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FRACMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY
phenomenon of life. If there is a purpose behind the grand scheme of cosmic evolution, it is not to produce life. Man is not the highest creation of God. Life is an excrescence which soils the niajesfic harmony of the physical Universe. All the primary bodics composing this grand system are free from the blemish ; their fiery purity can never be soiled by it.
Theoretically, life !nay occur only on the minute specks ca ashi, bloivi? Co withic flaming hcavenly bodics, called planets; and even ut of these insignificant components of the Cosmos, only a very small one has fallen into ciisgrace. It is the carth. It is theoretically excluded that the physico-chemical conditions in which life can orisinate and evolve into higher and higher forms, will ever be created on six out of the eight remaining members of the solar system. The two exceptions are Mars and Venus. The former seems to have water, though not in an adequate quantity ; its atinosphere contains gises nccessary for organisms; the tempcrature also is approximately suitable. But the speculation about the inhabitants of the Mars has not been borne out by recent rescarches of astral-physics. If the God of War rcally commands an army of living beings, these are most probably of a very low order, hardly above the botanic level. The present conditions have obtained on the Mars for a long timc, most probably as long as in the case of the earth. So, if
