Learned men, however, who are also philosophers, and therefore optimists in their view of creation, find, or believe they find, an explanation. Among others, Bonnet of Geneva, that mysterious exact thinker, who was opposed to Buffon, as in later times Geoffrey St. Hilaire has been to Cuvier, was struck with the idea of the final object. His notions may be summed up thus: universal death necessitates universal sepulture; the devourers are the sextons of the system of nature. All created things enter into and form the elements of other. To decay is to nourish. Such is the terrible law from which not even man himself escapes.
In our world of twilight this fatal order of things produces monsters. You ask for what purpose. We find the solution here.
But is this the solution? Is this the answer to our questionings? And if so, why not some different order of things? Thus the question returns.
Let us live: be it so.
But let us endeavour that death shall be progress. Let us aspire to an existence in which these mysteries shall be made clear. Let us follow that conscience which leads us thither.
For let us never forget that the highest is only attained through the high.
III
ANOTHER KIND OF SEA-COMBAT
Such was the creature in whose power Gilliatt had fallen for some minutes.