THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



this mountain, the top of which has never 

 been visited by man were sunk here the ship's 

 keel would not touch it. 



It is mind that descends invisibly on this four- 

 mile-long feeler. But where the mind wanders, 

 there we may go too on the wings of thought. 

 Let us descend with it into ihe depths. Scarce- 

 ly have we passed through the layer of shining 

 animals before absolute night surrounds us. It 

 is not the night of the sun deserted side of the 

 earth which meets us here. If when we have gone 

 the first three thousand of the twenty-seven 

 thousand feet, we make a halt and wait until 

 the stars have paled and the sun rises over the 

 ocean nothing will change. No sun rises 

 here. The astronomers tell us of the terrible 

 white mist envelope that surrounds the planet 

 Jupiter, that we have probably never seen the 

 actual surface of the planet and that an inhab- 

 itant of Jupiter would never have seen the sun. 

 We have touched a region of our planet where 

 such a layer cuts off all astronomical events. The 

 three thousand feet of water above us swallow 

 up every particle of the sun light, and since the 

 earth does not shine of itself, complete night 

 reigns in these sea depths, the night of a dark 

 star whose sun is extinguished. 



Tough, immeasurably tougher than the at- 

 mospheric envelope, through which we first came 

 to the earth, this chemical combinaticm Abater 

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