THE TRIUMPPI OF LIFE 



self formed an illuminated living point in the 

 world ocean up to this first glance of the desert 

 folk turning human eyes toward the star ocean ! 

 In this moment the dark wall between Hfe and 

 cosmos really fell — ^the globe itself recognized 

 its neighbors as once the first loving male animal 

 recognized its wife. 



This man who had learned to kill the mam- 

 moth and to count his ten fingers began to look 

 upon the quiet changes of the stars and under- 

 stand them. It was in the desert that astronomy 

 was born. From the stars the glance went on 

 higher and farther out. The cave man had 

 questioned: what am I in the presence of sum- 

 mer and winter, of birth and death ? Out of the 

 desert has come the first great reHgious philoso- 

 phy. It was amid nomadic living desert peoples 

 that our great philosophical ideas first arose in 

 the sacred stUlness beneath the shining starry 

 heavens — the ideas with which man in the high- 

 est sense has now conquered heaven and earth. 

 Cosmical views (weltanshaung) ! Do you under- 

 stand what this signifies in the triumph of life, 

 to which the earth has become too narrow, so 

 that it has stormed the cosmic power of which it 

 has become conscious and has learned to formu- 

 late direct purposes and begun to master nature 

 by means of natural forces. This new spirit 

 of life already looks out over the world and this 



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