58 THE BIOCOSM08 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 cosmical 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 

 cannot 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, 



