382 THE BIOCOSMOS PARTICULARIZED. 



distinctly formed. The cell is built into a 

 life, from something not alive; what does it? 

 Here lies that act of living individuation 

 which is the primordial fact of the Biocosmos, 

 in which Psyche begins to get inside the small- 

 est division of Nature, the atom or perchance 

 the etherion. In general it is Earth-life which 

 has to assimilate Unlife to Life, and start the 

 living individual, imparting to the latter the 

 same power. But on the other hand Life indi- 

 vidual returns to Unlife in the same process 

 of Earth-life, which controls all its children in 

 their total round of existence. 



1. Unlife to Life. Here meets us again 

 that oft-mentioned transition from the Inor- 

 ganic to the Organic, which dominates all Bi- 

 ology, being ever-present and hanging over 

 it like a cloud which the scientist has been 

 totally unable as yet to disperse. To make 

 the passage across the grand chasm between 

 Unlife and Life is the supreme, object and 

 pursuit of biological science; meantime it 

 brings up to the surface in this desperate 

 burrowing an enormous amount of valuable 

 facts, experiments and observations, which 

 constitute its present content. Thus it has its 

 end as yet ideal which many say is unattain- 

 able ; still the search is not lessened but rather 

 intensified. Some form of the much-defamed 

 spontaneous generation lies always in the 



