36 Summary 



ganisms; it was of incalculable importance in the 

 persistent circulation of matter and in the establish- 

 ment of the regulative meteorological cycle. The con- 

 stitution of the inanimate or inorganic world has been 

 and is in many ways uniquely favorable to the inter- 

 ests of living creatures. 



13. The arrangements that came about were no 

 doubt necessitated by the nature of the materials, 

 and the term "preparations for life" is going a little 

 beyond science. Yet the word may stand for a quite 

 legitimate philosophical or religious interpretation; 

 it means seeing the pre-conditions in the light of the 

 outcome. One must not make the mistake of discern- 

 ing providential arrangement in the way fine rivers 

 flow through large towns, but it looks as if Nature 

 were Nature for a purpose. 



14. The first picture is of a nebula and the elusive 

 spirit thereof. The irreducibles are electrons and 

 protons with electro-magnetic and other waves 

 spreading through space, perhaps through the con- 

 tinuous medium of the ether. Behind the kinetic, 

 however, was the primordial metakinetic, behind the 

 physical the psychical. The irreducibles were such 

 that a more differentiated cosmos arose. The Order 

 of Nature was such that out of a few threads a won- 

 derful fabric was woven. There seems to have been 

 an integrative urge in things which led to the fash- 

 ioning of an earth suitable to become a cradle and 

 home of life. What science gives us is a descriptive 

 cosmography, which seems to be congruent with a 

 philosophical or religious cosmology. There is 



