Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-08-29


rect knowledge. first of all. through the
light that the earth planet sends to them.
The great mass of this light Is of course.
reflected sunlight. But the earth also sends
out light from the side that Is turned
from the sun. when II is not illuminated
even by the moon.
This is light of two kinds: First. light
caused by great mechanical causes, such
as northern lights. nghtnings. star showers
and the.red CLEANS Of active volcanoes. The
second sort of light Is more mysterious. It
Is light that depends on the existence of
organic creatures.
The distant observer might perceive the
great cities of man as faint misty stars
the work of man. the height of all organic
DEVELOPMENT on earth. But long before that
he would probably have seen something
more remarkable. He would have seen
dfnused pale light, phosphorescent hover
ing over vast areas.
What causes these fireworks?
Sfngle-celled things-um- cells. creatures Of
the order OF the atoms Of the ocean which,
singly only miorOscopical bits of mucus
fllumine the oceans by their myriads.
Visible to Far Stars.
The distant observer. then. would see the
works of the two great opposites Of world
life
This kingdom of the minute. the kingdom
Of the bacillus. is truly great enough to
make its effects seen afar through the uni
verse. Like a sandstone that threatens to
pury mankind. 1t sweeps over humanity.
And in this bacillus are traits that point
to life form beyond the limits that are
drawn on earth for other forms of life
Everywhere we see the true vegetable.
the true animal life, limited to certain
grades OF temperature. In the terrible
polar cold life gradually ceases. In boiling
water life ends
While the earth still was red-hot in its
interior. we picture life as absent from 1t.
In the great glacial periods 1t must have
oeen destroyed In great areas Of the earth
In the Icy universe, in the star spaces or
on a planet for which no sun shines we
imagine again that life is totally extinct
Yet certain bacilli Withstand intense tenn
peratures. high and low: temperatures that
destroy the vital albumen entirely.
This fact furnishes much food for
meet 1T with the primeval existence of these
uni-cells.
The entire world Of plants and animals
shows one-sided adaptation to certain
conditions. with death as the result of any
violent change. But the tough bacillus
faces US like an arch-form Of life that is
far superior to these limits. 1t enables lis
to imagine a life that does not know any
limits of temperature at all.
Is Eternal Existence Possiblep
This would be life corresponding to the
life speculated on by Fechtner, who ad-
vanced the idea of an existence that has
adapted itself through the cons to all the
changes of temperatures and is as eternal
as the motion that is the cause of ell
warmth
The bacillus Of today that can withstand
13O degrees Celsius of cold may be capable
OF existence in the ever-froZen space of the
universe even now-the universe cold
a nj &c hot a
solar systems, and that lies between us and
the moon. between US and Mars and be-
tween the sun and its red double star
Such bacillus gives point to the Theory
OF Humboldt. that life never began on earth
through birth on earth. but that 1t reached
this planet through some agency that
brought out of the universe In the right
moment, when the cooling earth offered tha
proper conditions.
He suggested that such an agency might
have been a meteoric stone. carrying the
primeval germ OF life in a fissure
We need not fall back on the meteorfc
stone. We have 1t in the presence of bacflH
that can bear 100 degrees Celsius and more
Of cold.
We might ask If the earth in its daring
flight around the sun does not at times
cut through cosmic swarms of bacilu as 1t
cuts through meteoric swarms? If the as
tronomers of the middle ages who used to
hold that all great comets brought pesti-
lences to the EARTH had been in possession
of our present knowledge of bacilli, they
might well have been led to imagine that
the comets tail carried the bacfllf of the
pest and rained them down on the unlucky
earth.
These are dreams Yet it is undeni able
that there is something weird about the
properties Of bacflli. something that points
at one and the same time to the Oldest ex-
istence on earth and to the last living thing
man.
Bacteria Masses Beyond Conception.
Max Schultze counted 800 900 lime shells
of certain uni-cells in thirty grammes of
sand. Now. remind yourself that thousands
of square miles of the oceans are one sin
gle, compact layer of gray mud, and that
this gray mud consists practically of moth
ing except such shells.
The whole bottom of the North Atlantic
ocean from Greenland to the Azores is so
formed. 1t is the so-called cable plateau,
and over it's entire breadth. from the Brit
ish to the American coast, lies this mud.
We marvel at the Cheops pyramid as a
gigantic achievement of man. Yet long be-
fore man upreared this royal mountain
uni-cells made the stone that was used by
man afterward.
They did not merely furnish material
enough for pyramids. The limestone into