THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



to the earth bound glance to reach upward to 

 the milky way of suns in the sky. Man who 

 guides this ship through the solitary ocean 

 where only the animals and the stars shine, is 

 himself the representative of the highest animal 

 order, the vertebrates. Every white glowing 

 colony of social tunicates shows a close lineal, 

 relationship to the vertebrates. Itself in every 

 thing else very close to the worm it shows in 

 the life of the larva a fine cartilagenous rod. On 

 this weak rod, life, upward struggling life, has 

 played the most excellent melody on earth. A 

 hard vertebral column throughout the length of 

 the vertebrates has been created from this rod. 

 In the shelter of this column the highest nerve 

 center of the whole animal kingdom was enclosed 

 like a most costly and sacred thing in its taber- 

 nacle, until through the work of millions of 

 years it had grown to man's brain. Finally this 

 brain broke over the ban of the old organic 

 structure. Itself like the remainder of the 

 human body built up of myriads of tiny indi- 

 vidual cells, a wonderful illustration of the con- 

 centration of primitive life, in the light of 

 knowledge it bursts from the bounds of its own 

 body through the discovery of tools. From wood 

 and iron it constructed ships to travel over the 

 watery wastes of the planet into which its lower 

 vertebrate ancestors were once driven from the 

 land. From new combinations of old elements 

 SO 



