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themselves, and the voiced snake perish for lack of 

 food; and afterwards, in natural course its young would 

 die. On the other hand the hiss of the serpent, inaudible 

 or slightly audible in the open air, vibrates far and wide 

 amongst the rocky recesses, and guides the young to 

 their parents and the parents to their young. 



In the same way the lion, the king of the desert, living 

 in his wilderness dominion encounters beasts as swift as 

 he himself. In pursuit of such prey he wanders many 

 miles from home, and when at last he catches his victim 

 he cannot bear it back, for his whole organism is un- 

 fitted for that task. But with his thunderous roar he sum- 

 mons Jiis family to their repast from afar. 



In the voice, the character and all the details of every 

 animal is well expressed the deepest natural reason which, 

 though apparently only concerned with the life of the 

 particular creature, is in reality merely regarding that 

 life as an agent of cosmic and planetary culture. 



Probably animal life, as we know it upon earth comes 

 to an end on double-stars, inasmuch as the spectral 

 analysis of these stars passing through all the colours 

 up to the solar colour, tells of an mcreasing heat incon- 

 sistent not only with human life but with any concei- 

 vable sort of animal existence. It may be however, that 

 sun flame itself is a product of some organic microbe. 

 Typhus bacilli raise the temperature of a man lying in 

 bed without exertion or movement six or seven degrees; 

 why may there not exist a solar microbe the more since 

 the solar rays, on reaching the planets exercise a vivi- 

 fying influence on these worlds and produce cosmic 

 energy? 



The spectrum of double-stars is, as we saw, most 

 varied. The solar spectrum is of yellow stripes with 

 black lines. The spectrum of extinct systems i. e. cosmic 

 cloud, is formed of the lines of the hydrogen, nitrogen 

 and oxygen. Comets in the nature of things, have no 

 light excepting when they fall beneath and reflect the 

 rays of a sun; consequently they supply no spectrum. 



