THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



meeting the demands of a new period. Three 

 million years at least separate us from their 

 kingdom. Today not a single one lives. Only 

 their bones lie deep in the stone, indestructible as 

 the ancient pyramids on the border of the desert, 

 along side of which a whole civilization has long 

 since sunk into the sand. A tragic melody 

 sounds softly through the rock. It is not alone 

 in the skull heap of myriad individuals that life 

 has planted its conquering banners. Whole 

 races, species, orders of creatures, peoples and 

 kingdoms of the animal and plant world it has 

 devoured within itself. It has built up colossal 

 structures only to relentlessly dissolve them 

 again, because they have contained defects, and 

 it has, with the pitiless courage of the experi- 

 menter, permitted a pigmy race to triumph over 

 the great because in it this defect was avoided. 

 The bones lie in the depths of the earth and 

 the old ocean slime is hard rock. Like an army 

 of eternally active moles the tiny drops of water 

 penetrate into the spaces of these rocks and hol- 

 low out wide grottoes. On the arches above, how- 

 ever, there rages a never-ending struggle be- 

 tween the beings for space. The same power 

 that has driven the population of the fishes and 

 crabs into the blackness of the deep sea and 

 the mole into the soft earth loam makes a wel- 

 come asylum of the yawning space within this 

 dark horrible cave on the border of the upper 

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