286 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



7. 



" Cyclical ' 

 view. 



acteristic achievements the genetic view. There is 

 another view which a superficial glance at organic life, 

 with its well known phases of birth, culmination, and 

 decay, has frequently impressed upon the observer ; there 

 seemed another lesson to learn than that which our age 

 is trying to master. 



That other view can best be termed the " cyclical " 

 view of things, the doctrine that every thing runs in a 

 cycle 1 and repeats itself, that all change is periodic and 

 recurrent, that there is nothing new under the sun. 2 



1 Mr Thomas Whittaker has given 

 me various references to the writ- 

 ings of ancient philosophers which 

 bear on this subject. He finds the 

 cyclical or recurrent aspect of the 

 world-process prominently put for- 

 ward by the Stoics. Zeller (' Philo- 

 sophic der Griechen,' vol. iii. I. p. 

 136, &c., 2nd ed.) says in his 

 account of the stoical philosophy : 

 " Out of the original substance the 

 separate things are developed ac- 

 cording to an inner law. For in- 

 asmuch as the first principle, accord- 

 ing to its definition, is the creative 

 and formative power, the whole uni- 

 verse must grow out of it with the 

 same necessity as the animal or the 

 plant from the seed. The original 

 fire according to the Stoics and 

 Heraclitus first changes to ' air ' or 

 vapour, then to water ; out of this 

 a portion is precipitated as earth, 

 another remains water, a third 

 evaporates as atmospheric air, 

 which again kindles the fire, and 

 out of the changing mixture of 

 these four elements there is formed 

 from the earth as centre the 

 world. . . . Through this separa- 

 tion of the elements there arises 

 the contrast of the active and the 

 passive principle : the soul of the 

 world and its body. . . . But as 

 this contrast came in time, so it is 

 also destined to cease ; the original 

 substance gradually consumes the 



matter, which it segregated out of 

 itself as its body, till at the end of 

 this world-period a universal world- 

 conflagration brings everything back 

 again to the primaeval condition. 

 . . . But when everything has thus 

 returned to the original unity, and 

 the great world-year has run out, 

 the formation of a new world begins 

 again, which is so exactly like the 

 former one that in it all single 

 things, persons, and phenomena 

 return exactly as before ; and in 

 this wise the history of the world 

 and the deity . . . moves in an 

 endless cycle through the same 

 stages." Zeller, in a note to this 

 passage, remarks that " the con- 

 ception of changing world-periods 

 is frequent in the oldest Greek 

 philosophy ; the Stoics found it 

 first in Heraclitus. The further 

 statement," however, that the suc- 

 ceeding worlds resemble one another 

 down to the minutest detail, is to 

 be found, to my knowledge, before 

 Zeuo only in the Pythagorean school 

 . . . and is connected with the 

 doctrine of metempsychosis and 

 the world -year." 



2 Mr Whittaker quotes a pass- 

 age from Aristotle's 'Metaphysics,' 

 towards the end of the 12th book 

 (Berlin ed., p. 1074, b. 10-12): 

 "Kara rb ei'/cos iro\\a.Kis evpT)/j.tvriS 

 fl rb Svvarbis iKO-art)? Kal 



