38 THE BIOCOSMOS PRELIMINARY. 



in order to produce its vital round: it indi- 

 viduates a primal life-stuff (often called pro- 

 toplasm) into innumerable plants and ani- 

 mals which still further develop into species, 

 families, orders, etc. The living individual, 

 to which, as microscopic cell or as large or- 

 ganism, Biology has quite confined itself hith- 

 erto, must be grasped ultimately as but one 

 stage of the total terrestrial process of Life. 

 The vast reservoir of vital energy out of 

 which the living individual of every sort is 

 born and to which it returns through death, 

 belongs to Earth-life, whose chief struggle is 

 to transform the overwhelming non-vital 

 mass of our globe into the vital, which, how- 

 ever, never gets beyond one part in ten mil- 

 lion, according to an estimate already cited. 

 So this fixed quantity of Life-stuff (if it be 

 fixed), seems always to be fighting for itself, 

 namely, for Life against Unlife. An eminent 

 authority in geology has stated that the sum 

 total of Life in the past geologic ages appears 

 to be about the same as it is at present, though 

 its differentiation into plants and animals has 

 been very different in different periods. If 

 that be so, it would seem that the Organic 

 is not gaining on the Inorganic, but barely 

 holding its own in the battle with the non- 

 vital world environing it on every side to in- 

 finity which drawn battle has been going on 



