THK TKIUMPH OF LIFE 



present we have come to know four thousand? 

 different art forais, of which the deep sea ooze 

 like a true museum has preserved innumerable 

 individual specimens. Doubtless there are 

 thousands more. 



Now then: each of these radiolaria consists 

 of only a single cell. They belong to the sim- 

 ple original primordial animals. Yet in their 

 case the single cell was set the problem of build- 

 ing a little silicious float in at least four thou- 

 sand different styles of architecture. It has 

 found four thousand different answers. With 

 playful fancy there have been introduced into 

 these answers four thousand different forms of 

 art, rhymically pure, so to speak, melodious so- 

 lutions. Here is an abundance of ornamenta- 

 tion. Man has obtained such results only 

 through great efforts. Art in its human 

 history appears at first as a crude attempt, then 

 develops into finer and more perfect forms so 

 that we measure the stages of society by their 

 aesthetic attainments. But here in this first life, 

 in the simple cell art appears ornamentally ex- 

 pressed. 



Like a flash this disclosure of the slime in th^j 

 black deep sea night elucidates our question for; 

 us. Life which carries within itself the limit- 

 less abundance of power of answering so simple] 

 a question of utility with four thousand inner 

 possibilities and these clearly possibilities that 



