31C COSMIC PHILOSOFll Y [n. n. 



bringing about precisely the same state of things with which 

 it started. But where there are a vast number of forces at 

 work, as in the evolution of the earth and of life upon its 

 surface, the probability is infinitely small that any pair of 

 forces can so far predominate over all the rest as to reduce 

 their effects to comparative insignificance. Hence the result- 

 ing rhythms will not be closed curves, but endlessly com- 

 plicated 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 elevation and subsidence 

 leaves the distribution of land and water over the earth 

 exactly as it found it. No biologic rhythm of sleep and 

 wakefulness leaves the distribution of nutritive forces in 

 the organism precisely as it found it; otherwise it would 

 not be true that each day's functional activity is a member 

 of the series of changes which is bearing us from the cradle 

 to the grave. In an exogenous tree each annual 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 con- 

 stituents. 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 of the widest 

 generalizations of physics can carry us, and before we attempt 

 to go further, we may fitly present in a single view the con- 

 clusions reached in this and in the preceding chapter. 



We observed first that the three departments of abstract- 

 concrete science are alike concerned with the investigation of 

 the general laws of force as manifested in the motions of 



J Hence the theory of Vico, that social progress takes place in cycles in 

 which history literally repeats itself, is based upon a very inadequate know 

 edge of the results of the cooperation of many interacting forces. 



