This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ... EPILOGUE I. Hellenes And Hebrews The spiritual views of a man, of whatever religion or race, are the products of his particular environment. But the roots of these- conceptions, as well as those of social life in general, lie in the great web of organic life with which the social life is closely and inseparably connected; just as organic life itself is connected with the next life sphere, the cosmic. There is no absolute line of demarcation between these three life spheres, just as there is no difference between the material and the spiritual life. The three life spheres do, however, form sharply defined grades or epochs within the unified and indivisible universal life. And just as in each individual life sphere, so also in the totality of the universal life, every step toward a higher grade of life must have its antecedents in the lower grade. Compared with the higher order of life, the organic, the cosmic life sphere appears lifeless, especially on the border line which leads from the life of the cosmic bodies to that of the organisms. Here, on the surface of the already cooled-off and stiffened cosmic bodies, we see only the dead residue of the cosmic life sphere, out of which the higher organic life sphere developed. But if we observe the life of the cosmic sphere where it is still being generated and developed in universal space, we cannot deny to it attributes of the divine life--the life that is so beautifully described in our literature in the words: "Last in creation, first in thought." The remarkable phenomena which were observed in the modern period, such as the splitting and other changes going on in the double comets of Bielasch and Liais, the solidifying of the cosmic dust, its assumption of the spheroid form and spiral...