THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



The ideal organ, the ideal of a creative organ 

 conquering all great distances, is the eye. There- 

 fore it belongs to the animal, to the freely mov- 

 ing half of the life creations. When man made 

 tools after the model of his organs he made 

 them first of all to obtain actual movements, 

 real bridges to the things that his eye had long 

 seen. He actually climbed with great labor 

 over the mountain which his glance had clamber- 

 ed up in a single second, he sailed over the 

 stream whose further shore he saw. Then came 

 the second and the higher stage: he improved 

 with mechanical technique the light trap itself, 

 placed new artificial lens in front of the natural 

 one of the eye — ^he invented the microscope, and 

 the telescope. Now he could see the cells whose 

 many millions built up himself as well as the 

 whole solar system and the far reaching dis- 

 tances of the heavens to far away Sirius.* With- 

 in these spaces again his cosmical pictures grew 

 and with them his inner philosophy, his ethical 

 conquest of things. So upon this little par- 

 ticle of retina behind the light trap there is 

 cooking the highest material of our world just 

 as the plant within its clean chlorophyl kettle 

 has cooked the lower, — ^here in the latter the 

 bodily nourishment, there the intellectual. 



The cave cleft has closed again. We are 



*The 80-calkd dog-star. — Trans. 



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