THE GREAT CYCLE THEORY. 2O9 



first place to the difficulty of really grasping the 

 reality of the process and admitting a real increase 

 and growth in the content or significance of the 

 world. The force of facts compels to the admission 

 that the world really progresses, really contains more 

 than it did of the quality in terms of which the pro- 

 cess is formulated, that its Becoming involves a 

 progressive increase in Being. But in spite of the 

 avowal of dynamical principles, the statical tendency 

 to regard the amount of Reality as stationary, ir- 

 resistibly re-asserts itself. The actual fact of growth 

 cannot be denied, but its significance may be dis- 

 puted. And so it is asserted to be merely apparent : 

 it is really only the manifestation of the great Cycle, 

 which reels off the appointed series of events in 

 precisely the same order for ever. It is therefore a 

 mere illusion to fancy that the total content of the 

 universe changes : it is an equation which is repre- 

 sented by A = A = A . . . to infinity, in spite 

 lof the apparent progress of the phenomenal series 

 [from A to Z. 



And, as will be shown (ch. x. § 12), there is a 



jense in which this is true, but it is not true in any 



lense which is relevant to the explanation of the 



[Becoming of the actual world. In as far as we and 



>ur world are real at all, in so far the change and 



[progress of our world is real, and the world- process 



[is a real growth in the content of our world. 



The second difficulty to which the cycle-theory is 

 lue, is that men find it hard to conceive the world 

 LS reaching the end of any process without the 

 [uestion of — What next ? And as they have not 

 Toubled to consider the nature of the eternal state 

 >f equilibrium, which would supersede the Becoming 

 )f the world-process (cf. ch. xii.), they have failed to 



R. of S. P 



