* 



EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



tive and avowedly tentative opinion of the author. 

 Here, however, we are less concerned with his 

 opinions than with the most reasonable opinions 

 that may be held. In the last edition, Spencer 

 advanced various considerations which seem to 

 qualify the likelihood that the sentences quoted 

 are really in consonance with the past and the fut- 

 ure facts. At the end of the last chapter I have 

 advanced another consideration, the influence of 

 man's mind on the future of things, which does 

 not appear to have occurred to Spencer. I am 

 certainly not prepared to express any opinion as 

 to what this suggestion is worth ; but perhaps it is, 

 at any rate, worth considering. 



The cyclical idea of the cosmos appears to have 

 originated with Heraclitus, the first evolutionist, 

 and to have been borrowed from him by the Stoics, 

 who thought that "the history of the world and 

 the Deity moves in an endless cycle through the 

 same stages . ' ' The Pythagoreans thought that ' ' the 

 succeeding worlds resemble one another down to 

 the minutest detail." 1 This doctrine Spencer ex- 

 pressly denies in the passage quoted. Some day, 

 when a scholar and student like Dr. Merz, aided 

 by many collaborators, has given us that Histori- 

 cal Dictionary of Ideas for which I provided the 

 title a year or two ago, but with which no one 

 has yet been good enough to supply me, he will 

 doubtless spend many pleasant hours in studying 



1 Zeller, Philosophic der Griechen, III., 136. 



