THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



brance, a feeling of contrast and that power of 

 ordering, and knowing itself to be the inner 

 master of a portion of the world in which it can 

 contemplate the past and future, and that it 

 comprehends the motive power of this portion 

 as a conscious end and a definite goal * * * 



Suddenly the being awoke from his trance. A 

 dull roar sounded from afar through the cave 

 wall. It was the thunder of a colossal avalanche 

 outside. But when the ice fell, spring was com- 

 ing. And that being crept through the long, 

 long cave entrance until at last on the rough 

 outer wall whose perpendicular precipice would 

 retain no snow he saw a small shaft-like open- 

 ing. 



It was a moonlight night. Dim green light 

 shone over all. Mysteriously in this light and 

 stretching out far and wide even to the horizon 

 were the endless glacier fields of the ice age. 



Like a green fog ocean at midnight seen from 

 a high mountain top it lay there. But to look 

 upon it one must ascend above the clouds, for 

 high mountains then lay so deeply buried that 

 only a dark shady tip raised itself into the 

 moonlit plains. There were indeed single glac- 

 iers which reached out icy claws thousands of 

 feet thick from Scandinavia down into the Alps 

 covering over the North and Baltic seas and in 

 the western hemisphere three-fourths of North 

 America were covered. In its frightful precipi- 



