**> 93 .^ 



ral law. In the life of the animal and vegetable kingdoms 

 we must trace the extinction of weaker organisms not to 

 the fact that these where necessary tor the support of 

 stronger organisms, hut because the productive forces of 

 the latter lor the support of cosmic functions were fare 

 more efficient and in some cases the changed conditions 

 of nature herself excluded the possible continuance of 

 these perishing species. We shall have to consider this 

 more fully when we come to consider the life of our 

 earth as that of an animal organism. 



And thank God that this struggle for existence is not 

 a universal law of life, for otherwise we should be com- 

 pelled to suppose that not good but evil rules the uni- 

 verse, and that not God but the Devil created its infi- 

 nity. Such a conclusion would make of life itself a cala- 

 mity. Life is a heavenly gift, a thing of joy our poets 

 say; but if we could believe in this all prevailing struggle 

 we should have to exalt the dark and bitter accidents of 

 life into its essence. And inasmuch as mankind is always. 

 striving to attain felicity as his ideal, we should be for- 

 ced to suppose that man's life is led against the laws 

 of nature, or that these laws are formed in malice 

 against man. 



The error of this Darwinian theory is owing to the 

 fact that the great naturalist and savant, allured and fas- 

 cinated by his own experiments, looked at cosmic exis- 

 tence from below instead of irom above. He derived 

 the cosmic laws from particular instances of death and 

 adapted them to his own particular conclusions, instead 

 of regarding these instances of death as the extreme 

 cases demanded for the perfection of surrounding life. 

 In the best constituted governments on earth we meet 

 with draconic laws against offenders, but we must not 

 assume from that, that in these governments there are 

 found no gentler forms of rule. 



The fundamental principle of cosmogany is self per- 

 fection the attainment of the celestial cosmic ideal, 

 which as we mortals can see, goes no further and rises. 



