92 THE BIOCOSMOS PRELIMINARY. 



Eartli-life, has not yet gone through its one 

 cycle. A tick on the clock of the universe is 

 an easy million of years ; the period of Earth- 

 life, we are told, must be many myriads of 

 millenniums. And still the end must come in 

 Time. 



If this Earth-life, like one of its minutest 

 microbes, goes through the process of birth 

 and cessation, is it not itself but one evanes- 

 cent individual of the All-Life (Pambiosis) ? 

 Some such conception rises and has been held, 

 but it lies beyond all proof and stretches the 

 most elastic limits of thinking. It is conceiv- 

 able that many millions of planets like ours 

 are dead and buried throughout the dark 

 graveyard of space; indeed, whole suns and 

 their systems are extinct, having lived their 

 day, and are awaiting resurrection into light 

 and life. So some astronomers have reported 

 to us, fortifying hope. Still we have at last 

 to take the Earth-life as individual in the to- 

 tal universe, a drop, as it were, in the vast 

 reservoir; but that there is another drop of 

 life anywhere in the cosmical spaces we do 

 not know. It is natural to suppose that ours 

 is not the sole vital appearance in all cre- 

 ation, or that our conditions of life are not 

 the only ones possible. For instance, a wholly 

 different heat-scale from our hundred de- 

 grees is conceivable; indeed, every hundred 



