Rejuvenescence appears, in the first place, as a return to an ear- 

 lier condition of life, whereby is obtained a point of departure for 

 renewed progress ; or, in the extreme case, as a retrogression to the 

 commencement of the entire course of development, to attain the aim 

 in a repetition of the development. 



Inquiring into the causes of the phenomena of Rejuvenescence, we 

 recognize that external Nature, amid which special life displays itself, 

 acts in calling and awakening through the influences which the sea- 

 sons of the year, nay, even the hours of the day, bring forth; but 

 the proper internal cause can only be found in the tendency toward 

 completion, which is present in every existence according to its kind, 

 and drives it to subordinate to itself ever more completely the foreign 

 and external world, to shape itself within it as independently as the 

 specific Nature allows. 



The mind which becomes developed in Man is not fitted together, 

 with the physical organism, from without, for we behold its evolution 

 indicated in the lower stages of natural life, especially in the animal 

 kingdom; the spiritual life is rather the purest and most refined re- 

 presentative of the fundamental life, which we meet as natural life in 

 the preceding stages. We may say of Mind, that it is the youngest; 

 and yet the oldest, existence in nature, destined to attain, in its last 

 age, its eternal youth, the freedom fittest to its essential nature. Rising 

 from the groundwork of Nature bearing and supporting them, the 

 spiritual Rejuvenescences in the history of Man strive toward this 

 aim of internal vital emancipation, driving the mind out of every 

 senility, every fetter of time, to soar upward in a new flight of life. 



Nature points to Man from step to step, ever more distinctly 

 throughout her entire series; and Man again cannot be considered 

 without that which itself constitutes his humanity, the development 

 of Mind.- The development of Mind cannot be separated from its 

 substratum, Nature, since although Mind itself is destined to rise 

 victorious over all the obstructions of physical life, it must also pene- 

 trate backward through all the stages of that life, and give them a 

 spiritual signification. Only by starting from this standing-point, 

 fixing the aim of the entire development in Nature, can we find the 

 true internal connection of all the gradations of natural life; and by 

 the very conjunction with the course of development of Man, Natural 

 History acquires its highest import. Nature, without man, presents 

 externally the image of a labyrinth without a clue. The aim to 

 which the infinite Rejuvenescences throughout all Nature strive, is 

 the progressive development of the Human Race. 



DR. ALEXANDER BRAUN. 

 52 613 



