THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



Through all the years that this earth had 

 known life, that life had been building in dim 

 anticipation for this being, its earthly master- 

 piece. It had experimented and experimented 

 through an endless chain of animal forms fur- 

 ther and further toward it. Piece after piece like 

 a costly jewel arises, ring after ring it has put 

 his body together. Then just as the forerunners 

 of the change of climate came and just as an ap- 

 proaching cosmical struggle appeared on the 

 distant horizon it succeeded at last in its final 

 cast. And now when the glaciers swept down 

 like fearful talons and when all the long ago 

 created saurians had gone — then arose this be- 

 ing, this man, with his first fire test. He pushed 

 out to the very foot of the glacier, struck the 

 red flames from the flint and did not sink down 

 in spore or marmot sleep. He watched by the 

 side of this flame, he reckoned, he painted, he 

 thought. When the glacier crept back it had 

 hardened him into the first race. A new day of 

 life had opened. This new champion, who 

 triumphed over the ice age because he had won 

 the warming flame like a domestic animal, was 

 the new twig planted at the right hour in which 

 life once more blossomed forth in boundless ca- 

 pacity, compared with which all the past was 

 but the idyll of a cocoa palm on a tiny coral is- 

 land. 



My mind returns to this natural cave sought 



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