THE EVOLUTIONARY RHYTHM 45 



And the third time the world awoke to a tremen- 

 dous outburst of energy. But while the realisation 

 of it was sudden, the process itself had been a slow 

 one. It was no less than the mobilisation of vast ho- 

 mogeneous masses of the Gastrea, resulting in the 

 formation of Annelids, best described, I think, as ar- 

 mies, for unlike their predecessors they were linear in 

 shape, with the controlling force at the anterior end. 

 With their dominance a new period of Kultur arose. 



Surely now Evolution is in sight of its goal. Ah, 

 no, for again life is caught up by the evolutionary 

 rhythm, and the formula for the making of a com- 

 munal soul is repeated. We see the same clustering, 

 fusing and centralising of unit organs in the striving 

 for a " conscience more divine " ; life swings to a still 

 higher level through the righteousness of its purpose. 

 And so " up, the pinnacled glory reached " to man. 1 



Four evolutionary periods do not go far, it will be 

 said, toward establishing a scientific induction. But 

 rhythms are very apt to have a mathematical basis, 

 and the evolutionary one is no exception. There is 

 a method known to Algebra as the theory of groups. 

 A group is made up of a set of operations or trans- 

 formations such that a combination of any two of 

 them yields an operation or transformation belong- 

 ing to the set. Any property or quality that is left 

 unaltered by all the transformations in the group is 



i ". . . and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without 

 end. Amen." 



