EARTH-LIFE IN GENERAL. 359 



Earth has been individualized and likewise 

 vitalized, and we have to think it as impart- 

 ing these traits to its progeny, plant and ani- 

 mal. Earth-life is then the creative source 

 and prototype of all living individuals. 



Every plant and every animal have in 

 themselves a vital and a non- vital element; 

 when burnt, for instance, they show the in- 

 organic earth which is in their constitution. 

 Thus each living individual is a reproduc- 

 tion of Earth-life; it recapitulates in small 

 its primordial big parent. And its vital pro- 

 cess .is the continual reduction of the Inor- 

 ganic (air, water, soil, etc.) to the Organic, 

 that is, to its own living individuality. Then 

 after a cycle of time it restores these inor- 

 ganic materials to its source, of which they 

 form a part. Such is the round of individual 

 life with its birth, maturity, decline, cessa- 

 tion, a copy of the Earth-life, from which it 

 as vital sprang. 



The Earth with its Life, therefore, we have 

 to grasp as an individual; it, too, has been 

 individuated, like the Plant and the Animal. 

 Science now very generally holds that it sep- 

 arated originally from the Heliosphere, at a 

 certain stage in the evolution of the Sun (see 

 Oosmos and Diacosmos, pp. 259-265). The 

 Earth was, accordingly, born an individual, 

 whose father, or we may say, grandfather, 



