286 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



7. 

 " Cyclical ' 

 ▼iew. 



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 ^ and repeats itself, that all change is periodic and 

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



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- 

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

 136, &c., 2ud 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 

 tire — 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 conti'ast 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 

 Zeno only in the Pythagorean school 

 . . . and is connected with the 

 doctrine of metemp.sychosis and 

 the world-year." 



^ 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 rh fiKos iroWaKis evprifjL^vrjs 

 el rh SvvaThv l/catTTTjs Kai Tex^vs 

 Kal (pi\o<joc(>ias Kai TrdXiy (pOfipofxevuiv. 



