158 Unconscious Memory 



that our days and nights and seasons follow one another 

 with nearly perfect regularity from year to year, and have 

 done so for as long time as we know anything for certain. 

 A vast preponderance of all the action that takes place 

 around us is cycular action. 



Within the great cycle of the planetary revolution of 

 our own earth, and as a consequence thereof, we have the 

 minor cycle of the phenomena of the seasons ; these 

 generate atmospheric cycles. Water is evaporated from 

 the ocean and conveyed to mountain ranges, where it is 

 cooled, and whence it returns again to the sea. This 

 cycle of events is being repeated again and again with 

 little appreciable variation. The tides and winds in cer- 

 tain latitudes go round and round the world with what 

 amounts to continuous regularity. There are storms of 

 wind and rain called cyclones. In the case of these, the 

 cycle is not very complete, the movement, therefore, is 

 spiral, and the tendency to recur is comparatively soon 

 lost. It is a common saying that history repeats itself, 

 so that anarchy will lead to despotism and despotism to 

 anarchy ; every nation can point to instances of men's 

 minds having gone round and round so nearly in a per- 

 fect cycle that man}^ revolutions have occurred before the 

 cessation of a tendency to recur. Lastly, in the generation 

 of plants and animals we have, perhaps, the most striking 

 and common example of the inevitable tendency of all 

 action to repeat itself when it has once proximately done 

 so. Let only one living being have once succeeded in 

 producing a being like itself, and thus have returned, so 

 to speak, upon itself, and a series of generations must 

 follow of necessity, unless some matter interfere which 

 had no part in the original combination, and, as it may 

 happen, kill the first reproductive creature or all its 

 descendants within a few generations. If no such mishap 

 occurs as this, and if the recurrence of the conditions is 

 sufficiently perfect, a series of generations follows with as 

 much certainty as a series of seasons follows upon the 



