiles and Birds), Malleifera (Mammals). And
in this highest class, the Mammals, there is
found no small diversity of ordering from
Linneus till the present time. Still there is
good ground for dividing the Mammals as fol-
lows: Monotremata, oviparous (Ornitho-
rhyneus); Marsupialia, viviparous, with
pouch for young; Placentalia, having a pla-
centa with uterus. The last rise through a
variety of forms to the simian and finally to
man.

The foregoing line of development shows
the ascent of the human species through what
we have named the total Generation of Ani-
mal-life. On the whole the basic principle of

358 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

classification is the Form as determined
chiefly by the bony structure. The assimila-
tive Process has furnished also a number of
criteria forgranking the animal, but they have
hardly been pivotal. The question arises,
whence is to be taken the ultimate test of or-
dering all these shapes of Animal-life—from
Formation, Assimilation or Generation? Of
course Form is the most apparent and strik-
ing, but the deepest and most essential fact
of animal existence is Generation. Already
some phases of it have been seized upon for
co-ordinating certain shapes of Animal-life,
but it has not been universally applied. In
this respect Plant-life seems to be better or-
ganized than Animal-life. One may be per-
mitted to think that there will be a gradual
approach in systematic zoology toward the
generative Process of Animal-life as the true
principle of its order. In that case even the
division of the Vertebrates will have to be
supplemented, or probably supplanted.

But, having fairly grasped the generative
Process of the living individual, we find that
it reaches back to something more ultimate.
Necessarily individual Life pre-supposes uni-
versal Life as creative of this Life individual-
ized. The act of Generation taps the vital
reservoir which exists already, and which in-
dividuates itself into the separated world of

ANIMAL LIFE—GENERATION. 259

living things. But the individual once being
born, has to go back and re-bear himself; he
makes himself the medium for the common
fountain of Life to pour into the birth of what
lives singly. So we are led to inquire after
this common fountain, the universal source
of the individual Life of Plant and Animal,
which hes in the background of all the va-
ried display of living forms on our planet,
and is indeed their primal form forming them
separately.

Such total Life welling up into the single
lives of the whole Earth, we shall distinctively
eall Earth-life, which embraces in its com-
plete process the sum of terrestrial creatures
and their common living substance. In it
takes place that as yet hidden transition from
the Inorganic to the Organic, from the precel-
lular plasm into the cell, where lies the source
of primordial individuation, which is broached
by the generative Process, and set to flowing
anew into individual existence. That which
is known in Biology as germinal continuity
has its origin in this universal Life of the
Earth, though this too originates still further
back. But Harth-life is the collective act of
Nature’s individuation, the totality of vital
units from the microscopie cell (and possibly
before) to the largest organism.

360 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

We repeat, then, that the supreme postulate
and creative pre-requisite of individual Gen-
eration, both in Plant and Animal is this
Earth-life, which cannot be omitted in any
complete view of the Biocosmos whereof it
is the full summation and synthesis. Likewise
it has its own organization and processes
which are next to be considered.

EARTH-LIFE IN GENERAL. 361

III. EarruH-uirer.

The two extremes of living things may be
taken as the microscopic cell and the Earth-
life; the smallest and the largest become
therein counterparts, and are the first an‘
last, between which all vital existence is mov-
ing. The shapes of life, in so far as they are
visible, appear to be set in this frame-work
embracing least and greatest, between begin-
ning and conclusion. It is the grand living
stream of existence as a whole which we are
now to summon before us; it seems to be bub-
bling up from unseen depths in the smallest
points of life which unite, organize and asso-
ciate in a vast line of varying forms, till they
pour back again to the unseen depths of the
Karth-life.

Now is there any connection between the
appearance and the disappearance of this liv-
ing river before us—is it simply emptying
back into the invisible underworld of its
origin the contents of its visible upper world,
to be made over again into life? Some such
cycle has long been conceived, and on certain
lines rendered probable. The dissolution of
organisms into their chemical constituents
would seem to be a preparation for their vital

862 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

re-constitution. Still something besides chem-
ism is needed for making and re-making life.
It is agreed that spontaneous generation from
inorganic matter has hardly yet taken place
within any limits now perceptible; still many
a scientist holds it as necessary postulate of
Evolution. For if our planet was once flung
off as a fragment of fire-mist from the sun,
it must have become alive much later. But
how? Whatever else may be affirmed, the
Inorganic must have turned to the Organic.
Furthermore, is this process still going on?
It has not yet been scientifically detected in
spite of many adroit attempts. But such a
postulate is also necessary; it is absurd to
think that just so much life-stuff was evolved
from Unlife somewhere and at some time on
our planet just once for all, and that then
this protoplasmic material was left to its own
FEivolution, which has been continuing ever
since. Surely that original transition from
the Inorganic to the Organic is still a neces-
sary part or stage of the life-process of the
Earth, even if it yet awaits the sight of the
scientific eye.

Tt would seem that Harth-life alone can
individuate the living thing, can start the
vital organism on its career even as self-
generative. For the aphorism of science,
omne vivum ex vivo, calls secretly for the

EARTH-LIFE IN GENERAL. 363

origin of the first living thing which could
reproduce itself. The problem is not simply
whence came just this single vital shape’ be-
fore us, but whence came it with its power
of self-propagation? It was born immedi-
ately of a parent who again had a parent;
but who or what individuated the first parent
with its parenthood, though it be only a cell?
Here we reach back to the source of all indi-
vidual life on our planet, the giver of just this
individuation; it must be a kind of universal
self-creative life which imparts itself to each
tiny bit of living matter. So we rise to the
conception of Earth-life, which, however, has
to keep on individuating itself as universal
and self-generative, in order to be the uni-
versal life of the Earth, of which every indi-
vidual living thing has to partake in order
to live. From this each Plant or Animal gets
its special vital share, namely from the whole
of vitality of our planet, and as far as we
know, of the universe. Every day in our
food we appropriate a bit for our renewal;
then finally our organisms are plunged back
into this reservoir of total Earth-life for some
sort of re-creation. If we look back at the
generative Process, vegetal as well as animal,
we find that it reproduces individuals after a-
given norm. It therefore reveals itself as lim-
ited, transmitted, originated; what is its

364 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

origin? Now this norm is that which per-
sists through birth, life, death, and passes
on from individual to individual. It is the
immortal portion in Generation, and mani-
fests the participation in the universal life.
The generative Process of the individual liv-
ing thing, be it Plant or Animal finds its true
realization as well its primal source in the
creativity of the Earth-life, which is accord-
ingly the Generation of Generation, or Gen-
eration as universal, to which all individual
Generation returns as to its fountain as well
as creative prototype. From this point of
view we may behold the previous stage of
Animal-life passing over into Earth-life
through the generative Process, which must,
according to its own principle, be generated.

Here it will be recalled that the three Life-
forms we have put together in one process—
Plant-life, Animal-life and Karth-life. Though
these three stages become outwardly very dis-
tinct, still we are to trace, as far as possible,
their inner inter-relation, and behold them
genetically connected. Thus we have just
seen Animal-life through its highest act, that
of Generation, connect with its primal orig- —
inative source, the Earth-life. All special
Generation must push forward to the uni-
versal reservoir of Generation, which, how-
ever, in its turn needs to be accounted for,

EARTH-LIFE IN GENERAL. 265

and traced back to its origin. But at present
we seek to keep before the mind this three-
fold process of the Biocosmos in its ultimate
Life-forms, of which Earth-life is the third
stage returning to the first, the Plant, and
embracing the whole round of terrestrial
Life. Moreover this differentiation arose
and still keeps arising with all its diversity
from a common primordial vital protoplasm;
that is, Plant-life, Animal-life and Earth-
life were originally one undifferenced Life,
to which every living shape has to go back
for renewal. We may say metaphorically
that the sphere of the Earth-life keeps turn-
ing on its own axis quite as decidedly as the
sphere of the Earth, though the one is biocos-
mical and the other cosmical; or the one has
an inner vital determination while the other
has an outer mechanical or gravitative deter-
mination.

Here the reflection comes up that the en-
tire physical Universe (the Pancosmos), so
far as we know, lives through our Harth-life
alone. Ours is the sole living point of the
All as Nature, whose creative purpose would
seem to be just this living point. The sun
and even the stars contribute to life on the
Earth; that is, their energy, cosmical and
diacosmical, is transmuted into the small dot
of vital energy of the globe, in which each liv-

366 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

ing thing participates. The conjecture lies
near that there are other far-off extra-mun-
dane forces which are passing through the
alembic of Harth-life, in which they become
at least vitalized, and attain a higher destiny.
Still it,is possible, yea probable, that there
are other Life-points besides ours scattered
through the constellated spaces.

We have already indicated that there is an
unseen returning current in EKarth-life, pass-
ing from the cessation of the living individual
back to the beginning, where it has to be re-
vitalized after dissolution. The preliminary
steps of this transition may be summarized
as follows: (1) The general change from the
Inorganic to the Organic, with which is close-
ly connected (2) the act of vital individua-
tion; (3) the act of bifurcation into Plant and
Animal lies also in the dim foreground of
Farth-life, which thereafter begins to have
a history traceable in its remains, through
ages. But, like man, Harth-life had its pre-
historic time, which is very difficult to reach
directly. Given its starting-point, Geology
has been able to point out in a general way the
successive periods of Harth-life, organic with
inorganic. Thus we seek to embrace in one
thought and its term the total life of our
globe; this is what we here call Harth-life.
It also has its process; as already said, it is

EARTH-LIFE IN GENERAL. 267

perpetually moving from the Inorganic to
the Organic, and from the Organic back
to the Organic. The quantity of Life com-
pared to the Unlife of our globe is very small,
and there is an incessant fight between them;
the original struggle for existence is not
merely that between living individuals, but it
goes back to the struggle of Earth-life itself
against its own inorganic elements, which are
always seeking to snuff it out. If we conceive
total Earth-life, or all living matter to be a
small globe lying in another globe of non-
living matter ten million times larger, we
have the quantitative relation between the
two according to a well-known estimate, which
probably is intended not to be precise, but
only suggestive.

It should also be noted that Earth-life as
organic has its round between two impassable
barriers, or as yet unpassed: between non-
vital matter and consciousness. The trans-
formation of Unlife into Life without the me-
diating germ or egg has not yet taken place—
spontaneous generation is still disclaimed by
science, even if it has to be postulated in
Farth-life. On the other hand, the transi-
tion from the living body to the conscious
Ego has not been scientifically made. So the
little globe of Life before mentioned hangs
in the air, being isolated from what goes be-

368 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

fore and from what comes after, though sci-
ence is working at bridges on both sides.
Plant and animal, as we have seen them,
are individuals; out of what do they individu-
ate? We observe both going back to a form
which is common or nearly so and then un-
folding into a vast diversity on each line,
vegetal and animal; what and whence is this
power of individuality which so dominates
all Life? It individuates more and more in
time, it keeps specifying (or making species).
At least we have to say such is the nature of
Life, or better, it is Nature herself manifest-
ing her separative character, which indeed
carries us up again to her very origin.
Now the scientist deals or has dealt quite
exclusively with this living individual, plant
or animal, analyzing it into its parts down to
cell and even to cellule, and on the other hand
synthesizing it in various ways into species,
genera, families, ete. His microscope can
only see individuals in some form, however
small. Now this process of individuation
takes place in and through the Harth-life,
which has therein its primal function. In
what way? This lies beyond scientific proof
which, as already said, deals with the living
individual as plant or animal. But what if
the Earth also with its Life is an individual,
source of all other living individuals?) The

EARTH-LIFE IN GENERAL. 369

Harth has been individualized and likewise
vitalized, and we have to think it as impart-
ing these traits to its progeny, plant and ani-
mal. LEarth-life is then the creative source
and prototype of all living individuals.
Every plant and every animal have in
themselves a vital and a non-vital element;
when burnt, for- instance, they show the in-
organic earth which is in their constitution.
Thus each living individual is a reprodue-
tion of Harth-life; it recapitulates in small
its primordial big parent. And its vital pro-
cess is the continual reduction of the Inor-
ganic (air, water, soil, etc.) to the Organic,
that is, to its own living individuality. Then
after a cycle of time it restores these inor-
ganic materials to its source, of which they
form a part. Such is the round of individual
life with its birth, maturity, decline, cessa-
tion, a copy of the Earth-life, from which it
as vital sprang.
_ The Earth with its Life, therefore, we have
to grasp as an individual; it, too, has been
individuated, like the Plant and the Animal.
Science now very generally holds that it sep-
arated originally from the Heliosphere, at a
certain stage in the evolution of the Sun (see
Cosmos and Diacosmos, pp. 259-265). The
Earth was, accordingly, born an individual,
whose father, or we may say, grandfather,

370 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

was the Cosmos. So this individuation of the
Universe reaches far back, really to the
Pampsychosis, which is in itself the primor-
dial separation. But what concerns us now
is that this individualized Earth goes on with
its process till it generates the spark of Life,
somehow passing at a little genetic point from
the Inorganic into the Organic. Of course,
the When, the Where and the How lie as yet
beyond the ken of science—some say they
never can be known (DuBois Reymond’s
famous ignoramus et ignorabimus, a very
hazardous prophecy by the way, and indeed
contradictory). But what we here wish to
emphasize is that the Earth becomes a living
individual—or becomes individualized and
vitalized—even if the vital spot is very mi-
nute in a colossal non-vital body. But hav-
ing grasped this point of view as genetic, we
may see Mother Earth reproducing her own
fundamental traits in plants and animals, or
in the vast multitude of other individuals
primarily earth-born.

Naturally the question comes up: Is this
Earth-individual with its Life also transitory
like Plant and Animal? Science on the whole
answers affirmatively. The Earth has also
its cycle of Life, even though it lasts millions
or hundreds of millions of years. It passes
through the round of birth, bloom, decay,

EARTH-LIFE IN GENERAL. 971

death, like the mere insect or indeed the
microscopic cell. Thus a vast life-scale of liv-
ing things presents itself to the mind, from
the duration of a few hours or a few moments
even, up to uncounted eons. But each Life,
short or long, is individualized, and has the
same general cycle of existence—the separa-
tion from and return to its elemental source.
Earth-life would seem to be no exception.

The further problem arises: If the Earth
with its Life be only one individual, are there
other similar individuals in the universe
which are passing through their vital cycles?
These may be as varied as our plants and
animals, and Harth-life may be only a kind
of amceba in the universal Life. Proof there
is none, but imagination winged by science is
prompted to take a far-off flight into the void
of the cosmos. But for our present sight, the
Earth with its Life appears a kind of uni-
versal individual, embracing all living things,
originating them as well as receiving them
back into its bosom.

Though we may not with our senses be able
to get back to the primal transitional forma-
tion of Earth-life, we can observe that its
first function is to transmute the Inorganic
into the Organic. This is the step to indi-
viduation, and each living individual must
draw on the original storehouse of Life, not

372 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

only in order to be born but to continue exist-
ence. It looks as if there might have been
barely one species at the start, which showed
no differentiation of Plant and Animal; but
the tendency of Nature to separation and
individuation has resulted in the present mil-
lions of species, constituting as far as we
know, the only living speck in the physical
universe. Yet to bring forth this speck of
Karth-life would seem to be the great pur-
pose of the Cosmos, which is possibly yet to
be vitalized from this speck quite invisible
(humanly speaking’) at a short distance from
the surface of our globe.

Earth-life, accordingly, we conceive to con-
tain the elemental start or Life-stuff of the
planet, then the sum total of all individuals
which are alive on the Earth. Each of the
latter passes through its cycle and returns to
its origin as inorganic, perpetuating its Life
by the generative process. Harth-life, while
ever revolving, is also evolving and has long
been evolving so that it has its history. But
within human ken it has no association with
other living individuals of like kind; it is its
own species and genus as well as individual.

Many sciences have been unfolded out of
Earth-life in its various aspects. Here, how-
ever, we shall co-ordinate its general process
with that of Plant-life and Animal-life; thus

EARTH-LIFE—FORMATION. 272

the three Life-forms of the Biocosmos will
show a certain unity of order, revealing a
common process which belongs to every liv-
ing individual, and whose stages have been
already often designated as Formation, As-
similation, Generation. But the Earth, as the
sole telluric individual alive in the Universe,
will have its own peculiar ways of manifest-
ing the basic process of Life just mentioned.

I. Tue Formative Process or HARTH-LIFE.
The Form of the Earth in general includes
both the inorganic and the organic elements
taken as not yet separated. The external
shape or body of Harth-life is its most imme-
diate manifestation and is first to be consid-
ered. This is by no means accidental, but
has its significance which is to be pondered.
The sphericity of the Earth may well be
deemed its primal characteristic, it shows
matter. centered in itself, individualized we
may say; with good reason some educators
have taken the sphere as the first geometric
form, from which all other such forms are
to be derived.

The spherical Form would seem to be com-
mon to most of the free-moving heavenly
bodies, and may be taken as the earliest com-
bination of cosmical Motion and Matter.
‘That is, Matter primordially united with Mo-
tion becomes spherical. So the sun, the plan-

874 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

ets and probably the stars. Terrestrial Form
ean be regarded then, as a primeval act of
the Cosmos, the first individual of Nature.
On the surface of the Earth we may notice
the same characteristic in the falling rain- —
drops, which are rounded. (On Matter and
Motion of the Cosmos, see Cosmos and Dia-
cosmos, p. 39, ete.) The body of Earth-life
differs in shape, accordingly, from Plant-
life and Animal-life, which show a cylindrical
tendency. All, however, strive toward a cer-
tain rotundity of shape.

We have already spoken of the norm of
the Plant and the Animal, which is impressed
upon all individuals, however varied they may
be. Earth-life has also its norm as a whole,
the invariable and universal one of Nature;
reaching back to the early Cosmos. This
norm of Earth-life we may, therefore, deem
the cosmical norm.

1. The Earth-organism asa whole. Motion
is, then, a primal element of the Earth’s
material Form, shaping it and keeping it
shaped. In other words, terrestrial Form
must be perpetually reproduced by Motion.
In fact, we can discern three main kinds of
terrestrial Motion: first is axial, which may
be deemed its own specially, as self-revolu-
tion; second is orbital, which acknowledges
and obeys an outside power, the sun; third

EARTH-LIFE—FORMATION. 375

is its Motion along with the whole solar sys-
tem around some supposed cosmical center.
Coupled with these Motions are the changes
of day and night (axial) and those of the sea-
sons (orbital). What changes the third Mo-
tion (galactal, we can conceive it) has brought
or will bring, is of course unknown; but it is
not improbable that even this remote influence
may have produced some variations of Earth-
life in the long periods. of the past.

The terrestrial sphere in its spherical mo-
.tions is in striking contrast with the Plant
and Animal. The Plant is fixed to the Earth
on the whole, and has mainly an inner move-
ment of growth, a pushing outwards in lay-
ers during its round of life. The Animal in
_ general has a limited power of locomotion on
the Earth’s surface. Both, therefore, mani-
fest broken or finite Motion in comparison
with the perpetual or infinite Motion of the
Earth, which they seem to have the power of
tapping individually for a small portion of
motivé power.

2. The Earth-organism in its dual sym-
metry. The sphere is naturally symmetrical
in its two halves or hemispheres. The equa-
tor is the well-known median line of the
Earth which is not an exact sphere, but tech-
nically an oblate spheroid. Parallel to this
median line are drawn the lines of latitude

376 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

so important in Geography. A second halv-
ing of the Earth into symmetrical parts is
made by the ecliptic, whose inclination to the
equator is nearly twenty-three and a half de-
grees. Another symmetrical halving of the
Harth is that of day and night produced by
axial rotation, and hence is not fixed but con-
tinuous, and also self-returning every twenty-
four hours. Harth-life as a whole may thus
be deemed half asleep and half awake, spa-
tially and temporally, contrasting therein with
Plant and Anima! whose sleeping and waking
involve the whole individual, not the half of
him; or he is entirely in the light or entirely
in the night, not in both at once.

The symmetry of the Earth is, according-
ly, of the two hemispheres, not of the two
sides (like the Animal) or of the two ends
(like the Plant). Spherical symmetry is the
simpler and more immediate, being equally
possible in many divisions, as an apple can
be halved in numerous ways. Lateral sym-
metry of animals has but one true median
line of separation; terminal symmetry of
plants has essentially but one way parting the
two symmetrical ends (roots and branches,
including leaves). Still in the three forms of
Life—Plant, Animal and Earth—we are to
note the common principle of dual symmetry.

3. The Earth - organism differentiated.

EARTH-LIFE—FORMATION. 377

Looking at the Karth’s appearance around
us, we see it divided into three physical ele-
ments—air, water, land—a gas, a liquid and
a solid. These we set down in the probable
order of their origin. In the great transition
of the Earth from its original mass of lumin-
ous nebula or fire-mist, the air or atmosphere
was doubtless the first to evolve; out of this
air must have come as it cooled off the liquid,
water, which is composed of the gases oxy-
gen and hydrogen. Still further, of this water
sprang land which still often shows, even on
the mountain tops, so many signs that it once
had its home in the bottom of the sea. In
such way science at present conceives the
Karth’s Organism to have been differentiated
into its three main elements in the lapse of
geologic ages.

The first fact about the terrestrial air is
its continual motion. As it is gaseous, its
particles or molecules are expansible, self-
repellent, though still subject to gravitation.
The next fact about the Earth’s atmosphere
is that it moves in currents, and that these
currents, after detours long and short, come
back to their starting point. For instance,
there is the universal sweep of the winds to-
wards the equator and then their deflection
and return toward the poles, mainly caused
through the sun’s heat. But in this general

378 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

atmospheric ocean there are many other
eycles and cyclones, furious and moderate,
great and small, down to the petty momen-
tary eddy of the autumnal breeze. Note-
worthy, however, is this tendency of mobile
air to run into circuits, in part determined
thereto by the rotary motion of the round
Earth. The science of Meteorology deals
with this great variety of wind currents which
are also the bearers of heat and cold.

If air be the universal element surrounding
the whole earth, water is a partial element
covering about three-fourths of the terrestrial
surface. The characteristic of water in con-
trast to air is its non-elasticity, its unyield-
ing nature, being almost incompressible. It
has a hard molecular individuality, though so
easily separative and penetrable; it is the
digger, tearer of continents and leveler of
mountains; also the chief transporter of
Earth’s burdens, not merely on its surface
but in its currents. There is little doubt that
land was born of water; also the earliest life
arose in the sea, man still bears traces that
he was once an aqueous monster. Water in
doing its work goes in a circle, running down
hill in the rivers, then rising through evap-
oration into the air and returning to the fluvial
sources in order to make the same round over
again. So we see a perpetual process of these

EARTH-LIFE—FORMATION. 879

three elements together, while each has its
own process.

There is a question about a change in the
character of the air, as well as about the
diminution of its quantity. Some scientists
maintain that the atmosphere is losing its
oxygen and its carbon dioxide, the one being
taken up by animals chiefly and the other by
plants, whereby both pass into the solid earth.
How these losses have been made good in the
past geologic ages, since the advent of or-
ganic life has been the subject of no little
speculation, and the question is still unsettled.
In both cases supphes have been supposed to
come to our globe from the outside, and pos-
sibly from the heated inside also. The mass
of air seems to have been constant and its
chemical constituents have not varied in pro-
portion since life began on our planet, say a
hundred million years ago. A small increase
in the proportions of oxygen and carbon diox-
ide has been shown by experiment to be fatal
to both Plant and Animal.

On the other hand, it is stated that the land
of the globe is increasing. Not only is the
area extending at the expense of the water,
but certain chemical constituents held in so-
lution are continually deposited as solids, es-
pecially by marine organisms, like the coral
insect. Possibly in this case also there may

930 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

be a cosmic supply. But here the question
will arise: Is our globe always receiving and
not giving off anything? And are comets,
meteorites, cosmic dust and such interplan-
etary bodies simply feeders of our hungry
Earth? If so, then it must be increasing in
size for the future.

On the other hand, danger has been feared
from these outside wanderers. The comet
may be dismissed in spite of its threatening
aspect, but not so easy is the meteorite to be
put aside, which may drop upon us without
much warning. Meteoric masses weighing
some tons are known; but if such a body were
a mile in thickness, and were to fall on a city,
this would be suddenly destroyed. . A scien-
tist of eminence has declared that a meteorite
with a diameter of twenty miles, ‘‘would
pretty surely be fatal to all the land-life of
the earth.’? <A possible collision with an
asteroid has been broached, especially with
one whose very eccentric, if not uncertain,
orbit, runs between the Earth and Mars.

This differentiation of the Earth’s Organ-
ism is what furnishes food to all Life, vegetal
and animal. Also to the Earth’s own Life
air, water, and land are necessary. Thus con-
sidered as a whole the Earth is self-feeding,
unless it receives some aliment continuously
from the Cosmos outside, On the other hand,

EARTH-LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 324

the diacosmical energies—heat, light, elec-
tricity—have to be furnished to it unceas-
ingly, though it has stores of its own. Thus
Karth-life assimilates external elements to
its own Organism.

Il. Tse Asstminative Process or Hartr-
LIFE. So we may call the present stage of
Harth-life, keeping the nomenclature in cor-
respondence with Plant-life and Animal-life
as already set forth. To be sure the Assim-
ilation is now different; we grasp the total
organic world as assimilating the inorganic;
in fact this is just what the Plant does, and
also the Animal in part. Still this inorganic
element we here conceive to be an integral
part of the Earth-organism as a whole, while
the Plant-organism is distinct from its inor-
ganic food, and assimilates the same from the
outside. So to the Earth-body belongs a non-
vital as well as a vital portion—the former
being far the larger—and between these two
portions its assimilative Process takes place.
In this way Earth-life may be looked at as a
return upon Plant-life, making itself a kind
of universal vegetable,:as far as this is pos-
sible under the conditions, for after all is
said the Earth too is a limited individual as
well as the Plant.

_ EKarth-life employs Assimilation in its most
immediate stage, even before the Plant is

989 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

distinctly formed. The cell is built into a
life, from something not alive; what does it?
Here hes that act of living individuation
which is the primordial fact of the Biocosmos,
in which Psyche begins to get inside the small-
est division of Nature, the atom or perchance
the etherion. In general it is Earth-life which
has to assimilate Unlife to Life, and start the
living individual, imparting to the latter the
same power. But on the other hand Life indi-
vidual returns to Unlife in the same process
of Earth-life, which controls all its children in
their total round of existence.

1. Unlife to Life. Here meets us again
that oft-mentioned transition from the Inor-
ganic to the Organic, which dominates all Bi-
ology, being ever-present and hanging over
it like a cloud which the scientist has been
totally unable as yet to disperse. To make
the passage across the grand chasm between
Unlife and Life is the supreme. object and
pursuit of biological science; meantime it
brings up to the surface in this desperate
burrowing an enormous amount of valuable
facts, experiments and observations, which
constitute its present content. Thus it has its
end as yet ideal which many say is unattain-
able; still the search is not lessened but rather
intensified. Some form of the much-defamed
spontaneous generation hes always in the

EARTH-LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 883

background of our Biocosmos as a so-called
postulate, somewhat like ether in the Diacos-
mos (as already noted). The formation of
that primal life-stuff, speculative on one side
yet very real on the other side, out of which
stream all living things, down to the minutest
cell, has to be pre-conceived as the starting-
point of biological science. On this subject
we have dwelt sufficiently in other parts of
this book (see p. 139, et passim).

Hven the quantity of this elemental pre-
cellular life-stuff has been estimated. And
we may conjecture how much of it arose at
the start, and whether it is being exhausted;
where and when it began may be conceived
but cannot yet be proved. Now into this orig-
inal protoplasm of Life, Evolution enters and
differentiates it in many ways.

2. Harth-life as Separate. Here again
we shall have to repeat the pervasive fact of
individuation, which springs out of the pri-
mordial life-stuff of the Earth, and enters into
every living individual—the first separative
act of the Biocosmos. Harth-life individuates
itself into the millions of separate plants and
animals, the Earth itself being the proto-
typal creative individual of them all, their
universal individual we may think it (if we
ean). Now it is this individuated plant or

884 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

animal with which science concerns itself in
one way or other.

Then there is the separation of Earth-life
into its two lines of development, vegetal and
animal, so that every region of Earth has its
double life known as Flora and Fauna. More-
over Earth-life has its peculiar circulation;
there is a continual movement of these vegetal
and animal forms called their geographic
distribution over the terrestrial surface, and
this movement is traceable through the past
geologic ages.

Equally certain is the final separation, in
which Life separates from its separated in-
dividualized condition. It is the logic of Life
as particular that it ends in death, for it is
not universal. Each living individual as
Plant or Animal goes its round of birth, ma-
turity, cessation, when it returns its elements
to the Earth-life. It may propagate itself and
thus show its persistent or immortal portion;
but as mere individual it is mortal.

3. Life to Unlife. There is the return of all
living things to their inorganic constituents,
which thus are ready for a new vitalization.
Such is the round of Earth-life, which inces-
santly ejects into its Unlife vast masses of
its Life, a kind of general excretion of the
huge terrestrial individual, which therein re-
sembles the small organisms of Plant and Ani-

EARTH-LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 995

mal, though these in Earth-life are thrown off
as Wholes. Death of the living individual is
this a stage of the process of Earth-life, a
restoration of the borrowed elements—air,
water, earth—a return of the Biocosmos to
the Cosmos, which, however, may be again
transformed into Life.

The end and aim of living Nature is to
undo itself as Life. On the other hand the
struggle of the living individual is to preserve
its Life as its special boon. Earth-life lives
through the death of individual Life, which
forms a part of its process. That is, the total
Life of the Earth is always moving from the
Organic to the Inorganic. Thus it comes that
every living thing is in conflict with external
Nature, which it has to subsume in order to
live, but which subsumes it in the end. We
may conceive two quantities of Life, one vast
and one little, or rather one all and one small,
in a struggle which winds up in the cessation
of the individual who is the small one. This
is, indeed, the primordial struggle of the liv-
ing individual for existence—the struggle not
with other individuals but with Harth-life
itself.

Such is the seal of fate set upon all indi-
viduality that lives. The very fact of indi-
viduation marks the limit, and stamps death
upon the living object. To be sure such indi-

886 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

viduation springs of Earth-life, which as Na-
ture must produce this separation in order to
exist as process. Why take the trouble to be
born that you may die! That is just your pen-
alty for getting alive; you as so much Life are
a part of the total Harth-life, which after hav-
ing separated or individuated you, demands
you back as its own. Your final malady,
verily the malady of all maladies, is your liv-
ing individuality, which, however is not yours,
and which you must give back to the owner.

Meanwhile who are you? Perchance a Self
or an Ego which has transcended Life, even
Earth-life, by getting its separation (or in-
dividuation) inside itself, not imposed from
the outside, and which ean divide within itself
and be its other, while still remaining itself.
Thus rises a new kind of individuality, not
that of Life, but of Spirit. Not till the indi-
vidual can put this outer separation of the
Earth-life inside himself, can he persist, hav-
ing his own individuation within himself, and
thus mastering his own limit of life. Or we
may say that the Universal of himself is no
longer external, but internal, and indeed has
become his very process. Or to use a still
different expression, the individual has now
mastered his own negative in Life and made
the same his servant. For the living indi-
vidual is one-sided and hence perishable

BPARTH-LIFE—ASSIMILATION. 397

through his other, which is Earth-life hav-
ing the external power of individuation. But
when the individual can individuate himself,
he can be no more the victim of Life even
of Karth-life. ,
To die is on the one hand to yield to Na-
ture, to be subject to her separation, her in-
dividuation, her negation. But on the other
hand it is also to transcend Nature, to separ-
ate from her separation, to serve up her deep-
est character to herself. Thus she is at last
self-undoing. Ego, or Spirit, is this perpetual
dialectic of Nature, making her final act not
death, but the death of death—the negation
of her negative. The ultimate principle of
Nature is separation, universal separation,
hence in the end separation from itself as Na-
ture, or as the externally separated; thus it
becomes the internally separated, or the self-
separated. In other words, Nature of its own
inherent character rises to Spirit, as that
which lay implicitly in it from the beginning,
and will not stay in its dualism, but is always
overcoming the same, even if positing it. So
we reach a new Nature, whch becomes one
with itself in and through its separation.
Many are the special ways in which the
Farth-life attacks and undoes the individual
Life; these are the particular diseases which
can often be met and cured. But the one uni-

388 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

versal disease of individuality itself is incur-
able, or has been so far. The supreme fact
here is that the living individual is always
capable of death; the special form of it, how-
ever, varies in time, place and kind of mal-
ady. The physician can only put off the mo-
ment, delaying the fate of Life but not mas-
tering it; he may slow its pace and assuage
its pain, his best gift being that of euthanasia
conferred upon the poor mortal. But the
original ailment of individuality itself he can-
not touch with his medicine till he be able to
confer upon us the boon of athanasia, by cur-
ing mortality itself and reversing Nature’s
course of individuation. Some scientists have
indeed intimated that the death-bearing mi-
erobe of old age is to be isolated and then ex-
terminated through the antidote of all anti-
dotes, whereby the cycle of Life will return
to its youth without having to pass through
the underworld of Unlife. The problem is
whether the living individual will ever be able
to re-bear himself completely, and start over
again, without the mortal dip back into the
elements belonging to the process of Harth-
life which still must individuate Life.

Such is the round of Earth-life, as it moves
from Unlife to Life in all the latter’s varie-
ties, and then turns back out of Life to Un-
life. Assimilation we call this process, since

=>

EARTH-LIFE—GENERATION. - 339

each side is perpetually assimilating the other
_ to itself, that is the Inorganic to the Organic,
and then the Organic to the Inorganic. In
Earth-life we observe the twofoldness: the
non-vital element is not outside, but a part
of the process as well as the vital; the two
are mutually assimilative. But in the Plant
and Animal assimilation was essentially to
vitalize the non-vital and showed only one side
of the process; while Earth-life shows both
sides, not only vitalizing the non-vital, but
also devitalizing the vital. And we may also
say that it keeps individuating, de-individuat-
ing, and re-individuating Life.

But now we have to ask: whence comes this
Karth-life? It too has an origin and a gen-
eration for itself, even if it be a source of
generation on our globe for the individual
Life in Plant and Animal. This is what we
may look at next.

III. TH Generative Process oF Earru-
tire. Again we should first note that this is
the third stage of the total Process of Earth-
life, and is primarily the reproduction of the
Form of the Earth. For this Form has to be
continually generated by rotary motion, not
too swift nor too slow. Thus Generation in
the present case is a return to Formation
which we see perpetually re-enacted; for our
globe, even as to shape, was not made once

390 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTIOULARIZED.

for all, but has to keep re-making itself every
day and that too with no little speed.

Moreover the Generation of Earth-life has
both its inorganic and organic phases. In-
organically it is generated from the outside,
or determined by the Cosmos from which it
sprang; but organically we may deem it es-
sentially self-generated, though it depends
still for Life upon the diacosmical radiants—
heat, light, electricity.

Still further the generative Process of
Earth-life is different from that of Plant and
Animal; it produces no young individual
Earths; reproduction is turned upon itself,
and brings forth itself perpetually renewed
after a season of aging or of Unlife. The :
dual relation of the sexes does not belong to
the Marth as a whole, but to its constitutive
members in Plant-life and Animal-life. It is
the many millions of sexual individuals, veg-
etal and animal, which keep Harth-life always
self-begetting within itself. We may say that
the Moon is in a sense the child of the Earth,
having issued from it; but that separation
took place long before the birth of Earth-life,
or the transition from its inorganic state to
its organic. The Moon is supposed to be
wholly inorganic; but as it separated from the
Earth so the Earth long before separated

EARTH-LIFE—GENERATION. 39]

from the Heliosphere, which act we may con-
sider its first or inorganic birth.

In this generative Process of Earth-life
we can behold three stages, as in Plant-life
and Animal-life, though the former be quite
different and unique in its way. Still they
all are homologous, and we shall call them
by the same names. So we have at present
Single Generation, which is not only asexual
but imorganic and hence external; Double
Generation, in which is the movement from
the Inorganic to the Organic, with the appear-
ance of life and sex; finally Total Generation
will go back to the past and take up the whole
line of Earth-life in its evolution through the
geologic ages. In this common nomenclature
we may note a common principle of Genera-
tion running through all three Life-forms—
Plant, Animal, Earth.

1. Single Generation of Earth-life. Let it
be remembered that this deals with the in-
organic act of the Karth’s Generation through
the primal rotation of Matter, which results
in separation, or in a _ kind fissiparism,
which is of course non-vital, yet in
a sense monogenetic. Now this externally
generative process which belongs to the whole
Cosmos, is to become internally generative
in each separated part, when the latter gets
to be alive. But the long evolution from

892 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

outer to inner Generation is specially the
work of the Karth-Life in its totality, whose
first form is that of inorganic or cosmical
evolution. So we bring before us the beget-
ting of the Earth (sometimes called Geog-
nony).

The general sweep of the Earth’s genesis
has been elsewhere given. We may start with
that shred of fire-mist or nebulous matter,
in its first apparent, more or less chaotic
form (of which the great nebula in Orion may
be taken as an example); then the shred be-
comes a part of the nebulous spiral (say like
that in Canes Venatici); then it passes into
the evolution of solar systems, to which our
Heliosphere belongs; the latter then throws
off the planets of which our Earth is one;
this in turn throws off its moon, and begins
to cool and to solidify, till air, water and land
differentiate themselves, and the inorganic
process of our globe begins which finally un-
folds into the organic (for the cosmogonic
evolution of the Harth see Cosmos and Dia-
cosmos, pp. 251-256).

Such is the general view of science today,
largely speculative; but it does not stop here.
It is supposed that we have reached about
the middle period of Earth-life at present—
one-half gone, one-half still to come—each
half representing perhaps a hundred million

EARTH-LIFE—GENERATION. 398

of years, a kind of euphemism for a very long
time. Harth-life is, then, to cease; and our
globe as a dead cadaver is to pass through a
new unseen unillumined stage, perchance the
meteoritic, buried in the graveyard of the
skies, till the exon of resurrection arrives. So
the transition has been conceived, with some
show of facts though very inadequate. But
the initial point is again reached, namely that
shred of fire-mist in some Orion nebula which
is Just emerging once more into light out of
its dark cosmical cemetery—whence our
Earth is again to evolve, and to go through
its round of existence.

HMarth-life is, therefore, but a small seg-
ment in the vast cycle of terrestrial evolu-
tion; of that vital segment we here and now
have the satisfaction of standing on the cen-
tral point perchance. But it is significant to
note that the Earth as individual must die too,
hike the rest of us animals and plants, must
be resolved into its original cosmical elements,
must be dipped into the Pancosmos whence it
was born, thence passing to resurrection and
new life.

So we picture to ourselves the total cycle
of the Earth’s existence, the geogonic evolu-
tion as a whole, of which terrestrial life is
but a part. This part has also its past his-
tory, its long evolution down to the present.

394 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED,

Thus the Harth’s development began at a cer-
tain time to bifureate and to run double.

2. Double Generation of Earth-life. There
is a generation of the inorganic element of
Harth-life going on all the time; there is like-
wise a generation of the organic element of
Earth-life going on all the time; such is what
we here conceive as the double generation of
Harth-life which is now existent and has long
existed. The one embraces the rocks of the
Earth, stratified and unstratified, with soil,
air, water; the other embraces all Life from
lowest to highest. The rocks are always be-
ing displaced and replaced by erosion, up-
heaval, subsidence and other causes; that is,
the Earth is continually generated anew in-
organically; in like manner there is a per-
petual displacing and replacing of living indi-
viduals, vegetal and animal; that is, the Earth
is continually generated anew organically.
These parallel movements, however, are deep-
ly interwoven with each other; the inorganic
world sustains directly or indirectly the or-
ganic, while the latter helps reproduce the
inorganic (for instance, the limestone of the
Earth is mostly if not wholly the deposit of
organisms). Still we hold apart these two
separate lines of Generation of EKarth-life,
especially in the science of Geology, in order
to sean their interaction, Here it may be

BARTH-LIFE—GENERATION. 395

added that the preceding process of Assim-
ilation, in which each side assimilates the
other, depends upon the present process of
Generation, as the inorganic and organic
forms have to be generated before they can
be assimilated. lHarth-life therefore has
these two strands, ever active and inter-active.

The process of inorganic Generation re-
sults from two kinds of rocks—in geologic
language the primary and secondary rocks.
The former are the original constituents of
the Earth cooled and crystallized, hence desig-
nated as igneous, unstratified, without fossil
or organic remains. The secondary rocks are
the derived, resulting from the destruction
of the original rocks and their reconstruction
through water (aqueous rocks), or through
the atmospheric agencies (sub-aerial rocks),
or through organisms, vegetal and animal.
The last give the fossiliferous rocks, which
being also stratified in succession of time, re-
veal the past history of KHarth-life along three
lines—plant, animal, mineral. Herewith we
are enabled to reach back and take up the en-
tire sweep of Earth-life in its generative
movement.

3. Total Generation of Earth-life. Thus
the organic stage of Earth-life has its dis-
tinct history divided into numerous epochs
and sub-epochs, in triple record, from the be-

396 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

einning of life on our planet till the present.
Stratification of the inorganic material has
preserved the contemporaneous organic re-
mains in various degrees of completeness,
from a mere trace or footprint, or bone, up
to the entire skeleton, whose flesh and hair
have continued undecayed in some instances
through being encased in ice.

The science which deals with fossils is called
Paleontology, and has reached large propor-
tions. Fossils in the different successive
strata of the same region indicate which rocks
are older and which younger since the order
of ascent in the organic world is known, and
thus becomes the key for unlocking the rela-
tive age of the inorganic formations. Still
further, the same kinds of fossils appear in
strata very far apart, on a different conti-
nent perhaps; all such rocks are supposed to
have been formed in the same geologic period,
however distant they lie asunder. A geol-
ogist has recently estimated that the total
stratified order of the Earth’s crust has a
thickness of fifty miles; but the strata are
much broken and interrupted through various
causes, and have to be put together from
diverse localities. Fossils have been called the
medals of creation, as they bear the stamp
of the historic order of the Harth’s evolution.
Still not the whole of this evolution can they

EARTH-LIFE—GENERATION. 397

give, but only the organic part, and not all of
that. The earliest organisms have hardly left
their trace.

It was an epoch-making scientific act when
this idea of ordering the Earth’s successive
layers through their fossils first began to
dawn upon a human brain, and to be applied
even to a limited territory. The English
claim in the present case the right of priority
for William Smith (1769-1839), a surveyor,
who, in pursuit of his calling was led to
observe the recurring kinds of fossils in
strata at different places. Such strata
he accordingly sychronized, making them
products of the same geologic epoch. What
he did for a part of England is now
being done for the whole Earth. He also
applied the basic principle of the Earth’s
evolution that in a suecession of strata
the oldest is found at the bottom. Thus
the Earth is conceived to grow by adding
layer to layer, like a Plant, round an unstrati-
fied kernel which is without fossils (azoic).
From this point of view Earth-life may be
compared to a gigantic tree with its manifold
concentric layers, which are continually add-
ed on the outside, if not year by year, at
least epoch by epoch. How many such layers
this Earth-tree (the real Ygedrasil) will de-
posit belongs of course to the future; but we

898 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

can seek to count the layers of the past, as
we do those of the Sequoia. And by such a
count we may approximately determine the
age of this Earth-life in its multitudinous
sequences. The co-odination of all the fos-
sils along with their strata around the
globe is now a main task of Geology, which
has to give at last a telluric chronology, both
inorganic and organic up to date.

The bare outlines of such a chronology we
may here set down in the nomenclature usual-
ly given:

(1). Azorc, the era of Unlife, which in the
widest sense would embrace the Earth’s earli-
est appearance in a nebulous form, perchance
first in the Cosmosphere, then in the Helio-
sphere, then in the Geosphere thrown off
from the Sun. This azoic era would include
the evolution of the chemical elements, start-
ing possibly with proto-hydrogen, which final-
ly evolve into chemical compounds, some of
which we have with us still in the form of
azoic rocks, unstratified, upon which the
earliest strata rest and begin the concentric
fossiliferous layers of Earth-life already men-
tioned. Herewith we have come to the next.

(IT). Zorc, the era of Life on our globe, to
which Life has occurred the transition from
Unlife. In this era are found many divisions
and sub-divisions, of which the following may

EARTH-LIFE—GENERATION. 399

be briefly noted: (1) Palaeozoic or old-life, in
which are several periods, such as Silurian,
Devonian, Carboniferous. (2) Mesozoic, or
middle-life, which has also several periods.
(3) Caenozoic, new-life, which is also sub-
divided. As already indicated, each of these
eras, and indeed each of their subordinate
epochs, had its own peculiar species which
can be identified over the Globe. Then again
each of these important stages had its spe-
cial forms of Life; thus the Silurian is called
the age of mollusks, and the Carboniferous
the age of coal-plants. It would seem that
the total life-stuff of the Earth was expended
in a colossal effort to produce one kind of
living thing, animal or vegetal, at a time. We
may conceive the Earth-life as a whole to be
a huge animal which has had to go through
various stages of evolution, at first a fish,
later a reptile, and finally a mammal, which
it is now, though once it turned plant mainly,
back in the coal measures. Of course it has
kept in general the living shapes which it
once evolved, still its stress seems to have
been upon one great typical form during a
given time. In this trait Earth-life appears
like an individual undergoing a series of meta-
morphoses through the geologic ages, each
of which is characterized by such a metamor-
phosis. While the Earth-life may be deemed

400 THE BIOCOSMOS—PARTICULARIZED.

mainly an animal, it is also a plant and was
primarily so. In vegetation through many
flowerless forms, it finally infloresced in the
flowering plants, seemingly along with the
rise of the mammals.

So far Earth-life has remained mammalian,
culminating in man. But with his advent
comes a great new transition—the sweep from
Life to the conscious self. This still takes
place upon our Earth, and is a part of its
process. So we may set it down in the pres-
ent connection.

(III). Psycnuic. The individual has now
reached the completed act of Generation in a
continual self-genesis, which is Soul, Ego,
Self. That is, he can separate and become his
own other within himself, thus returning to
himself and becoming the whole genetic pro-
cess. The total Generation of Harth-life has
here gotten inside the living individual, who
now individuates himself when he chooses, or
generates himself anew in each act of con-
sciousness, and thus persists through and be-
yond Life.

Earth-life has, accordingly, shown in its
generative sweep three great stages—inor-
ganic (azoic), organic (zoic), and psychic.
Between each of these stages yawns a wide
abyss which science finds it impossible to -

EARTH-LIFE—GENERATION. 401

bridge. To pass from the pre-inorganic to
the inorganic, and then from the inorganic to
the vital and finally from the vital to the
psychie are great flights which thought alone
as yet dares attempt. Such a fact would
seem to indicate that thought is itself pri-
mordial, antecedent to Nature which springs
from it as universal, or as the Universe.

But we have now reached the conclusion of
the ordering of the three Life-forms as par-
ticularized separately and as united in their
one process—Plant-life, Animal-lfe, and
Earth-life. This portion of our entire theme
we have designated as the Particularized Bio-
cosmos, which has wound up in evolving the
inner movement of the psychic individual,
who now has won the power of turning back
not only upon himself but also upon all his
past history, being in his evolution the total
generation of Harth-life, which he is next to
re-generate. That is, we are to see that the
Hgo has evolved to the point of re-evolving
its own evolution, of which it is to become con-
scious. But this transition carries us over
into a new stage of the whole Biocosmos,
which now is able to look back at itself, and
trace its own past history.

Dart Third.

HistroricaL Brocosmos.

We have to include in the science of Life
not merely Biology, but the biologist himself
biologising, or evolving his Biology. Thus
we rise to the conception of a completed Or-
der of Life or Biocosmos, which attains not
simply the Ego as evolved, which stage was
reached long ago, but as going back and evolv-_
ing all living Nature up to itself as evolver,
which stage belongs emphatically to the pres-
ent time. The hero of this Biocosmos is un-
questionably Charles Darwin, whom we have
to grasp as an evolved Ego returning upon
Nature and evolving Evolution.

It is worth while to consider the fact that
Biology has its connection with Biography,

(402)

INTRODUCTION. 403

which is indicated by the common Greek word
fTios, Life. Both, too, stand in relation to
the Biscosmos, of which we are treating. It
is true that Biology deals more with the phys-
ical processes of Nature, while Biography re-
cords rather the mental or psychical side of
the individual as shown in the occurrences
of his career. In a sense we ean say that the
plant or animal has a Biography which gives
an account of its birth, development and ces-
sation. It would be interesting to have the
Biography of a tree like the gigantic Sequoia.
Pedigrees of famous steeds have a biographi-
eal value to the horse-breeder. But it is the
life of the biologist which specially concerns
us here, and is intimately intertwined with
his science, each reacting upon the other, so
that they become mutually interpretative. The
mind or consciousness of the biologist turns
biological, being trained by what it works in,
and it gets to looking at the universe biologi-
eally, that is, after the method and within
the limits of Biology. Such an Ego accord-
ingly belongs to the full sweep of the Biocos-
mos; indeed, a line of such Egos appears, un-
folding in historic succession, and setting forth
the various stages of their evolvine science.
Thus we catch the outlines of the historica!
Biocosmos, which will arise only after a con-
siderable evolution on which we can look back.

404 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

Here then the pivotal thought comes up that
we have reached not merely Evolution, but
the Evolution of Evolution, as it turns round
upon itself and applies itself to itself. The
biologist evolves his science, but now we are
to evolve the biologist evolving his science,
and behold him subject to his principle, illus-
trating in his own individual life his evolu-
tion of life in Nature. Nor is this all: there
are many individual lives of biologists success-
sive in time, who show the Evolution of their
science as a whole from its beginning till the
present time.

Evidently we have before us three phases
of the evolutionary principle: First is the
Evolution of biology (the science), then is
the Evolution of the single biologist (the biog-
raphy), third is the Evolution of the many
biologists with their doctrines (the history).
The great scientist thinks with Nature, or by
means of Nature, to whom he has to give a
human voice, which she strictly has not, yet
longs for. But Nature is large, has many
compartments, each with its own character, or
soul or Psyche. The scientist usually special-
izes, confining himself to one of these compart-
ments, with whose Psyche he affiliates on the
most intimate terms, seeking by many sorts of.
interviews to get acquainted with it and to ex-
press it. Newton was a cosmical genius, who

INTRODUCTION. 405

showed the deepest intimacy with the mechan-
ical element of Nature; his mind was born in
some deep unity with gravitation, whose law
was his own as well as that of the Cosmos.
But this realm’s limit seemed also his spirit’s
boundary, his diacosmical genius was by no
means so transcendent, and in the Biocosmos
he has hardly left a trace. On the other hand
Darwin’s very soul was biocosmical, and hence
evolutionary; he hardly felt the inner psy-
chical throb of the Cosmos or Diacosmos as
ereat divisions of Nature, or in one of their
lesser compartments; he was the supreme biol-
ogist who lived on intimate terms with life
whose soul he caught and voiced in his doc-
trine of Evolution.

Suggestive in a number of points is the
comparison between Newton and Darwin, the
two supreme scientists of the English-speak-
ing race, if not of all Europe. Each in his
own way sought and formulated the unity of
Nature in one of her largest phases. Newton
placed all the material bodies of the physical
Universe under one law, that of gravitation,
which the sun and stars obey as well as a bit
of earth-dust. Thus the separated Cosmos he
unified under an universal principle, and made
it truly a part of the science of inorganic Na-
ture. Darwin likewise performed a mighty act
of unification through his law of organic evo-

406 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

lution, by which the living universe was seen
to be governed by a single principle. The
two English lawmakers of science have, ac-
cordingly, ordered their respective territories
of Nature, having done this not merely for
their own people, but for the rest of mankind.
Tn like manner, we may be permitted to think,
Iingland has elaborated a constitution with
form of government which seems to have some
attribute of universality for Europe, since
nearly all European nations have adopted it
more or less closely, as the one fundamental
law of the State. The two English scientists
we may, therefore, connect on one interior
line, with the dominant institutional conscious-
ness of their people.

The seventeenth century, that of Newton,
had to put under law all the diverse and re-
ealeitrant pieces of matter in the physical
universe—the first subjection, we may deem
it, of Nature’s individuality, which had been
let loose along with man’s, from the clerical
sway, in the Renaissance. The free movements
of natural bodies must be shown to be not
capricious or accidental, but obedient to legal
control. This was peculiarly the work of New-
ton who may be well called the Lawgiver of
the Cosmos. (See our Cosmos and Diacos-
mos, pp. 170, 178, ete.)

On the other hand the nineteenth century,

INTRODUCTION. AQT

that of Darwin, felt imperiously the need of
putting under law all the variations of life, all
the changes in living things. Not only the ex-
ternal movements of lifeless bodies, but the
internal movements of vital bodies must be
seen to be no play of chance or caprice, but
duly subordinated to control. Species, for
instance, are not arbitrarily created from the
outside, but evolve freely from within; yet this
freedom obeys its own law. This must be re-
garded as a new stage in the progressive eman-
cipation of Nature, when she is declared by
science to be in a manner self-governed. Life
has undoubtedly its anarchic, negative, revo-
lutionary aspect, but this will be seen as a
transitory phase when we grasp its evolution-
ary character. Darwin is essentially the Law-
giver of Evolution, and thus has borne science
out of its seemingly destructive attitude,
which it manifests so decidedly in the Diacos-
mos. Rightly does our time feel grateful to
Darwin, for he has revealed the supreme pos-
itive act of Nature in the Biocosmos, and has
shown the rescue from negation through his
law of Evolution, which, at present chiefly bio-
logical, is yet to be made universal, being ap-
plied in its way to the inorganic world, yea
to Evolution itself.

_ Very significant, therefore, is this return
of nineteenth century to the seventeenth, in

408 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

the endeavor to express a new and more in-
ternal unity of Nature. In a sense we can say
that Darwin goes back to Newton, takes up the
latter’s far-reaching thought and applies it
to a fresh domain of the physical world. Evo-
lution, the pivotal category of the Biocosmos,
reaches back to Gravitation, the pivotal cate-
gory of the Cosmos, and connects with it in
the one great process of total Nature. Cos-
mically the individual body has its center out-
side itself, to which it strives perpetually to
be restored; biocosmically the individual body
has its center inside itself, out of which it un-
folds into its genetic act, whereby it repro-
duces itself and thus returns to its starting-
point. Such is the simple round of Life, which,
however, is but a stage of the larger round of
Nature as a whole, as already often stated.
The interest here is to see the stages of this
process taking place in stretches of time, in
centuries, generally speaking; also it concen-
trates itself in the mind and character of great
scientists, who thus become the stages of Na-
ture embodied, or rather personalized. So we
conceive Newton and Darwin, whose lives are
a manifestation of Natural Science, and thus
must be integrated with it.

At this point it may be noted that Biogra-
phy as such has never been ordered through
any universal principle. The career of the

INTRODUCTION. 409

individual, it seems to be taken for granted,
is not amenable to any law of development
which apples to all careers, whatever be the
department of activity. But every person who
enacts a life is an Ngo, and must ultimately
manifest the process of the Ego, which is ver-
ily universal. Hence Psychology is the only
discipline which can reveal the all-dominating
principle common to every human life. Phil-
osophy.as a world-discipline never did and
indeed never could give a philosophy of Biog-
raphy, which must refuse to have a system
foreign to itself clapped upon its free move-
ment. The science of Psychology, that is, of
the Psyche or Self, can alone penetrate and or-
der the Self in all its diversity. Accordingly,
Biography, which is the favorite kind of lit-
erature for a majority of people, is sometime
to reach a new stage of its evolution, advanc-
ing out of its present separative, chaotic, dis-
tracted condition. All lives must show the
common underlying principle or law of all
life, which they in one form or other embody.
Newton and Darwin in the circuit of their ter-
restrial existence, had the one common process
of the Ego; but with the former this took a
cosmical turn (or mechanical), while with the
latter it took a biocosmical turn (or vital).
The Biographies of both would give their uni-
tary process, but would portray it unfolding

410 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

their separate characteristics. And some day
we may have a science of Biography, as we
have long had a science (or philosophy) of
History, which in a number of ways is the
counterpart and complement of Biography.
Accordingly we have to think that biologica}
Evolution is not complete till it embraces the
corresponding biographical Evolution which
evolved it as a science. Both are forms or
stages of that larger Life which we name the
Biocosmos. Biological Evolution is to set forth
not merely the Descent of Man (or his Ascent,
as it is sometimes put), but it is also to bring
before us the descended Man, the biologist
himself, looking back and telling us of his
Descent from the beginning (perchance the
monera or amoeba). His act is truly the last
outcome of Evolution which thus turns about
and takes up itself as a whole. It is true that
in such a case Evolution proper has evolved
out of itself and gone beyond into a psychical
sphere. The end of Evolution is to free the
Psyche from its immediate bond with Nature,
till it attains the power of self-return within
itself or self-consciousness, and through this to
become aware of how it gradually won such a
power. Thus the Psyche is to evolve into
being conscious not only of its own immediate
self, but also of the genesis of that self in its
long training with Nature (or Physis). Dar-

INTRODUCTION. All

win indeed is inclined to limit Evolution to his
own organism, hardly reaching his self-re-
turned EHgo, which therefore. works quite un-
conscious of its true end, and in the deeper
sense does not know what it has done—name-
ly evolved out of Fivolution. Still the evolu-
tionary biologist must not omit himself from
his own process; just he is the greatest fact
of it, as he wheels about and recreates in
thought his entire Evolution perchance from
_amicroscopic cell. And when he has evolved
himself evolving Evolution, it is plain that
he has evolved its master. His Biology thus
winds up in his Biography, therein rounding
itself out to completion.

There can be no doubt that his age, and es-
pecially his nation were ready for Darwin,
in fact were calling for him, and hence rose
the mighty response to his book. This was a
fact which Darwin himself did not always see;
he is inclined to deny that ‘‘the subject was
in the air, or that men’s minds were prepared
for it.’? He says (in his Autobiography) that
he ‘‘sounded not a few naturalists, and never
happened to come across a single one who
seemed to doubt about the permanence of the
species.’? Even his closest friends held back.
Lyell the geologist and Hooker the botanist,
“though they would listen with interest to me,
never seemed to agree.’’ How could they

412 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

take such a big leap at once, with their trans-
mitted inheritance of old doctrines? But Lyell
and Hooker will also evolve, though they too
must have time, like the rest of animated ex-
istence. ;

Now it is a curious fact that his foregoing
statement runs directly counter to what he.
says in the Introduction to his Origin of Spe-
cies, Where he recognizes a goodly-number of
his predecessors in the matter of the gradual
modification of the species. His object there is
to show. that his theme was in the air and had
been so for a good while. He adds a sug-
gestive note in the same place: ‘‘It is rather
a singular instance of the manner in which
similar views arise at about the same time,
that Goethe in Germany and Dr. Darwin in
England, and Geoffroy Saint-Hilare in
France, came to the same conclusion on the
origin of species in the years 1794-5.’’ The
mentioned Dr. Darwin was Charles Darwin’s
orandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, poet-natur-
alist as well as physician, from whom the
grandson may have derived a fair half of his
talent, to the exclusion of his ancestor’s other
poetic half. But the fact above indicates that
distinguished men in Germany, France and
England, each independent of the other, more
than fifty years before the appearance of the
Origin of Species, had at least suggested its

INTRODUCTION. 413

fundamental subject. This surely shows that
the idea was fermenting deeply in the time,
and was getting ready to be born.

It may be here remarked that these oppos-
ing statements of Darwin illustrate a strain of
his psychologic character: he was gifted with
a considerable power of unconscious self-con-
tradiction. .He had small logical, or rather,
dialectical aptitude; he specially disclaims
any success with metaphysics or’'mathematics,
they both lay outside of his mental domain.
Argumentation indeed he possessed, his great
book is east throughout in the form of an ar-
gument. On the whole Darwin in his life was
an unfallen, paradisaical spirit, despite his re-
action; little of the negative lay in him con-
sciously, all his friends have celebrated his
angelic character. He was one with Nature
and responded instinctively to her heart-beat;
such was his congenial sphere as well as his
limit. Still he also heard the call of his time
and answered famously in his way. This was
through Nature, who also gave expression to
the spirit of the age in Darwin’s voice, which
really could speak no other tongue but Na-
ture’s.

The foregoing facts of the age’s prepara-
tion may be elaborated a little further, to
show more fully the place of Darwin as the
pivotal biologist of the Biocosmos, who biolo-

414 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

gically evolves himself evolving Evolution as
the time’s basic thought expressed in a eate-
gory. Moreover Darwin has his peculiar
method of Evolution: it takes place through
Natural Selection, or the Survival of Fittest,
which involves the elimination of the unse-
lected or the unfit. Thus the method has a
deeply negative, indeed a tragic counterstroke,
which may be applied to nature and to man
also, the latter becoming in the talk of the
day the submerged half, more or less. Now
Darwin lived and wrought in the very hey-
dey of England’s Political Economy with its
doctrine of ever-decreasing means of human
subsistence. Thus death through starvation
continually looked the English people in the
face; they beheld fate stealthily creeping upon
them in the lack of the supply of food. Some
would survive, the strong, the rich, the capa-
ble, in general the fittest; the rest would sink
beneath the wave. Human Society in Eng-
land was one colossal example of Natural Se-
lection, which surged before and around Dar-
win everywhere who, bearing in his soul the
strong impress of the fact, took it and apphed
it to all Nature. Undoubtedly the air which
he breathed was full of it, he heard the echo
of it on all sides from the statesman and the-
orist to the bitter shout of anguish always ris-
ing out of the hearts of the poor. The social

INTRODUCTION. AS

order of his time and nation, therefore, gave
to Darwin the push to his task, and suggested
to him his epochal thought.

A few indications may be pointed out.
Ricardo’s Theory of Rent made a great stir
in England during Darwin’s earlier days, and
was generally accepted. This showed a selec-
tion of the land, the best being taken first, then
the next best, till the poorest soil was reached
which would simply furnish food enough to
keep those alive who tilled it. But the peo-
ple needing bread would still increase; what
was to become of them? At least they would
have to engage in the bitter struggle for ex-
istence, which Darwin saw raging around him
on every side, and which became a part of his
consciousness. Then Britain was an island
whose territorial limits could not only be seen
but decidedly felt, so that they have entered
into the very character of the Hnglishman who
has so often been designated as insular. Thus
Nature had drawn a sea-line around the sup-
ply of food though the mouths to be fed kept
increasing. Necessarily the impressive social
phenomenon in the British Isles was the strug-
ele for existence. But the most significant of
all books to Darwin in his mood was the Hs-
say on Population by Malthus. This brings
out that while sustenance increases only in
arithmetical ratio, population increases at the

416 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

same time in geometrical ratio. Again looms
up portentous that Natural Selection among
men in a social condition, with the survival
of the fittest and subsidence of the less fit.
This book seems to have dropped down upon
Darwin’s table at the pivotal psychological
moment. Listen to his own record of the mat-
ter in his Autobiography :

‘‘In October, 1838, that is, fifteen months
after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I
happened to read for amusement Malthus on
Population, and being well prepared to appre-
ciate the struggle for existence which every-
where goes on from long-continued observa-
tion of plants and animals, it struck me that
under these circumstances favorable varia-
tions would tend to be preserved, and unfa-
vorable ones to be destroyed. The result of
this would be the formation of new species.
Here then at last I had got a theory by which
to work.”’

So Darwin traces his first glimpse of the
theory of Evolution through Natural Selec-
tion, and acknowledges that he derives his
ideafrom Malthus;only he transfers the strug-
ele from social man to the vaster population
of plants and animals. The British Island-
ers had become profoundly conscious of this
struggle in their midst, for it had received em-
phatic expression not only in Ricardo and

INTRODUCTION. AIT

Malthus, but also had been organized into an
extensive science by John Stuart Mill’s work
on Political Economy, a gloomy book full of
the modern social tragedy. It is still Natural
Selection with its remorseless submergence of
the weak. From this fateful impression Polit-
ical Economy in England has been named the
Dismal Science. The same doctrine was car-
ried over into Philosophy by Herbert Spencer
who first formulated the famous phrase, ‘‘the
survival of the fittest.’’ It should be added
that in continental America such an insular
theory could not arise; the circumstances, so-
cial and physical, were wanting. There was
still an abundance of land, no limitation of
the food supply was visible, and hence no
social struggle for existence as in England.
It was in place, therefore, that the strongest
contradiction of the doctrines of Ricardo, Mal-
thus and Mill, should be the work of an Amer-
ican economist, Henry C. Carey. Darwin with
his theory of Natural Selection could not have
originated in the United States, where his
social presupposition was wanting; he had to
be born not only a European but an English
Islander of the nineteenth century, in order to
see and perform his task for Nature. Darwin
must be seen as an offshoot of the same eco-
nomie world which produced Robert Owen
with his early socialism as the panacea for

418 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

the ills of society, and which developed Karl
Marx with his later socialism, whose edifice
he sought to erect in a monumental book (Das
Kapital). Darwin’s Natural Selection should
be regarded, therefore, as the outgrowth of the
time and nation in their most coercive prob-
lem, and not simply as an isolated burst of
individual genius. Shortly before the publi-
cation of his great book he witnessed the excit-
ing repeal of the long-standing corn-laws,
which act threw down the last bar to the un-
restrained might of Natural Selection among
the British people.

Here we may recall that the nineteenth cen-
tury, which was spiritually defined and for-
mulated by Darwin more than by any other
man must be deemed the evolutionary cen-
tury. We have elsewhere noted that Hegel,
the chief philosopher of the century, apples
Evolution to his Absolute Idea, and thus his
entire system of thought is evolutionary,
though kept wholly in the realm of abstract
thought. That was too remote for the average
mind, which must see the principle working in
the realm of sense, which proof was just that
furnished by Darwin. Accordingly the biolo-
gist and not the philosopher took possession
of his age and voiced its inmost spirit in a
way intelligible to all, elevating at the same
time Natural Science into the utterance of the

INTRODUCTION. 419

universal Self (Pampsychosis) and quite sup-
planting its former royal herald, Philosophy.
Hence resulted the great philosophic subsi-
dence, especially in the last half of the nine-
teenth century, which subsidence carried down
with it a good deal of the old theology. Then
began to be felt the need of a new formulation
of the Universe in all its three constitutive
stages—-God, World and Man. For the two
old formulations in all their various phases
were no longer sufficient; Religion and Philos-
ophy, the two ancient world-disciplines of man
and the greatest trainers of his spirit, had
been partially at least outgrown. Not that
they were to be thrown away and wholly elim-
inated from the great school of humanity, but
they must be supplemented by a third con-
struction of thought of the All, different in-
deed but co-operant and reconciling, for Re-
ligion and Philosophy from the time of old
Greece had never been very good friends and
needed a mediator. At any rate the aspiration
rose in the soul of the age for the new third
world-discipline—an aspiration indicated by
the deep-seated unrest of the best spirits.

So it happened that Natural Science with
its fresh triumph laid claim to being the great
new dispensation. Through it the old order
had been assailed and partly undermined; its
negative might had indeed been prodigious.

A20 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

But did that make it competent to be the su-
preme positive doctrine? Many fervent dis-
ciples said so, and thus arose the Gospel of
Natural Science, very ably and often beauti-
fully set forth by an army of literary mission-
aries. But now, as the smoke of battle begins
' to clear away, we can see that Natural Science
cannot take the place of Religion and Philos-
ophy, which it sought to do in the height of its
victory ; nor can it be that third newest world-
discipline called for by the aspiration of the
time. Still it is going to remain, yet remain
in its place; Nature is not the Universe, but
at most the second compartment of it; and
Natural Science cannot, therefore, be the sci-
ence of the All, but of a part, a phase, a stage..
There must be a greater over it, the Universal
Science or the Science of the Universe, which
determines it, and gives to it its final organ-
ization. We hear in certain quarters a deep
disappointment with Natural Science, it has
not fulfilled what was expected of it some
years ago, especially in education. In fact it
has shown a decided tendency to separation,
distraction, pessimism, in general to uneduca-
tion. Such a result comes from trying to make
it do what it cannot and ought not; Natural
Science does not reveal the ultimate unitary
process of the Universe, and hence it is unable
to furnish the universal method; yea it cannot

INTRODUCTION. 42]

finally furnish its own method, for Nature has
to be ordered at last by something higher than
itself. Still it has asserted its place and func-
tion in the grand Totality, chiefly through the
work of Darwin, and is no longer to be con-
temptuously cast out by Religion and Philos-
ophy.

Natural Science with its supreme category
of Evolution is not, therefore, the new-born
world-discipline, though it be the chief force
which is propelling such an idea toward real-
isation. It drives us to forecast what will be
the dominant thought of the twentieth cen-
tury. Already has the question been asked:
After Darwin, what? Evolution has shown
itself to be one side or part of a greater
Whole, which would seem to be next in order.

If we seek to grasp fully the place of Dar-
win or of any epochal genius, we are to see
him as the mediator between what may be
deemed two extremes: the universal spirit of
the Ages which is now to reveal itself in the
stage of Evolution, and the popular mind
which must be ready to receive such a revela-
tion; this, however, has to be formulated and
imparted by the mediating Great Man of the
time. To use the psychological phraseology
already employed: it is the function of the
evenius of a given domain and time to mediate
the Pampsychosis in its special manifestation

499 THE BIOCOSMOS--HISTORICAL.

with the People or the Folk-soul of the period.
It may be said that in the nineteenth century
the World’s Spirit had become evolutionary,
and that on the other hand the People’s Spirit
was ready for the impress which was also its
own. Darwin was the one who had the gift of
uttering the timely message from God to Man
(to employ the religious phrasing of this mat-
ter). Still Darwin is not the whole of Evo-
lution, nor is Evolution the whole of the Uni-
verse.

It has been already remarked that there was
something insular in the theory of Natural
Selection, and that England alone through its
social and mental condition could have called
forth such a doctrine. The fittest and the un-
fit seem engirdled in a ring of sea, and the
strugele for existence takes place. Natural
Selection implies the sinking of the unselected
under the waves of being, while the selected
species rises and floats on the surface like an
island, like England. Civilisation is indeed
saved by the survival of the fittest, yet its tri-
umph is ever accompanied by the awful trag-
edy of the unfit. Now Darwin, an English-
man and so an islander, catches up this key-
note of his time and people and of his pecu-
liar locality, and starts to applying it to the
whole life of Nature. But why just he, this
individual? What experience does he pass

INTRODUCTION. 423

through whereby he is selected among millions
of the same human species to unfold Natural
Selection?

Now this experience as told by himself, is
emphatically insular, as he proceeds in his
voyage on the Beagle from one group of is-
lands to another. He starts of course with the
British Isles which were doubtless at one time
eonnected with the continent, but have been
long separated from it, and have developed
their own peculiar species and varieties among
living things, notably, the man and his institu-
tions. The first group of islands to which the
vessel came was the Cape de Verde, lying off
the coast of Africa, and closely related to it,
though differmg from it enough to suggest
a little bit of evolution, if the thought was
ready. But the great insular experience of
Darwin on his voyage, which lasted five years
altogether, was at the Galapagos Islands, in
the Pacific, some hundreds of miles west of
South America, under the Equator. They were
of voleanic origin, their geology as well as
their fauna and flora indicated their original
connection with the South American main-
land.

It may be said that Darwin at the Galapagos
Tslands saw his theory rise bodily before his
eyes out of the ocean. In the territory itself
he beheld variation and descent from an ances-

424A THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

tor. This ancestor was the continent of South
America from which these different islands
had been originally separated, and been made
to constitute an entirety together (the archi-
pelago); then the archipelago was divided up
into a number of large and small islands, and
even some smallest ones. Says Darwin in his
Journal: ‘‘This archipelago consists of ten
principle islands of which five exceed the oth-
ers in size.’’ It is evident that the earth itself
presented variations which might be classified
after the model of Natural History as family
(the original continent), as genus (the archi-
pelago as a whole), and as species (the several
sorts of islands), each of which finally had its
individuals. But the striking fact was that all
these gradations were separated from one
another, insulated we may say; and they all
—family, genus, species, individuals—had
their real counterparts before the eye. Thus
the territory itself furnished the framework
and suggested externally the order and evo-
lution of living things there found.

Again we shall cite Darwin’s Journal: ‘‘ By
far the most remarkable feature in the nat-
ural history of this archipelago is that the dif-
ferent islands to a considerable extent are in-
habited by a different set of beings,’’ that is,
the life upon them varies. For instance, the
tortoises of the same species on different is-

INTRODUCTION. 425

lands showed so great differences that an ex-
perienced eye could tell from which island a
given specimen was brought. Darwin goes
on: ‘‘I never dreamed that islands about fifty
or sixty miles apart, and most of them in sight
of each other, formed of precisely the same
rocks, placed under a quite similar climate,
rising to a nearly equal height, would have
been differently tenanted.’’ The physical en-
vironment was quite similar in all, but the or-
ganic variation seemed to go on. Birds of
the same species in the separate islands va-
ried, so did the flowers. Here then was vari-
ation with the consequent evolution into dis-
tinct species, mapped out by localities and set
directly under the eye. Insular species of
plants, animals and insects fenced off by the
sea and confined to limited territory in the
separate islands, always show differences in
their individuals. Here is the clew to Dar-
win’s chapter on Variation Under Nature (in
Origin of Species). Seeing this phenomenon
oft repeated in a little enclosed spot, Darwin
carries it home and applies it to the whole
earth; he has found the typical fact of his
work, and at once proceeds to make the same
universal. But first he is driven to find the
source of such variation.

~ Darwin fully recognized the foregoing or-
ginal suggestion of his idea. Says he in his

496 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

Origin of Species (Chap. II.): ‘‘Many years
ago, when comparing and seeing others com-
pare, the birds from the closely neighboring
islands of the Galapagos Archipelago, one
with another, and with those from the Amer-
ican mainland, I was much struck how entirely
vague and arbitrary is the distinction between
species and varieties,’’ and he might have add-
ed genera. In fact there was no fixed bound-
ary line between these classes; every indi-
vidual, plant and animal, varied from its par-
ents and from its brothers and sisters. Va-
viability of all living organisms thus became
his germinal starting-point, seen plain in the
Galapagos Islands; but when he went home to
his own British Island and saw the intense in-
sular struggle for existence, he found his sec-
ond great category, Natural Selection, as the
chief, though not the only, ground of this con-
dition in which the fittest persist and propa-
gate. Says he: ‘‘As more individuals are
produced than can possibly survive, there
must in every case be a struggle for exist-
ence.’? But who will survive? Those indi-
viduals ‘‘which have favorable differences and
variations”? are preserved, while the injurious
variations will cause destruction. He also
states (Origin, 11), whence he derived his
view: ‘‘It is the-doctrine of Malthus applied
with manifold force to the whole animal and

INTRODUCTION. 427

vegetable kingdoms.’’ Thus also he applied
the Galapagos Islands as a kind of measuring-
rod to the whole earth, dividing it up into so
many insular units of the migration of flora
and fauna, and hence of geographical distri-
bution, as well as of variation.

The individual Darwin is, accordingly, a
product of his environment working with his
inherited gifts. As stated some pages back
there was an insular element in his character
and career, otherwise he would never have
evolved Evolution by Natural Selection. An
insular Evolution had evolved him the evolver
of insular Evolution. The sight of the Gala-
pagos Islands, and their living inhabitants,
brought him to a consciousness of his own
deepest self and of his life’s task; they were
Nature’s outer manifestation of what lay in
him, and so he beheld himself in them as in
amirror. He as naturalist had found his true
counterpart in Nature, and began at once to
unfold and describe what he saw. He had dis-
covered the world (or quite a fragment there-
of), and then he sets about discovering himself
in the world everywhere.

This brings us to a new stage of his devel-
opment or personal evolution; and we are led
to ask what are all these stages. Darwin’s
individual evolution to the point where he saw
-and evolved organic evolution, making the

428 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

universal life of Nature the content of his own
life as conscious, cannot be left out of a com-
plete survey of the Biocosmos, which thus
not simply evolves as a natural object, but
beholds itself evolving through the ages—the
evolver standing not outside but inside of Hvo-
lution, not merely a spectator but a partici-
pant active, yea necessary. Mvolution would
not be complete without having evolved Dar-
win—its culminating act in some respects.
Still we are not to forget that before and after
Darwin runs a line of biological Egos engaged
in the work of evolving Evolution, and them-
selves a part thereof also. This fact brings
to the surface the historical side of the Bio-
cosmos, and shows that the doctrine of Kvo-
lution had long been evolving and is still at
its task. But the all-dominating personality
in this field is Darwin whose individual evo-
lution we wish to see as an illustration, yea
as an integral part of universal Evolution.
So next we have to unfold the biographical
Darwin to his place in the Biocosmos.

DARWIN'S BIOGRAPHY. 499

I. Darwtn’s Brocrapny.

The Biography of the biologist, the Evolu-
tion of the evolver of Evolution, the life of
the man who unfolds Life—such we wish to
grasp in its main outlines, as an essential
stage of the Biocosmos, which seeks to order
the totality of Life. As Darwin turned back
and showed the development of his own or-
ganism physically, so we are to see him de-
veloping this development mentally (born
1809, died 1882).

Evidently here are woven together two
strands, two kinds of life which we may call
organic and psychic. Darwin evolved organic
Evolution through its various forms, but his
act therein was psychical or mental. Now to
perform such a mental act, he had to have
his preliminary training, or his Spirit’s Evo-
lution into seeing Nature’s Evolution.

This is to be unfolded in his Biography.
But after he had written his great evolution-
ary work (Origin of Species) he lived many
years, making new application of his prin-
ciple. Accordingly we may observe three
leading stages in his career:

First is his period of education, which we
may call his Apprenticeship, till he found

430 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

himself and his vocation, through his voyage
as naturalist on the Beagle.

Second is the period of elaboration from
his germinal point of view, which view he
brings back with him as his instinctive yet
creative idea; this is what is now to clothe it-
self with facts of organic life.

Third is the period in which he seeks to
make his principle universal, applying it gen-
erally to animate existence. Thus he passes
from the implicit time of acquisition to the ex-
plicit discovery of his principle, which he
finally applies in many ways.

Here it may be noted that Darwin’s indi-
vidual career can well be regarded as a typical
hfe; it has in it the idea and the movement of
universal Biography, though following its par-
ticular lines and character. We may deem
him a special manifestation of the universal
man in a very unique and exalted way: in a
way which becomes an exemplar of all com-
pleted lives, like those of Lincoln and Goethe
for instance. Nota broken inperfect life con-
sisting of scattered fragments is Darwin’s;
it has a unity and a process which connect it
with the All-Life, yea with the All-Self, of
which it is an incarnation and a reflection.

In this sense it will be worth while to study
Darwin’s biographical stages with some at-
tention.

DARWIN'S BIOGRAPHY. 43]

J. ApprenticrsHip. We are struck with
the difficulty which Darwin had in finding his
true bent, in discovering what he had to do in
the world. If we look into his immediate an-
cestral inheritance, we observe a line of
science coming down to him through his fore-
fathers. He has celebrated the mental capac-
ity of his father, who was a physician and
specially gifted with keen power of observa-
tion, which the son also shows. But the most
interesting as well as famous of these ancest-
ors was Dr. Krasmus Darwin (1731-1802) who
was a poet and put Nature into brilliant Po-
pian verse in his Botanic Garden, and seems
to have kept up his poetizing to the end of
his days. This trait he did not transmit to
his grandson, who says (in his Autobiogra-
phy) that in earlier life he read poetry with
pleasure, and then continues: ‘‘ But now for
many years I cannot endure to read a line of
poetry; I have tried lately to read Shakes-
peare, and I found it so intolerably dull that
it nauseated me. I have also lost my taste
for pictures and music. My mind seems to
have become a kind of machine for grinding
general laws out of large collections of facts.’’
So he confesses to ‘‘the atrophy of the higher
aesthetic tastes’’ during his later years. Very
different in this regard was his grandfather,
who, however, on another line reveals a men-

432 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

tal turn very similar to that of his grandson.
For Dr. Erasmus Darwin wrote a work called
Zoonomia, which seeks to find the law of the
animal world, and in one passage (cited in the
Introduction to the Origin of Species) par-
tially anticipates Charles Darwin’s doctrine
in regard to the transmutation of the species.
The grandfather also wrote a work called
Phytologia, which has to do with plants. Or-
ganic life was therefore the main theme and
delight of this ancestor, wherein he is like his
famous descendent, who, however, did not
poetize it, though certainly gifted with im-
agination subordinate to science. It has been
noticed that children often skip their fathers,
and inherit from their grandfathers (a point
dwelt on by Goethe, by the way); some such
fact we may see in the case of Darwin.

The first decided bent which Darwin notes
in himself as a boy was ‘‘my taste for Nat-
ural History’? and also the passion for col-
lecting specimens of various objects, ‘‘ which
was very strong in me and was clearly innate,
as none of my sisters or brother had this
taste.”’ .

When nine years old he was sent to a ‘‘Dr.
Butler’s great school in Shrewsbury,’’ where
he stayed seven years. Here is the result in
his own language: ‘‘Nothing could have been
worse for the development of my mind than

DARWIN'S BIOGRAPHY. 433

Dr. Butler’s school, as it was strictly classical,
nothing else being taught but a little ancient
geography and history. The school as a means
of education was to me simply a blank. Dur-
ing my whole life I have been singularly in-
capable of mastering any language. Especial
attention was paid to verse-making, and this
I never could do well.’’ Here is one of the
first guns of the great battle between Natural
Science and the Classics, about which recent
pedagogy has heard so much. The school had
no study of Nature for developing the boy’s
innate bent which showed itself in the fact that
‘‘T continued collecting minerals with much
zeal but quite unscientifically. I must have
gathered insects with some little care,’’ even
before the age of ten years. Also he observed
birds, and dabbled in chemistry. Evidently
the boy Darwin is making his own eurriculum
of education in strong reaction against the
transmitted training through the Classics.
Once he was publicly rebuked by the head-
master ‘‘for thus wasting time on such useless
subjects.’’

What is to be done with the trifling lad, for
so he seems. His father took him away from
the classical school, where he ‘‘was doing no
good,’’ and sent him to Edinburgh Univer-
sity to study medicine, evidently that he might
succeed the father in practice. But here again

434 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

the youth kicked out of the transmitted traces
and pursued his own course in some irregular
studies of Natural History. He loved to hunt
and to sport with animals. His father in des-
peration once hurled at him a little thunder-
bolt: ‘‘You eare for nothing but shooting,
dogs and rat-eatching, and you will be a dis-
grace to yourself and all the family.’? Evi-
dently he will not fit into any paternal model;
he quits Edinburgh with its medicine after
two vears, he will not become a doctor and fol-
low in the footsteps of his sire. What to do
with the inadjustable boy must have ‘been the
chief problem of the Darwin household. For-
tunately he pays a visit to his uncle, Mr. Jo-
siah Wedgwood, who at once discerned the
bent of the youth, and what was still better, be-
came sympathetic with it. Mark this uncle,
for he speaks the pivotal word at the right
moment, and thereby renders possible the fu-
ture career of Charles Darwin.

The well-intentioned father, striving still to
keep his son in the ready-cut groove of a trans-
mitted vocation, proposes to mould him into
a clergyman of the Anglican Church. So the
young man betakes him to the University of
Cambridge to study for a degree, where he re-
mains three years (1828-31). But it is the
same old story. He had to brush up his class-
ics which he had forgotten with delight, and

DARWIN'S BIOGRAPHY. 435

to study Mathematics which he abominated;
still by dint of a good memory he succeeded
in passing the examination. Listen again to,
his damnatory judgment: ‘‘ During the three
years which I spent atCambridge my time was
wasted, as far as the academical studies were
concerned, as completely as at Edinburgh and
as at school.’’ But there was the same strong
undercurrent of his true bent which he suc-
ceeded in gratifying. He heard the lectures
on botany from the professor (Henslow),
‘‘though I did not study it,’’ and he went with
the class on botanical excursions, ‘‘which were
delightful.’? Moreover he gave rein to his
passion for collecting beetles. Says Darwin
of himself: ‘‘I am surprised what an indeli-
ble impression many of the beetles which I
caught at Cambridge have left on my mind.
I can remember the exact appearance of cer-
tain posts, old trees and banks where I made
a good capture.’’ But while he remembered
beetles, he totally forgot Homer and Virgil.
What was the whole beautiful classic world
compared with an insect! Tere is a sample
of the love of Nature which is hard to parallel:
‘‘One day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw
two rare beetles and seized one in each hand;
then T saw a third and new kind which I could
not bear to lose,so that I popped the one which
T held in my right hand into my mouth.’’ An

436 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

heroic act surely of its kind; what seasoned
entomologist would dare it? But the prisoned
bug shed an acrid juice ‘‘which burnt my
tongue so that I was forced to spit it out,’’
and so it was lost, says Darwin regretfully.
This certainly shows the bent of the youth, as
well as his observing power. Through the
advice of Henslow he studied geology .and
went with its professor, Sedgwick, on a geo-
logical expedition to North Wales. Such was
his real education at Cambridge; he was in
training to be the High-Priest of Nature and
not a clergyman of the Church of England;
nor could he be brought to fit into any of the
prescribed vocations. It may be noted that
already his heart is set upon communing with
organic life, and that he has in a desultory
way tapped its three main divisions: Plant-
life (botany), Animal-life (zoology), Earth-
life (geology).

It is manifest that Darwin’s education up to
this point has had two lines’ in it—the open,
regular, authorized, and the secret, irregular,
unauthorized. He has been training himself,
in defiance of the prescriptive disciplines;
though he has not rebelled, he has quietly let
them run into him and then run out. Classics,
Medicine, Theology had all tried to educate
Charles Darwin and could not; they were un-
able to call out of its germ his true self, his

DARWIN'S BIOGRAPHY. . 427
deepest nature, which, however, in a some-
what clandestine and unordered way persisted
in asserting itself. Now the peculiar scientific
character of the man, at present acquired, re-
mained with him to the end of his days. He
was always a kind of amateur in science; he
had not the professional touch, or routine, or
knowledge, though in his way he showed that
he knew more than any professor of Natural
Science in the world. But he was no trained
biologist, like his friend Huxley; no trained
botanist lke his friend Hooker; no trained
geologist like his friend Lyell. Still he drew
from these friends, in the most amiable way,
what he needed of theirs, and supplemented
his own deficiencies; he tapped them when he
wanted them, without having to go through
their professional tread-mill, with its crush-
ing formalism and useless lumber, from which
he had re-acted so strongly in the education
of his youth. For Science also has its ritual,
its ceremonies, and especially its dogmas, and
can become even more dogmatic than The-
ology.

Darwin then had no established training for
his scientific work such as we see everywhere
at present in the schools. He was not put
through the prescribed curriculum by the
~ Jearned professor of biology; doubtless he
would have turned against that too, in his

4388 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

younger days. Very glaring are some of his
deficiencies of education in his own depart-
ment. ‘Tl’o the last he never learned to draw
and he could not dissect wth any skill; draw-
ing and dissecting would now seem the most
elementary and indispensable branches to the
scientist. He even doubted his mastery over
the mother-tongue, and hired an adept to cor-
rect the English of his great book (Origin of
Species). Now we hazard the opinion that it
was just this unconventional education which
gave free scope to his genius; he was never
case-hardened by the University Professor of
Science in transmitted dogmas. It is true that
at Cambridge he was deeply influenced by two
teachers (Henslow and Sedgewick), yet he did
not study regularly with either of them, but
went irregularly botanizing and geologizing.
To the end he was a free ranger in Nature,
whose secret he must catch at first hand in her
own untrammeled life, and not in the lecture-
room of the Professor, who, however, was a
very useful purveyor of knowledge to him. It
is an oft-repeated phenomenon: the great dis-
eoveries are usually not made by the trained
scientist at the University, but by the outsider,
the amateur, who possesses the inborn love of
his theme with the genius to catch its deepest
spirit.

But, returning to the parental household,

DARWIN'S BIOGRAPHY. 429

we may still hear the old problem even after
the Cambridge examination: What is to be
done with this wayward young man who ev1-
dently has little taste for the clerical profes-
sion? Meanwhile Professor Henslow, though
a cleric himself, has fathomed the bent of his
botanical friend, and has quickly gone to work
to get him appointed as naturalist to the
Beagle, which was going to make a long scien-
tific voyage, in fact round the world. Papa
Darwin put his foot down against such a wild,
eareer-upsetting scheme; but Uncle Josiah
Wedgwood intercedes, and the paternal con-
sent is granted. Speaking briefly of this piv-
otal act, Charles Darwin says: ‘‘My uncle
sent for me and offered to drive me over to
Shrewsbury (the father’s residence) and talk
with my father, as my uncle thought it would
be wise in me to accept the offer.’? So the
mediator appears at the right moment for de-
termining the career of the great scientist.
Old Homer would picture it a divine interfer-
ence, perchance of Pallas Athena, at a nodal
turn of destiny, appearing to young Tele-
machus. This mediatorial uncle is already fa-
mous in the family for his mind and word.’
Darwin goes on in his account: ‘‘My father
always maintained that he (the uncle) was one
of the most sensible men in the world, and he
(the father) at once consented in the kindest

440 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

manner.’’ The uncle has distinctly glimpsed
the bent and possibly the genius of his
nephew, and moreover shows strong sympa-
thy with it, being eager to see it unfold ac-
cording to its own law. Remove the lad from
his father who does not understand him; get
him out of England with its oppressive for-
mality and traditionalism; send him off to sea
where he will be turned loose upon the vast
realm of Nature in which he can revel to the
full of his spirit’s debauchery: so must have
felt and thought Uncle Josh, who thus makes
himself the turning-point in the career of the
greatest modern Englishman. Henslow, the
warm friend, did much, very much for that
budding talent, and finally secured the offer
of just the right position for its further devel-
opment; still all this had been in vain but for
_ the mediation of the uncle, or in the words of
Darwin: ‘‘It all depended on so small a cir-
cumstance as my uncle offering to drive me
thirty miles to Shrewsbury,’’ in order to win
to the scheme the old doctor. A very brief
and mild memorandum has been preserved of -
Wedgwood’s opinion in the case which is
worth citing: ‘‘If I saw Charles now ab-
sorbed in professional duties (as clergyman),
T should probably think it would not be ad-
visable to interrupt them; but this is not, and
I think, will not be, the case with him. His

DARWIN'S BIOGRAPHY. 441

present pursuit of knowledge is in the same
track as he would have to follow in the expe-
dition (Life and Letters of Darwin, by his
son, Vol. 1, p. 173). So speaks Uncle Josiah
the words of wisdom to the father, which bear
of themselves a deep educational import for
all parents and children, at the critical con-
junction of choosing a vocation. Thus Charles
Darwin, after many an obstruction, turns
down the open road toward his true destiny.
He remarks in his Autobiography: ‘‘The
voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most
important event of my life, and has deter-
mined my whole career.’?’ He was a volunteer
naturalist, receiving no salary and paying his
own way besides. But he was now for the
first time a free man, and could evolve in his
own way on his own lines; no wonder that
in his emancipation he evolved Evolution
itself.

The voyage lasted five years (1831-6), start-
ing when he was twenty-two years old, and
thus embracing a very acquisitive portion of
human life. Vast were the stores which he
brought back, but they were in a separated,
more or less chaotic state. Always observing
and writing down in his note-book we find
him, as if determined to swallow all Nature
in his quinquennial banquet. Amateur indeed
with many shortcomings, but a true iover, he

442 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

feels at one with Mother Earth in all her
forms, and harmonizes with her spirit. His
letters throb with happiness, for he has found
his vocation, which is always in tune with his
talent, and also with his ambition. No more
Greek and Latin, no more medical lectures, no
more Theology, no more Papa on this free
Ocean! Still Darwin has expressed the
strongest affection for his father, who con-
tinued to think of him as a possible curate
after he had came back a new man, from his
regenerating voyage. The old Doctor was a
good obstetrician for infants, but totally unfit
for an adolescent, especially a genius. These
five years have also their culminating point
when Darwin saw the outlines of his theory
stamped upon the huge sphinx-face of Nature.
This vision embodied he beheld at the Gala-
pagos Islands, as already indicated.

Il. THrory Enasoratep (1837-59). We
have now reached the period in which Darwin
makes explicit that evolutionary germ hither-
to implicit and potential. He has gradually
to formulate that which he has lived inwardly
and outwardly—has lived in his own internal
struggles to get educated and in his external
experience with free Nature during his oceanic
voyage. Evolution as yet unborn but strug-
eling for birth in his Apprenticeship, is next
to pass into Evolution realized, evolved and

DARWIN'S BIOGRAPHY. 443

expressed in speech. This period lasts from
the time of his return, when he starts to elab-
orate his acquisition, till the publication of the
Origin of Species when Evolution leaps forth
into the light of Heaven fully evolved and
categorized, ready to undergo still new Evo-
lutions.

We are first to keep in mind that here in
particular run the following streams of Evo-
lution, one alongside the other, or perchance
one beneath the other. First is the objective
or physical Evolution, that of Nature, which
is properly the theme. Then there is the per-
sonal Evolution, very important, but kept un-
derneath, though it is really the working prin-
ciple which drives the whole machinery. For
it is Darwin’s Ego which is re-creating the
creative principle of Nature and giving ade-
quate utterance to the same; the evolver he is,
who while evolving Nature is himself evolved.
None of these sides can be left out in a com-
plete statement of the Darwinian process; all
belong to the Biocosmos which has to present
the psychical Evolution of the - individual
evolver as he evolves physical and perchance
universal Evolution.

From the foregoing account it is evident
that the reader must keep before himself no
less than three Evolutions: (1) the original
elemental Evolution of Nature herself which

444 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

brings forth a Darwin, the evolver; (2) the
re-created [volution generating in thought
and formulating in speech Nature’s Evolution
through the evolved evolver; (3) the evolver’s
own [tvolution, while evolving Nature’s Evo-
Iution; he must be self-evolving in doing his
evolutionary task. Perhaps the reader may
seek to include his own Ego as the fourth
stream of Kvolution intermingling with the
three other streams and re-producing them in
himself.

For more than twenty years after his re-
turn Darwin was elaborating the vast quantity
of materials which he had collected. These
pertained especially to Biology and Geology.
One of the works was his’ Journal of Re-
searches during the voyage of the Beagle,
printed first in 1839 (second edition corrected
and enlarged 1845). This is still a popular
book, being written in a familiar style and al-
ways manifesting the straightforward interest
of the lover of Nature. It shows Darwin eager-
ly picking up every particular fact without
much reflection or endeavor to put in order
what he saw. It is a kind of diary of his voy-
age. Yet growth can be traced in it, the evolu-
tion of the Naturalist who is finally to evolve
Evolution. As already stated, the culmination
of the book is reached in the visit to the Gala-
pagos Islands, which took place toward the

DARWIN'S BIOGRAPHY. 445

close of the fourth year of the voyage. Hav-
ing there received the impress of his idea
from Nature herself, he could go home and
elaborate it into reality from his collected -
stores. This, however, was no small or brief
task.

Two years and more after his return he
was married. It is not out of place to remark
that he in his marriage makes himself a new
center of Evolution, as does every man in such
a relation. Darwin took advantage of his
position, as we may observe from allusions in
his writings. He watched the unfolding of his
children, and did not fail to note down what he
saw. Says his biographer: ‘‘At the end of
1839 his eldest child was born, and it was then
that he began his observations ultimately pub-
lished in the Expression of the Emotions. His
book on this subject and the short paper pub-
lished in Mind, show how closely he observed
his child.’’ Eight children were born to him
—surely a great opportunity for the study of
biological Evolution, as well as for the exer-
cise of parental love and anxiety, both of
which Darwin showed in full measure. More-
over he quit smoky denatured London, and
moved to the country where he lived the rest
of his life in free, open contact with Nature.
~ Here he could experiment with plants and ani-
mals, wild and domestic; the environing coun-

AAG THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

try became his laboratory in which he made
Life reproduce and reveal its processes, con-
firming his views. Still he did not wholly ab-
jure the society of his scientific friends whom
he could meet in his little trips to London,
and who often went to his rural residence,
named Down, to see the great naturalist.

But the chief fact of this second period of
Darwin’s career is suggested in the following
statement: ‘‘In July, 1837, I opened my first
note-book for facts in relation to the Origin
of Species, about which I had long reflected
and never ceased working for the next twenty
years.’? Darwin himself thus marks off the
foregoing period through which was spun the
one thread uniting all his diversified activi-
ties: his theory of Evolution. To be sure, he
says he had been thinking about it for a long
time, especially during his voyage; but it
probably lurked as a hidden impulse farther
back in his youthful love of Nature which
dominated him from childhood. But now he
becomes conscious of his life’s chief pursuit;
he must uncover the origin of species. More-
over when he read Malthus fifteen months
later (1838) he came upon his basic principle,
Natural Selection.

At last in November, 1859, his pivotal book,
yea the pivotal book of the century perhaps
more than any other, was published with nu-

DARWIN'S BIOGRAPHY. - AAT

merous accompanying circumstances of in-
terest, all of which cannot here be recounted.
It was an abstract of a much larger work, in
fact the abstract of an abstract. This bigger
book never came out, though much of its con-
tents probably went over into the author’s
later works. The first edition was taken in a
day (1250 copies); and so it has gone on sell-
ing all over the world in many languages from
that time to this. The Age took it at once as
the most adequate expression of its very soul;
everybody had to read it who wished to hear
the voice of the nineteenth century in its clear-
est and most concentrated utterance. Another
indication of its striking adjustment to the
time is the fact that a contemporary scientist,
Mr. Alfred R. Wallace, had elaborated the
same doctrine of the transmutation of the spe-
cies, written it out in an essay which he sent
in the summer of 1858 to Darwin, who says of
it: ‘‘This essay contained exactly the same
theory as mine.’’ Still Darwin himself denied
that ‘‘the subject was in the air,’’ or that the
world was ready for it. But not only ready,
the Soul of the Age was calling for it, being
instinctively evolutionary and_ striving for
some utterance. Darwin spake the right word
at the right moment; he possessed the genius
to make himself the voice of the universal
Spirit to the eager people—a truly mediato-

448 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

rial function of the Great Man, as already in-
dicated.

In this way concludes the second period of
his Biography, with a prodigious blare of the
triumphal trumpet over the whole civilized
world. He has now made explicit his thought
so long implicit, has realized his Idea, brooded
over for more than twenty years, in one colos-
sal manifestation. What next?

Il. Evoturion Mave Untversau. That is,
Darwin proceeds during the rest of his life—
the concluding period—to apply his theory to
all Nature, not leaving out wholly the psy-
chieal side (1859-82). This period is about as
long as the second. Having made explicit his
one central principle, he goes forward to uni-
versalize it, showing its validity as well as its
extent in a number of departments of science.

We can see that the implicit germ of his
first period had now come to complete fruit-
age, and his life is rounded out. The vast
disorganized, scattered experiences of his voy-
age round the world he orders after a single
fundamental thought which he has evolved out
of the mass, which is to be ordered. A world
of facts he gathers one by one in his world-
trip, and crams them into his brain, belabor-
ing them till he finds the principle by which
they are to be organized, and then he proceeds
in his last period to organize them after this

DARWIN'S BIOGRAPHY. 449

principle. To Darwin the outer, separate uni-
verse of Nature becomes an inner harmonious
unified universe through Evolution by Nat-
ural Selection, which is the central mediating
principle. And just that is also the unity of
his life evolving through its three periods.
He mediated himself in his own crude imme-
diate state with his universal Self; and so
completely did he live this process that he was
the mediator in the sphere of Nature for his
age.

Thus he goes back to his voyage externally,
and makes the inner cirecumnavigation of Na-
ture, avoiding Classics, Medicine and Theol-
ogy to the last. We may observe him branch-
ing from his central principle in his next ex-
tensive work, Variation of Animals and
Plants Under Domestication. This contains
his theory of Pangenesis, which ‘‘implies that
every separate part of the whole organization
reproduces itself’’ through the so-called gem-
mules. Next we may place The Descent of Man
(1871), in which the transmutation of the spe-
cies is applied to the human being—which ap-
plication the author had avoided in the Origin
of Species. This is, of course, the most im-
portant application and has given to Darwin-
ism its greatest fame, as it affirms that man
had come through ‘‘a pithecoid ancestor.’’
But we shall have to forego any special des-
ignation of the rest of his works.

450 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

Noteworthy is the fact that in the last years
of his life he devoted his books chiefly - to
plants. His was primarily a flower-soul, he
was a botanist more than geologist or zoolo-
gist. This was an original bent lying in his
character, but doubtless unfolded by Profes-
sor Henslow, his dearest friend, educator and
then helper. Indeed Nature herself was first
of all a plant, and Darwin followed her. His
earliest love was for fowers, and later he went
to the country from flowerless London, living
in his Paradise or floral world, which was his
garden at Down with its insects and birds.
And on his voyage he seems to show the
greater inclination for Plant-life, though he
keeps also in view Animal-life as well as
Earth-life.

Such, as we look at it, is the movement of
the personal biography of Darwin, which is in
itself psychical, and unfolds after its own
law, though its content is the evolution of or-
ganic existence. A remarkably integral life
was his, fully rounded out, representing the
finished human career, whose process is in-
deed a manifestation of the process of the All-
Self, or of the Great Entirety. Typical we
may deem Darwin’s individual Biography, re-
flecting the universal Biography of all men at
their best and its process, though each man
has and must have his own special sphere of

DARWIN'S BIOGRAPHY. 451

activity, which has also its special events. We
may again emphasize that written Biography
must be elevated out of its present chaos by
bringing to light this universal process in
each human career, as well as its particular
occurrences.

Darwin lies beside Newton in Westminster
Abbey; thus the mighty Dioscuri of Nature’s
Revelation are twinned in their mortality as in
their immortality.

452 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

Il. BerorE Darwin AND AFTER.

Having evolved the one central man who
has practically evolved Evolution, we may
trace briefly the line of predecessors into him,
and the line of successors out of him. The
Hero of the Biocosmos, in so far as this has
yet unfolded, is Darwin, who possessed the
power of conquering his age with his thought,
and stamping upon it his fundamental cate-
gory. His was the regnant biological Kgo—
that designates his supremacy as well as his
limit. For he was not the universal genius,
even in the realm of Nature; biocosmical was
his field, rather confinedly fenced off from
every other domain of knowledge. He has
himself marked down his own = spiritual
bounds with candor and modesty. But within
his kingdom he is the monarch.

Still the science which he stands for, that of
Evolution, is itself an Evolution, and has a
number of ascending stages each of which is
usually represented by an important person,
who has his own biography or individual Evo-
lution. All of these taken together in succes-
sion will show the history of the science afore-
said. That is, we are to see Evolution itself
evolving up to the point at which it becomes
aware of itself and formulates itself as a

BEFORE DARWIN AND AFTER. 453

part of its own total science. And we may
add that Evolution does not stop with Darwin
but takes a fresh start. If his own principle
be apphed to himself, he too must evolve still
further. And this is what has happened.

The considerable details of biological his-
tory we cannot here enter upon; only the
mountain peaks of the science we shall at?
tempt to bring into one view, that our reader
may catch a glimpse of the complete Biocos-
mos, as we see it.

J. Artstotte. We shall begin with an Ego
which was not merely biological but was uni-
versal, elaborating not the science of Life
alone, but all science, yea the science of the
All. Doubtless of the great men who have
ever lived, Aristotle best deserves the title of
Genius Universal. In his works is grasped
and formulated the universe with its triune
process of God, Nature, and Man. This he
did of course in his way, which is that of the
Thinker, the Philosopher. Upon his thought
is stamped every phase or part of the great
All with equal fullness and favor. In him
the ideal and the real are equally at home
and harmonious; his mind conjoins and me-
diates in one process the Particular and the
Universal. But that which we may especially,
celebrate here is that he united the metaphy-
sician and the scientist in one complete per-

454A THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

sonality with both sides present and co-oper-
ant in mutual sympathy and appreciation.
After him these two sides separated and
flowed down time in diverse and often antag-
cnistic streams. During the last hundred
years (say the nineteenth century) Philosophy
and Science have been at daggers’ points for
the most part. At first Philosophy seemed to
hold its own (in Schelling, Hegel, and we
should add, Oken, the much belabored at pres-
ent). Then Science flung its foe to the
ground, yea down into Inferno itself, as was
thought. Still Science has found itself un-
able to do without its counterpart, and is
becoming more speculative than Philosophy
(a fact which has been repeatedly noted in
the preceding exposition). The two are
really approaching each other, even through
mutual execration.

It would seem, then, that the time is march-
ing toward a new Aristotle who will again be
metaphysician and physicist in harmonious
proportion, who will reunite in himself the
two halves of the universe in a new symmet-
rical construction. It may well be questioned
if Philosophy, in its present form, can ac-
complish this great coming act of reconcili-
ation; apparently it has evolved to its limit,
and is impotent to proceed further with the
evolution of thought. A new discipline must

BEFORE DARWIN AND AFTER. ABS,

take its place, preserving all its treasures won,
which are many, including just this Aristotle.
But let it be also emphasized that Science is
not the new discipline, for Science too has
shown its limitation, and indeed is calling for
something more universal than itself. Sucha
dawning discipline of thought which can me-
diate the fierce dualism between Science and
Philosophy (and we may include Religion) is
the new Psychology.

It is evident, however, that Aristotle, who
is placed here at the beginning, may also be
regarded as a kind of ideal end toward which
both Science and Philosophy are striving.
Thus he is himself an illustration of his own
doctrine, that the end lies in the beginning, is
what essentially determines the same, espe-
cially in the sphere of Nature, and often re-
turns to the same, as may be noted in Gener-
ation.

The first fact regarding Aristotle in the
present connection is that he had already the
general conception of Evolution. Again and
again he speaks of the ascent of Nature
through various stages from lowest to high-
est. To be sure, this conception was not
wrought out by him to completion; it was a
germinal idea for whose realization thousands
of years were required. Still he gave utter-
ance to the idea.

456 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

His scientific activity embraced the whole
field of Biology, though his work on Plants
has been lost. A good deal of ‘his Zoology
survives, though in a fragmentary way. He
paid much attention to embryology which is
usually deemed a very modern science; day.
by day he observed the evolving chick in the
ken’s egg, and had his eye generally on the
development of animal-life. Thus he pre-
enacted an important phase of the modern
movement toward Evolution, for the embry-
ological researches of Von Baer (first part
published in 1828) are decidedly evolutionary
before Darwin. But Aristotle had already
opened the same field.

He also paid especial attention to the struc-
ture and functions of animals, and he sought
to classify them in larger and smaller divis-
ions according to their kinship. An extensive
and close observation of animals he shows,
and some of his statements of fact have been
verified quite recently by science. Thus on
many sides he radiates germinal thoughts
which require ages to unfold and ripen.

It is evident that he sees the pivotal fact
of organic Life to be Generation, a conception
which the botany and the zoology of today are
beginning to develop fully. Says he: ‘‘First
study the facts or appearances of animals;
then reach down to their causes; but finally

BEFORE DARWIN AND AFTER. A57

consider their Generation.’’ The last has in-
deed the stress; it treats of the organic indi-
vidual in its highest function, that of repro-
ducing its own separate individuation, and
thus of continuing itself beyond its own lim-
ited existence. This touches the doctrine of
germinal continuity upon which modern biol-
ogy is laboring with so much zeal and indus-
try. Aristotle glimpsed the deep significance
of the generative process of Life, and makes
upon it many subtle observations scattered
through his scattered treatises.

But we recur to the thought that Aristotle
was not confined to biology or to any single
department of Nature or of Mind. He was
not the modern specialist in one branch of
science; he knew all its branches, and would
not only co-ordinate them with one another
but also with the universe itself. From him
could spring the true university, based upon
an universal world-view which ordered all the
variety of special knowledge. His school con-
tinued his work for hundreds of years under
its so-called scholarchs. So with the coming
of the new Aristotle we may also think of the
coming of the new University which will be
truly universal and be organized and unified
by the science universal.

Another point in Aristotle’s conception of
Nature should not be omitted. In all organic

458 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL. .

Life, plant as well as animal, he sees the work-
ing of the Soul (Psyche). The psychical ele-
ment exists in conjunction with the physical.
The result is that he regards all Life, and in-
deed all Nature as having within it an End
to which it is moving, and which it seeks to
realize. Nature is, accordingly, teleological
in Aristotle, the realm of an inner propulsion
toward an end—it is not complete in itself,
but ultimately a part of a greater Whole.
Herein the universal thinker again appears
with his thought of the Universe, in which
Nature has its place and character.

II. From Aristorte To Darwin. We put
together in this caption the greatest ancient
and the greatest modern biologist for the pur-
pose of comparing and contrasting them. As
regards their individual lives, both show that
common psychical process which is manifested
in every complete career. Hach has his time
of Apprenticeship, of Elaboration of mater-
ials gained, and finally of Realization of his
idea, with its application to special domains
of knowledge. (For a brief account of Aris-
totle’s Life from this point of view, see our
Ancient European Philosophy, p. 348, ete..
For Darwin’s Life, see preceding section of
this book.)

The first fact here to be emphasized about
Aristotle is his encyclopedic faculty of acqui-

BEFORE DARWIN AND AFTER. 459

sition; every sort of knowledge he seems to
have appropriated with an equal relish; he
swallowed all creation in his mind, omnivor-
ous to know. On the other hand we have to
note how limited, how dainty was Darwin’s
appetite for intellectual acquisition; Classics,
Mathematics, Medicine, Theology, Art and
Poetry would not stay on his mental stomach.
Nature was his domain, yet only one nook of
it he passionately loved, the biological. The
Englishman was a specialist by birth, and
therein again belonged to his age, which is
so devoted to specialization. But the Greek
was all-embracing, all-ordering, all-knowing
in aspiration; he was born universal and an
universalizer. Individual he indeed was and
finite, yet he more than any other recorded
mortal bore this impress of the Universe it-
self in its highest process. The Pampsy-
chosis would seem to have stamped him with
its own image.

The result was that Darwin became an ag-
nostic in reference to all spheres of knowledge
lying outside of his relatively limited horizon.
Still he spoke the epoch-making word of Evo-
lution within his province, where it was picked
up by others and borne far and wide, and is
still in the process of dissemination. Nor
should we forget that Aristotle was a chief
factor for centuries in molding both the Euro-

460 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

pean and Oriental mind, and still today he is
potent in influence. The man of the present,
seeking universality as a counterpoise and
corrective of the desperate particularism of
the time, cannot do better than take some les-
sons from old Greek Aristotle, the first true
organizer of the thought of all things and of
the All itself.

In the long interval between Aristotle and
Darwin are many noteworthy biologists with
important contributions. <A history of them
shows a continuous undercurrent of evolution
toward Evolution as a formulated doctrine.
Perhaps the most important and typical of
the discoveries in the present field was the
circulation of the blood by Harvey. In the
sphere of Natural History the name of Linn-
eus stands first as the supreme orderer of
plants and animals. He is the author of the
so-called binomial nomenclature which gives
a name to every natural object in two words,
usually Latin, expressing the genus by a noun
and the species by an adjective term. For
instance, the common dog is called Canis fa-
miliaris, while the wolf, which is also a dog, is
called Canis lupus. Minerals were likewise
designated in this way as well as plants and
animals. Thus the vast diversity of Nature
gets labeled and classified. This must be
deemed a great act which endowed science

BEFORE DARWIN AND AFTER. 461

with a definite speech for the first time, where-
by scientists were enabled to talk to one an-
other intelligently through distance and dura-
tion. The result is that the whole scientific
world employs the binomial nomenclature for
inter-communication; one hears it in Japan
and in the Orient,—a sort of universal lan-
guage of science. A great trainer it is also for
organizing thought; it does not leave the indi-
vidual object isolated, but puts the same under
its species which again is subsumed under the
genus. The implication is that the process is
to continue till all Nature is ordered through
its various stages; indeed even Nature must
at last be subsumed under what is higher,
under the summum genus. So the binomial
nomenclature of the great Swedish botanist
we may well deem a genetic thought, which is
still productive in science.

The microscope is the source of the most
important discoveries in biological science.
There is a dispute about the time and the in-
ventor of this instrument. But the application
of it belongs to the seventeenth century al-
most cotemporaneously in England, Italy and
Holland. Perhaps of these early microscop-
ists the most credit is due to Leeuwenhoek,
who first observed the connection between the
veins and arteries in the capillaries, though
this had been conjectured before him by Har-

462 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

vey. But the triumph of the microscope came
two centuries later in the revelation of the
cell as the organic unit of Life. It is true that
the cell had been recognized, described and
even pictured by the observers of the seven-
teenth century. In fact the ancients had sup-
posed some such structural unit in both plants
and animals; the same statement had been re-
peatedly made as a conjecture. But the
ocular proof of the cell-theory as well as the
formulation of it are assigned to the year 1838
- in the work of two German co-laborers, Schlei-
den and Schwan, the one a botanist, the other
an anatomist. The latter declares that ‘‘there
exists one principle for the formation of or-
ganisms and that principle is the cell,’’ sup-
porting the proposition by direct observation.
Then came the discovery of protoplasm (by
Dujardin) as ihe common ultimate material’
in plants and animals. The leading statement
here is that of Schulze (1861) that a cell is a
globule of protoplasm surrounding a nucleus.
It should be noted that Darwin’s pivotal book,
Origin of the Species, had appeared two years
before, yet it hardly participates in this great
movement of microscopic biology.

But no sooner has the cell concentrated the
attention of biologists than the question opens
concerning its function, its physiological char-
acter. If it contains the unitary process of all

BEFORE DARWIN AND AFTER. 463

Life, vegetal and animal, it must be the seat
of health and disease. The Cellular Pathol-
ogy (1858) of Virchow was in this field epoch-
making. But when it began to be conceived
that hereditary qualities were transmitted
from generation to generation through the
cell, biology took a new turn, and entered upon
the investigations in which it is at present
chiefly engaged. The transmission of physi-
eal qualities from ancestors is the theme about
which our time is most anxious; the implica-
tion is that with physical are transmitted psy-
chical qualities. Evolution being granted, we
wish to catch it in the very act, to find its
secret process. This work has been going on
since the Darwinian deed, and it we must
sean briefly.

II. Arrer Darwin.—lIf we inspect the two
terms which compose the title to the Origin
of Species, we shall find that origin has a
deeper and stronger stress than species. Real-
ly Darwin’s book is a discussion of organic
generation, and turns upon the genesis of the
individual organism. This is what is brought
decidedly into the foreground in the trend
of biology after Darwin. What is the metiod
of the propagation of Life? Such a question
goes back in its farthest reach to the funda-
mental act of Nature, namely its individu-
ation. For Nature does its work through cre-

AG64 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

ating individuals, organically and inorgani-
cally; this must be deemed its primordial
trait. Darwin, of course, does not call up
such remote outlooks, he rather shuns them,
while Aristotle for instance, as philosopher,
seeks them as indicating Nature’s universal
relation, that is, its relation to the Universe.

The Darwinian round may be briefly con-
ceived as follows: (1) The given variation of
organisms; this on the whole is taken for
granted by Darwin as his starting point. To
be sure there is implied even here that such
variation takes place through birth; every
born individual is different from all others.
(2) The struggle for existence between these
varying individuals of the same species; the
fittest survive in the battle for food primarily.
(3) The propagation of the fittest organism
after getting rid of the unfit. But the progeny
of this fittest organism is again composed of
the fit and the unfit, and so the struggle be-
gins over again, or rather it never stops.
HKividently the generative act of the individual
which keeps reproducing variation with its
two main classes, the fit and the unfit, is the
pivotal act of the whole process, upon which
many problems turn. Can generation be so
controlled that it will lessen or eliminate the
unfit? In the lower organisms, the plant and
animal, this has long been done by the im-

BEFORE DARWIN AND AFTER. 465

provement of the breed, through a remorseless
weeding-out of the unfit. But when we rise
to man, the problem becomes complicated with
other considerings. Still the new science (u-
genics) is grappling bravely with the human
or social side of the question.

The scientist after Darwin who has most
directly pushed into the heart of the subject
is the German, Weismann. He illustrated and
enforced the distinction between the germ-cell
and the body-cell, the former is transmitted,
the latter is not. Accordingly all heredity
comes down through the germ-cell or germ-
plasma; necessarily this means that there has
been a continuous cellular stream through all
organic existence from the original fountain
of Life, which is tapped and flows forth into
these germ-cells, eternal, immortal, till the
Life of the planet ceases. On the other hand
the body-cells are purely individual, are not
inherited. As an inference from this proposi-
tion, Weismann declares that there is no in-
heritance of acquired characters. Against
him on this point rose a good deal of opposi-
tion headed by Herbert Spencer, who stoutly
maintained that traits won by the individual
for the first time have been often transmitted
to his posterity. The discussion revived the
_ work of the almost forgotten Lamarck who
had also propounded a theory of Evolution at

466 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

the beginning of the century, in which theory
the transmutation of the species was upheld.
He sought to account for variation by the use
and disuse of organs followed up by heredity
in the offspring. Thus Lamarck reached back
of Darwin in trying to account for variation,
which the latter assumed. Hence after Dar-
win arose the new school of biologists called
the neo-Lamarckian, which has representa-
tives in Europe and America.

Another significant addition to post-Dar-
winian Evolution is the doctrine of De Vries,
that new species often appear suddenly, and
not merely through ‘‘slight, successive, favor-
able variations,’’ as Darwin held. This doc-
trine showed by experiment that generation
of the individual can make a leap at once into
a new species, not merely repeating the parent
with a little difference. Thus the germ-cell
has in it untold possibilities, seemingly all
the past of the organic world from the begin-
ning; it embraces potentially the totality of
all Life, plant and animal. That primordial
germ-cell, issuing from the first living stuff
(Protobioticon) and individuating itself, per-
chance as the primal plant-animal (phyto-
zoon), contains implicitly all the organic
forms to be evolved in the ages to come, and
is still preserved and transmitted in the gen-
erative process of the organism, The chief in-

BEFORE DARWIN AND AFTER. AGT

terest of the doctrine of De Vries is that the
original germ-cell can break out of its fixed
mold transmitted from parent to child, and
become a member of a new order; it can de-
velop of a sudden the potentialities that have
been suppressed hitherto by the regular norm
of the organism for uncounted ages. De Vries
has shown that even the plant can turn revo-
lutionist and defy its traditional limits (see
»preceding p. 199), following some hereditary
instinct of vegetal freedom. The question
rises: Will man ever be able to reach and con-
trol this tendency to mutation or sudden trans-
formation which lurks in every organism,
seemingly in the very act of its generation?
This would indeed be the new metamorphosis
of living Nature, when we can tap the original
fountain of Life, and make it develop what
organic shapes we choose, instead of leaving
them to blind impulse.

The doctrine of germinal continuity set
forth by Weismann is a great and fruitful
thought at which biology is still working. To
it we would conjoin the doctrine of De Vries
which makes the germ-cell the arena of sudden
catastophic changes which appear to be the
bursting forth into reality of long-inherited
ancestral tendencies previously submerged.
Every plant and animal, yea every living
genetic cell contains the possibilities of the
total Biocosmos.

“468 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

The third considerable name in the post-
Darwinian evolution of Biology is that of
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), an Austrian monk
of Briinn. His chief experiment was to take
two pure breeds of peas, of different colors
and shapes and lengths, and by cross-fertili-
zation to produce a hybrid pea. Now this
hybrid would have the characteristic of one
parent present, while that of the other parent
was absent. Here Mendel had the insight to
give names to these two derived characteris-
tics, one of which he called dominant, the other
recessive. But what has become of that char-
acteristic which has disappeared? Is it de-
stroyed? Not by any means; to show this
fact was the next step in the experiment of
Mendel. He took the hybrid and raised from
it alone a new crop of peas, which was divided
between the two ancestors in a certain pro-
portion. Thus the suppressed (or recessive)
characteristics of the hybrid again appear in
its progeny, part of which follow one grand-
parent, part the other. That is, after the re-
cession of parental traits, there is the recur-
rence of them in the new generation, a return
and restoration to the original sources. This
stage we cannot find named specially by Men-
del, though fully described by him; we may
eall it the recurrent. Thus the hybrid repro-
duced itself doubly in its offspring, alternat-

BEFORE DARWIN AND AFTER. 469

ing between the two ancestors (the so-called
alternative inheritance) ; also there is the sep-
aration or disociation of characters in the
germ-cell, each of which can be transmitted
(sometimes named unit-characters). In this
case there is a new approach to that primal
act of Life, namely, living individuation; each
characteristic of the pea is individuated in the
genetic cell and asserts itself sooner or later.
What constitutes or causes these unit-charac-
ters is not known; some say they spring from
a chemical, others from a mechanical change
at the source. But what we are to grasp first is
the Mendelian round of heredity: dominance,
recession, recurrence. The last term involves
the persistence of the unit-character; though
it may be for a time only potential, it can be-
come real, doubtless suddenly so (as in the
examples of mutation given by De Vries).
Mendel continued his experimentation on
this double offspring of the hybrid; he found
that each side afterward bred its own kind,
yet with some exceptions. Moreover, not a
little depends on what characteristic is select-
ed for trial—color, shape, stalk, seed, etc. All
qualities are not always transmitted alike. It
is a significant fact that though Mendel’s re-
sults were first communicated to the Brinn
Academy of Science in 1865 and published the
following year, they were without the least

470 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

response from the scientific world, which was
then digesting Darwin’s book. Mendel, a con-
temporary of Darwin, enunciated a doctrine,
which was to find its place not only after Dar-
win, but after the two chief post-Darwinians,
Weismann and De Vries. It was mainly the
latter who about the year 1900 re-discovered
and resurrected Mendel’s work, which is in
general complementary to his own. At the
present time the Mendelian movement would
seem to be uppermost in biology, and has
called forth or at least confirmed a new de-
partment of it, or a new science perchance,
which now goes under the name of Genetics.
So it comes that an Austrian monk, a celibate,
has given to science the epoch-making idea
of generation, to which by his vow he might
be supposed to be unfriendly. Also he was
ahead of his time which had to evolve up to
him before he could be appreciated.
Accordingly in the succession after Darwin
we put together three leading names—Weis-
mann, De Vries, Mendel. They all contributed
to explain the genesis of the living individual.
Each of them in his own way dealt with that
persistent germ-cell which has the power of
continuing itself in a line of transitory indi-
vidual shapes through time. Thus in the or-
ganism there is suggested an immortal and a
mortal part. Germinal continuity, in its full

BEFORE DARWIN AND AFTER. 471

acceptation, is to be regarded as having the
duration of Earth-life, with which it begins
and ends. It is a kind of string on which has
been strung and will be strung all living forms
from the first terrestrial Life to the last.
Moreover, each individuated germ-cell is a
very complex thing, bearing in itself thou-
sands of transmitted characters, each of which
is declared to be a unit in itself and may rise
to the surface in heredity.

Using terms already employed (180) we
observe that the organism manifests all three
kinds of genesis, Homogenesis (like produces
like), Heterogenesis (like produces unlike—
De Vries); to these we may add the Darwin-
ian doctrine of Homoiogenesis (like produces
similar). These doctrines often held separ-
ately, are seen to be united in the Mendelian
experiments. That is, an organism may pro-
duce all three kinds—likes, unlikes, and simi-
lars. (See a very striking colored illustra-
tion of this fact in Prof. Bateson’s work on
Mendel’s Principles of Heredity, in the flower
Primula Sinensis, which by crossing is made
to show vividly the Mendelian process—domi-
nance, recession, and recurrence—and also in-
dicates by unique coloration of various
shades the three kinds of genesis—like, un-
like, and similar. (pp. 294-5.)

The chief interest here is to observe the

472 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

many possibilities lurking in the transmitted
germ-cell, which under right conditions spring
into reality. In Mendelism a submerged world
of inheritance is uncovered and made to ap-
pear. The individual is shown to have a
varied power of procreation transmitted from
the ancestors. Variation is not merely con-
tinuous, but discontinuous, to use a term of
the Mendelians. Doubtless every sexed indi-
vidual is a hybrid more or less composite and
is made up of inherited unit-characters thou-
sandfold, and so may beget individuals spe-
cifically different from itself. The more com-
plete and higher the evolution, the more com-
plex and diversified is the product; hence we
have to think that the most developed organ-
ism has in it the potentialities of the widest
variation. Man, even if he does not produce
the greatest diversity of shape and color, pro-
duces the greatest inner diversity of char-
acter in a single natural species. No telling
what may break up from that underworld of
generations. Still behind all this varied play
of individuals we have to keep asking whence
comes this power of individuation, and what
is its place in the All. Ultimately the germ-
cell, however small, is the potential universe
in its creative process.

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 473

III. RetrosPpEcT AND PROSPECT.

The attempt to see Nature in her totality
and to probe for her central principle, is an
old one; but such a search has fluctuated with
the ages. It may be said that Philosophy be-
gan with the Philosophy of Nature in the old
Greek philosophers (hence they were called
physiologoi). The genius of Darwin has been
designated as biocosmical, being confined to
the province of Life; Newton on the other
hand was cosmical in his greatest work. One
of the noteworthy modern attempts to present
Nature as a whole was that of Humboldt in
his so-called Cosmos. Hegel in his Philos-
ophy of Nature took a still bolder flight, seek-
ing to synthesize the natural and the spiritual
world, wherein he connects with ancient Aris-
totle. Hegel in spite of his heavy and often
forced formalism has many excellent thoughts
about Nature; his book has been lashed by
modern German scientists with bitter vituper-
ation, still we dare confess that we find in it
a deeper view of Nature than in Humboldt’s
work. Particularly the part on Organic Life,
though in many details it is far behind the
science of today, has in it thoughts and dis-
tinctions which are truly universal and hence
valid for all time. Still we shall agree that

AT4 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

the new. Aristotle is the great synthetic genius
who is wanted, who will unify the present
deeply specialized -and divided Natural
Science and then correlate it with the Uni-
verse of which Nature is but a stage or part.
Till such an universal organizer appears, we
shall have to swash about at random in the
ocean of particulars, with which the experi-
mental scientist is deluging us from every
direction.

We have now briefly set forth not only Evo-
lution but the evolver of Evolution, yea a line
of sueh evolvers, which line is itself an Evolu-
tion, or a history. That is, Evolution to be
true to its own principle, must also evolve:
Biology has to be studied, but with it the biol-
ogist biologizing. In him we behold the mind
evolving in itself and also as evolutionary in
doctrine. The reader is thus to appropriate
the Biocosmos as a whole, which embraces not
only the science of Life, but also the scientist,
who certainly ought not to be left out of his
own work. To be sure we here come upon
the Ego which itself has evolved up to the
point of turning back and grasping Evolution
which is really its own Evolution, whereof it
becomes conscious.

Mind, Consciousness, Ego—such is the new
world which has now come into view, and
which has been more or less implicit in the

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. AT5

living thing from the beginning. But when
it becomes fully explicit and works in its own
right, active in itself and self-creative, we
have not only transcended the Biocosmos, but
the entire realm of Nature. ‘The soul now
has its own body, not that of matter—nay, it
can in its way reproduce its own body, and
does so in every conscious act.

Still the chasm between Life and Conscious-
ness remains impassable by science; no micro-
scope can see and describe the conscious act,
which must see and describe itself. A self-
seeing microscope has not yet been invented;
in fact it is just that which invents micro-
scopes. In previous chapters we have often
“noted the gap between Unlife and Life, that
transition from the Inorganic to the Organic.
But having taken Life and observed its va-
rious evolutionary stages, we have reached
the second scientifically impassable limit,
which lies between vital and mental action.
The Biocosmos is, accordingly, bounded defi-
nitely at beginning and end by science-defying
barriers. As Chemism would not go over into
Life, so Life refuses to turn into Mind. Still,
if looking at the evolution of our planet, we
have to postulate the transition from Unlife
to Life, so likewise we have to postulate the
transition from Life to Consciousness. Where
and how man first broke through into his self-

476 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

knowing Self, is a matter of conjecture; but
we observe that every human infant has to
go through the same process. (See preced-
ing p. 47.)

If we consider more closely the foregoing
transition, we shall take Generation as the
highest process of Nature, and regard it in
its relation to Consciousness. The halfness
of the sexed individual rises to be the whole-
ness of the Ego; every human being is an
entire self within himself, we may say, an
image of the All-Self; but only a moiety he is
as male or female, both of which are Nature’s
sides of a higher totality in which both are to
participate together. Germinal continuity
of the race, which may be said to be the lead-
ing theme of present biology, is not through
one but through both; the dualism of Nature,
manifested at its highest point in the sexes,
must be overcome, even momentarily, that it
continue; the two sexed individuals are to
become one that they may persist as two
through generation. The dialectic of Nature
can be heard in the statement that sex must
transcend sex in order to exist as sex; or the
supreme dualism of Nature has to be unified
that it be dual. Now Consciousness has this
dualism, present also, but perpetually over-
coming and overcome; the two sides we desig-
nate with new names, subject and object,

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. ATT

which are always dualizing, yet also always
unifying in one process (the Psychosis). Thus
the individual as Ego is eternally self-propa-
gating, making and remaking himself in cease-
less process; this self-generation does not fall
outside of himself into another Ego, but is
within himself, is indeed his own self-creativ-
ity and source of all other creativity of the
self. Creation of the body and creation of the
mind have long been felt as intimately related;
in fact they bear the same name in human
speech. The genetic process of the Ego (as
we may call it in this connection) produces
the internal individual, while the genetic pro-
cess of the organism throws out the external
individual through indefinite repetition with-
out self-return—wherein is seen the outer in-
dividuation of Nature. Now this outer indi-
viduation of Nature is what will become in-
ternal in the Ego which is such self-division
within itself, and also the self-unification.
Looked at from this point of view, Conscious-
ness may be deemed the self-sexing of the in-
dividual and the overcoming of the same in
the one process; but such an individual is
no longer merely natural, but an Ego, which -
has the power of individuating itself eter-
nally, whose self-begetting is just its being.

On the other hand the Ego has risen to be
the very image and personation of the cre-

A478 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

¢

ative principle of the Universe which we have
often called the All-Ego. The individual now
re-enacts and indeed recreates the universal
Self; so far has that primal individuation of
Nature unfolded till this has individuated the
very All in its primordial process. That is,
the natural individual has evolved to the point
where it is the bearer of the Universal, or of
the essential movement of the Universe. To
use our technical terms, through the long tra-
vail of Nature the Psychosis has risen till it
has become the pure reflection of the self-
creative Pampsychosis as the supreme genetic
act of the All. Such is the high origin of Con-
sciousness on the one hand, and such is its low
origin on the other. Consciousness results
from and in fact embraces the vast experience
of Evolution from the beginning of Nature,
till it can evolve Evolution out of itself. Con-
sciousness is given from above, yet it has had
to win this gift of itself by the toil of zons.
So it is its own, yet also the Universe’s; on
one side it is the created, but it must forever
recreate its creation; if it be truly God-made,
it must itself make God, or rather re-make
Him; else He could not have being for it.
The Ego has gained its autonomy through a
long service to Nature, yet it had to be en-
dowed with this capacity to serve for its au-
tonomy, which service has been just its disci-

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. AT9

pline unto perfection. To be a self-conscious
being is, therefore, a very high attainment, the
steps toward which we can see all the way
down the ladder of Nature from the start. The
ligo is created by the Creator to create itself,
and so it is like to the Creator. It passes
through the stages of determined existence in
order to reach the self-determined. Its God-
given gift of freedom it must earn through a
long training of unfreedom in order to possess
such a gift. That training we may follow
through all the steps of Evolution. The ex-
perience of all Nature’s unfreedom the Ego
must get in order to surmount the same and
to attain its freedom, or its own inner self-
active consciousness.

Using another set of terms, we may recur to
the conception of Physis and Psyche, as ex-
pressing the pervasive dualism of Nature. But
when Psyche becomes self-dividing and self-
returning in one, or self-individuating within
itself, it declares its independence of Physis,
_ even if it recognizes its former dependence,

and finally accepts and even formulates its
previous evolution in, with, and out of Physis.
In its new freedom Psyche can return not only
upon its free self, but also upon its unfree self
and observe its process toward its (psychic)
freedom. Thus it becomes a perpetual self-
reproduction as the essence of its own self-

480 THE BIOCOSMOS—HISTORICAL.

hood; it is indeed self-generative, still not as
particular like Nature, but as universal; it
must create itself universally along with every
special activity, and so be Consciousness.

With this evolution of Consciousness we
have moved out of Nature into a new world
having a new order. Therewith we have also
moved into a new science, that of the Ego, or
of Psychology proper. The Ego as conscious
has the ever-present process of the Universe
in each of its special activities; surely its deep-
est character is to universalize what it par-
ticularizes, or to hold in one supreme unity
that which it grasps separately. Thus we may
see that the true science of Psychology is the
universal science, being the science which or-
ganizes itself and all other knowledge—self-
ordering and all-ordering in one. (For an ac-
count of Consciousness see our work on Feel-
mg, pp. CV-CX, of the Prolegomena; also in
the body of the work, p. 182, etc.)

We have now completed this survey of Na-
ture and its science. Its three leading stages
or divisions of which we took a brief forecast
at the start have been unfolded under the des-
ignations of Cosmos, Diacosmos, and Biocos-
mos. And Nature also has been treated as a
stage in the process of the Universe, reaching
its culmination and conclusion in Generation,
from which we have to make in thought the

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 481

leap, non-scientific as yet, to the conscious
Ego, which not only knows itself, but has
come to know itself as evolutionary. This
impress is what it stamps at present upon all
knowledge, making science along with itself
evolutionary. Such is not only the individual
consciousness of today but also the associated
or public consciousness.

So we are to make, in our thinking at least,
the transition from Nature’s Evolution to the
Ego’s Evolution—from an outer physical to
an inner conscious Evolution. And we may
add that each Ego, as a self-evolving individ-
ual within himself, is to associate with other
Egos, in that new kind of body, called the In-
stitution, which may at last include total hu-
manity. For the outlook now is that the race
must be institutionalized to secure the ulti-
mate freedom of the individual. To be sure,
the universal Institution of Man, be it politi-
eal, religious, social, or all combined or some-
thing else, is at present a dream; still the per-
sistent Evolution of human association into
ever-enlarging forms would seem to have some
such outlook (see preceding pp. 50-53).

153372

Snider, Denton..JACQUEB. mmr

Author

University of Toronto |

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