An unbroken series of natural events, following an orderly course of evolution according to fixed laws, now leads the reflecting human spirit through long aeons from a primeval chaos to the present "order of the cosmos." At the outset there is nothing in infinite space but mobile elastic ether, and innumerable similar separate particles--the primitive atoms--scattered throughout it in the form of dust; perhaps these are themselves originally "points of condensation" of the vibrating "substance," the remainder of which constitutes the ether. The atoms of our elements arise from the grouping together in definite numbers of the primitive atoms or atoms of mass. As the Kant-Laplace nebular hypothesis has it, the rotating heavenly bodies separate themselves out from that vibrating primeval cloud. A single unit among many thousands of celestial bodies is our sun, with its planets, which originated by being centrifugally thrown off from it. Our insignificant earth is a single planet of our solar system; its entire individual life is a product of the sunlight. After the glowing sphere of the earth has cooled down to a certain degree, drops of fluid water precipitate themselves on the hardened crust of its surface--the first preliminary condition of organic life. Carbon atoms begin their organism-engendering activity, and unite with the other elements into plasma-combinations capable of growing. One small plasma-group oversteps the limits of cohesion and individual growth; it falls asunder into two similar halves. With this first moneron begins organic life and its most distinctive function, heredity. In the homogeneous plasma of the monera, a firmer central nucleus is separated from a softer outer mass; through this differentiation of nucleus and protoplasm arises the first organic cell. For a long time our planet was inhabited solely by such Protista or single-celled primitive creatures. From coenobia or social unions of these afterwards arose the lowest histones, multicellular plants and animals.