8 Heredity, Variation and Genius 



the capital stored in weaker life being seized and 

 consumed by stronger life in progressive carnifica- 

 tions to subserve its maintenance and growth. 

 So and not otherwise has organic composition 

 been urged to higher and higher evolution of 

 life through the ages ; its series of ascents mark- 

 ing progressive embodiments of the sun's radiant 

 energies — its light, its heat, its showers of electrons 

 — in more complex matter and force. Were the 

 sun — " of this great world both eye and soul " — 

 to go out to-night all life would be dead tomorrow, 

 no memory more left of flora and fauna, of king- 

 doms and empires, of wise men and fools on its 

 sunless satellite. A verily tragic ending of things 

 to behold were any one left to behold it, but not 

 after all really unbefitting the trifles it and its 

 products are in everlastingness. But if very finite 

 and relative creatures, themselves infinitesimally 

 minute fractions of an infinite universe, strain 

 their wits to know the primal origin of things, 

 perforce imagining beginnings and ends just 

 because they begin and end, and ask meaningless 

 questions about the absolute when they are only 

 relative, the infinite when they are only finite, and 

 the eternal when they are only transitory ; vainly 

 craving to comprehend the incomprehensible and 

 to express the ineffable by setting forth how things 

 not finite began, why they go on, and whither 

 they are going ; then there is nothing for it but 

 transcendental metaphysical inanities or ecstatic 

 outpours and reverential pantings forth of mystical 



