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evealed itself to the scientific knowledge. Beneath the geoid level, the living matter
penetrates the stratisphere and the upper portions of the metamorphic and granite
envelopes. If one makes a cross-section of the globe, one would see that the living matter
rises 20-25 km over the geoid level, and sinks, on the average, 4-5 km below it. These
boundaries change with time and at places may advance far beyond these limits, although
this occurs only within small areas. In deep seas, the living matter certainly goes deeper
than 11 km here and there, and its presence at a depth exceeding 6 km has been
demonstrated by observations 2 . As to the stratosphere, we witness man’s penetrating it, but
the man is always inseparable from other organisms—insects, plants, microorganisms—
and thus the living matter has advanced to more than 40 km above the geoid level and goes
on rising rapidly.
In the course of the geological time, one may observe the process of continuous
expanding of the biosphere frontiers and its colonization by the living matter.
4. The organized state of the biosphere, or the organization of the living matter,
must be viewed upon as dynamic equilibria oscillating about an average distinctly
expressed both in the historical and geological time. Displacements or oscillations of the
average itself are continuously manifested in the geological time, not in the historical one.
During the geological time, in the circular processes characteristic of the biogeochemical
organization, no point (be that an atom or a chemical element) ever returns in aeons of
centuries identically-to its previous position.
This salient feature of the biosphere has been strikingly and dramatically
expressed by Leibnitz (1646-1716) in one of his philosophical discourses which seems to
be his Theodicy. He recollects there how, in the late 17th century, he was taking a walk in a
large garden, in a company of high society persons. Having spoken about the infinite
diversity of nature and about the infinite efficiency of mind, Leibnitz indicated that one
never finds two leaves of a tree or herb that would be fully identical to one another. Of
course, all
2 The benthic living organisms have been really found at all depths of the World Ocean, including those
exceeding 11 km (see the monographs by G. M. Belyaev. The Fauna of the Ultraabyssal Zone of the World Ocean,
Moscow, Nauka, 1966; The Deep-Sea Oceanic Trenches and Their Fauna, Moscow, Nauka, 1989)—Edit. note.
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