THE PRIMAL MIND 



whole, clothed with new powers and purposes, plaj^s 

 the drama of organic nature? Who can say that it 

 even seems designed for this purpose? On the con- 

 trary, from our human point of view, how casual 

 and uncertain the drama appears! Inside of this 

 stupendous carnival of the physicochemical forces 

 — at far removed points, and doubtless at vast 

 intervals of time, flickering here and there in the 

 cosmic darkness like a dim taper — appears this 

 mysterious change, this light which we call life and 

 mind, appears and disappears, like the lamps of the 

 fireflies of a summer night, confined to a very narrow 

 range of thermal and physical conditions, and, in its 

 higher manifestations on our planet, at least, limited 

 to a very narrow period of time. 



In our solar family of nine planets (considering 

 the asteroids as fragments of an exploded body be- 

 tween Mars and Jupiter) only one is unmistakably 

 the abode of life, with a strong probability in favor 

 of Mars. Our earth is the seventh child of the Sun 

 in point of time, and on it life is clearly as yet in the 

 heyday of youth. But what an enormous prepon- 

 derance of lifeless matter the other planets present ! 

 Though the superior planets are aons older and 

 thousands of times larger, it is evident that they 

 have never been the abode of life, and doubtful if 

 they ever can be. As the planets are all made of one 

 stuff, and the same physical and chemical laws are 

 operative in all, it is evident that the conditions of 



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