.THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



the hottest portions of the earth. Thej hav6 

 always been the deadly enemies of life. So 

 long as life has sought to transform this earth 

 into a beautiful kingdom of Paradise, from the 

 Alpine meadow to the coral abyss, so long have 

 these deserts stood behind it as a warning of 

 death and horror and of the eternal end. The 

 desert where the last drop of water dries up. 

 The waterless planet. Wherever this appears 

 life has always lost the game and this long be- 

 fore the ice came. Sand and naked pieces of 

 rock upon which the sun beats down mercilessly. 

 In the mid-day glow the heat rises on the naked 

 rock to 122° Fahrenheit. No tree, no bushes 

 are able to exist. It is as if the planet had sud- 

 denly drawn nearer to the sun, and that blessed 

 star for whose return we hoped, that it might 

 conquer the ice age now gives rise to the ty- 

 phoon, to the god of death that burns out life. 

 In a monstrous fire the red ball of the sun rises 

 up here. Is it also a part of the cosmic relation 

 that the sun which at the ice age perhaps drew 

 away from us should now return again.'' The 

 globe has hardened from a glowing mass.* 

 Shall it return once more to the glowing condi- 

 tion.'* Shall life that discovered its own hearth 

 flame in the ice go out in the fire.'' 



*The position taken by the author that the earth was once 

 a glowing ball is now contradicted by good authority. The 

 planetismal theory of the origin of the earth seems to b^ dis- 

 placing the nebular hypothesis.--— Trans, 



153 



