DIETERICH'S SUMMARY OF KANT'S THEORY. 175 



a conception of the History of the Universe to this effect : 

 that the organization of the raw material out of which it is 

 built has begun at some one point of space and in some 

 one moment of time ; and that it has thence progressed as 

 an advancing formation of unlimitedly many worlds in one 

 determinate direction, namely, from the centre away into 

 infinite space. Backwards from the momentary culmination 

 of the process that progresses to infinity in the form of a 

 constantly expanding circle, old worlds fall away ; and for- 

 wards, new worlds are formed. A complete cessation will 

 never come in. A developed world will always be found 

 existing between the ruins of the nature that has been 

 destroyed and the chaos of the nature that is still unformed. 

 To-day we look out on the one side to an infinite host of 

 ordered worlds which march slowly but surely to their dis- 

 solution, although thousands, perhaps millions, of centuries 

 may have to pass before that dissolution finally comes. On 

 the other side, there lies before us the infinite storehouse 

 of chaos, buried in silent night, yet full of materials and 

 springs of motion for the animation of the still desert regions 

 of space beyond. 



But this representation is not able yet to satisfy our 

 imagination completely, which would extend its view from 

 the eternal process of creation even away beyond that first 

 assumed point of beginning in time. Whence has sprung 

 the chaotically dispersed material of the self-organizing 

 systems ; and what will become of the fragments of the 

 disorganized systems? Is it not possible to imagine the 

 process of the world as an infinite circulation rather than 

 as a motion advancing in an unlimited straight line? If 

 we connect the initial and final points between which the 

 evolution of a single world-system runs its course, perhaps 

 the ring will be closed. A new point of view thus presents 

 itself to us from which we are able to contemplate the 

 history of the universe, even although it should be limited 

 in space, as an eternal process an endless becoming. 



We obtain the grandest idea of the economy of the 

 whole of nature, when we regard the ruins of perished 

 worlds as the raw material of endless new formations. 

 Nature appears to us as a phoenix which consumes herself 

 only in order to arise out of her own ashes, and to live again 



