THE COSlMIC adaptation OF THE SEED 455 



the standpoint of cosmic adaptation. If the supposition that 

 the primal cleavage between plants and animals may be cosmic 

 and not terrestrial goes to account for its inexplicability to us, 

 may we not imagine that similar difficulties may find their 

 solution in a like manner ? Even the flowering and seeding 

 of plants, as before suggested, may be an assertion of the 

 tendency to resume the cosmic habit. Then, again, man's 

 endeavours to throw off^ the chains of adaptation that bind 

 him to the earth or to rise above his conditions may be virtually 

 the assertion of the cosmic side of his nature. Terrestrially 

 he may be man, but cosmically he may be of such stuff as 

 dreams are made of. It is only on the cosmic side that man 

 could be immortal. In such cases it is likely enough that 

 our ideas of them are warped and narrowed through regard- 

 ing them solely from the contracted standpoint of our planet, 

 and that we have often failed to grasp the true significance of 

 the problem before us. 



Or we may put it in another way. Our senses enable us The cosmic 

 to follow the later part of the process, which is purely terres- restria^'sides 

 trial, namely, the differentiation and adaptation of types ; but 9^^^l. 

 the earlier portion connected with their origin comes abruptly 

 into our experience as a completed result affording us no clue 

 as to the beginning. Stated in a more reverent fashion, the 

 Creator has permitted us to see the differentiation of a type, 

 but He has hidden its origin from our view. Of the working 

 of the larger plan that links the life of this planet to that of 

 the cosmos we can, as terrestrial beings, have no direct cognis- 

 ance. Only the operations of its adaptation to life on the 

 earth are evident to our senses. Viewing our planet as 

 incomplete in itself, since it is but a fragment of the cosmos, 

 it follows that in no event can our investigations be ever 

 complete. There will always be the unfinished border, the The un- 

 side that fits with nothing in our experience or system. There border of all 

 will belong to all inquiries a cosmic side and a terrestrial ^j|^ttons 

 side, the one incomplete and indicative of a barrier that 

 sooner or later brings all investigations to a halt, the other 



