EARTH-LIFE ASSIMILATION. 



mal, though these in Earth-life are thrown off 

 as wholes. Death of the living individual is 

 thus a stage of the process of Earth-life, a 

 restoration of the borrowed elements air, 

 water, earth a return of the Biocosmos to 

 the Cosmos, which, however, may be again 

 transformed into Life. 



The end and aim of living Nature is to 

 undo itself as Life. On the other hand the 

 struggle of the living individual is to preserve 

 its Life as its special boon. Earth-life lives 

 through the death of individual Life, which 

 forms a part of its process. That is, the total 

 Life of the Earth is always moving from the 

 Organic to the Inorganic. Thus it comes that 

 every living thing is in conflict with external 

 Nature, which it has to subsume in order to 

 live, but which subsumes it in the end. We 

 may conceive two quantities of Life, one vast 

 and one little, or rather one all and one small, 

 in a struggle which winds up in the cessation 

 of the individual who is the small one. This 

 is, indeed, the primordial struggle of the liv- 

 ing individual for existence the struggle not 

 with other individuals but with Earth-life 

 itself. 



Such is the seal of fate set upon all indi- 

 viduality that lives. The very fact of indi- 

 viduation marks the limit, and stamps death 

 upon the living object. To be sure such indi- 



