408 THE BIOCOSM08 HISTORICAL. 



the endeavor to express a new and more in- 

 ternal unity of Nature. In a sense we can say 

 that Darwin goes back to Newton, takes up the 

 latter 's far-reaching thought and applies it 

 to a fresh domain of the physical world. Evo- 

 lution, the pivotal category of the Biocosmos, 

 reaches back to Gravitation, the pivotal cate- 

 gory of the Cosmos, and connects with it in 

 the one great process of total Nature. Cos- 

 mically the individual body has its center out- 

 side itself, to which it strives perpetually to 

 be restored; biocosmically the individual body 

 has its center inside itself, out of which it un- 

 folds into its genetic act, whereby it repro- 

 duces itself and thus returns to its starting- 

 point. Such is the simple round of Life, which, 

 however, is but a stage of the larger round of 

 Nature as a whole, as already often stated. 

 The interest here is to see the stages of this 

 process taking place in stretches of time, in 

 centuries, generally speaking; also it concen- 

 trates itself in the mind and character of great 

 scientists, who thus become the stages of Na- 

 ture embodied, or rather personalized. So we 

 conceive Newton and Darwin, whose lives are 

 a manifestation of Natural Science, and thus 

 must be integrated with it. 



At this point it may be noted that Biogra- 

 phy as such has never been ordered through 

 any universal principle. The career of the 



