12 A WONDERER UNDER SEA 



myriad of petty, human affairs, but in spite of our ego- 

 tism, our self-sufficiency, there, a httle ways underground, 

 is the slowly cooling heat of the Earth's youth, and, like 

 the monk's coffin in his cell, the ghastly cold of the poles 

 foreshadows an ultimate doom. Even today, at the surface, 

 in the heyday of our human existence, the headlines in 

 our newspapers alternate with "Sudden heat wave takes 

 toll of many lives" and "Scores of men and women suc- 

 cumb to the bitter cold of the blizzard." Our bodies must 

 keep fit to avoid the ever-clutching fingers of the alpha 

 and omega of planetary existence, even now reaching out 

 to seize us. 



Before we take up the main thesis of this volume we 

 should realize the amazing similarity to a living organism 

 which water makes of this earth of ours. We know how 

 the blood courses through our veins and arteries carrying 

 off the waste matter and bringing oxygen and renewed 

 life to all our tissues. When we turn on the water faucet 

 in our homes, the simile to a blood stream seems rather 

 far fetched, but let us carry out the idea. Fogs swirl across 

 the land and leave every tree and rock dripping with 

 dew, snow falls and soon changes to water, and rain 

 hurtles down and forms rills and brooks and streams, and 

 rivers which flow quietly into the sea. Wind and sun work 

 together and draw up vast amounts of invisible moisture 

 which change into sponge-like clouds, and the circle be- 

 gins again — the most astonishing circulation which cleanses 



