HISTORICAL CYCLES — CEAWFOED 459 



In other words, individuality can only exist in four dimensions. 



It is a method of acting and becoming ; it is never identical with itself for two 

 consecutive moments of its career. When we take it at any given moment and 

 examine it, it possesses * * * a certain degree of unity in its construction, a 

 unity in space. When we look at it as a history, we find that it has a certain 

 unity in time. The different events of its history cooperate to insure Its own 

 continuance or the continuance of new systems like itself." 



This description applies admirably to any one of Petrie's phases, 

 or to any of its component units. The thread of unity here is pro- 

 vided by tradition, the outcome of speech and writing. (The writer's 

 debt to this article of Professor Huxley's will be obvious, and he 

 wishes gratefully to acknowledge it.) 



NOTE in 

 [Added January, 1933] 



In correcting the proofs of my 1931 article I have made only one 

 alteration of meaning, and that a minor verbal one. It seemed better 

 to leave it exactly as it stands, for it exactly expressed my views at 

 the time it was written. I would not express myself in the same 

 way if I were to write an account of Historical Cycles to-day, for I 

 should write from the point of view of a Marxist. I believe that one 

 of the most immediate tasks for students of the history of material 

 human culture is to discover the material cause of historical cycles; 

 for their existence can not be called in question. Before this can 

 be done, however, a world history must be " written from the stand- 

 point of dialectical materialism, which alone can make the dynamics 

 of history comprehensible " (John Strachey in The Coming Struggle 

 for Power, p. 189, Gollancz, 1932) . 



IS Huxley, Julian, What is Individuality? The Realist, vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 109-121, April, 

 1929. 



