COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



to comparative insignificance. Hence the re- 

 sulting rhythms will not be closed curves, but 

 endlessly complicated undulations ; and every 

 rhythm will end in bringing about a state of 

 things somewhat different from that in which it 

 started. To recur to some of the illustrations 

 above given : No geologic rhythm of eleva- 

 tion and subsidence leaves the distribution of 

 land and water over the earth exactly as it found 

 it. No biologic rhythm of sleep and wakeful- 

 ness leaves the distribution of nutritive forces 

 in the organism precisely as it found it ; other- 

 wise it would not be true that each day's func- 

 tional activity is a member of the series of 

 changes which is bearing us from the cradle 

 to the grave. In an exogenous tree each an- 

 nual rhythm results in a permanent increase of 

 woody fibre : in a mammal it results in at least 

 a relative increase of the solid constituents of 

 the body as compared with the fluid and semi- 

 fluid constituents. And our illustration from 

 palaeontology shows that the series of enormous 

 rhythms in which the history of organic life 

 consists, has introduced a new state of things in 

 each geologic epoch. 1 



We have now proceeded as far as a survey 



1 Hence the theory of Vico, that social progress takes place 

 in cycles in which history literally repeats itself", is based upon 

 a very inadequate knowledge of the results of the cooperation 

 of many interacting forces. 



182 



