ON THE GENETIC VIEW OF NATURE. 



287 



Poets and pliilosophers have repeated this theme in end- 

 less variations, probably without improving upon the 

 classical and perfect expression which it has found in 

 ancient ^ poetry and in the sacred writings. History has 

 been written with the professed object of gaining, by 

 analogy, an insight into the drift of modern or future 

 events, and economic and political theories have been 

 based upon the likelihood of a recurrence of what has 

 happened before. Especially has the teaching been 

 impressed upon us that the universal fate of all develop- 

 ment is to lead to death and decay, and to make room 

 for the endless repetition of the same recurring phases 



Every art and every kind of philo- 

 sophy having probably been found 

 out many times up to the limits 

 of what is possible and again de- 

 stroyed ; " and remarks, " This 

 notion of cycles refers to human 

 civilisation, not to the universe, 

 which is one eternal system with 

 a ti.xed central mass, and with its 

 outer part in a moving equili- 

 brium. Empedocles undoubtedly 

 had a theory of recurrent cycles 

 in the universe. The four ele- 

 ments, — which he first brought to- 

 gether as elements of tiie whole, 

 early thinkers having tiiken one or 

 other of them as a first principle 

 from which the rest are evolved, 

 — according to Empedocles, are 

 necessarily aggregated and segre- 

 gated by the predominance of prin- 

 cii)les which he calls love {(piKia) 

 and hate {veiKos). The four periods 

 are: 1. Predominant love (the 

 ff<pa7pos), a state of complete aggre- 

 gation ; 2. decreasing love and in- 

 creasing hate or strife ; 3. pre- 

 dominant strife {a.Ku(T/xia, complete 

 separation of the elements) ; 4. de- 

 creasing strife and increasing love. 

 These are cosmic periods. It has 

 been supjjosed — Zeller takes this 

 view — tliat we are living in the 



fourth cosmic pei'iod, the period 

 of increasing love." 



' The best known passage is that 

 from the celebrated fourth eclogue 

 of Virgil, where, after describing the 

 return of the golden Saturnian age, 

 the poet continues (vv. 31-36): — 



" Pauca taiiieii subenuit j)riseai vestigia 



fraudis, 

 Qiue tentare Tlietini ratibus, quae cingere 



imiris 

 Oppida, quii: jubeaiit telluri iiifindere 



sulcos. 

 Alter eiit tiun Tipliys, et altera qua; 



veliat Argo 

 Dt'lectos licroas : erunt etiam altera bella, 

 Atqiie ilfiuiii ad Trojam nuignus inittetur 



Achilles." 



Dugald Stewart (' Philos. Works,' 

 vol. iii. p. 167) refers to this 

 with the following quotation from 

 Clavius's ' Commentary on the 

 Treatise on the Sphere,' by Joannes 

 Sacro Bosco : " Hoc intervallo, qui- 

 dam volunt, omnia qmocunujue in 

 mundo sunt, eodem ordine esse 

 reditura, quo nunc cernuntur," and 

 he also attriliutes this theory of re- 

 currence to an extreme application 

 of the mathematical spirit (vol. iv. 

 p. 207). How tiiis idea of recur- 

 rent cycles fascinated and haunted 

 Fr. Nietzsche see Seth's article, 

 'Contem. Kev.,' vol. 73, p. 734. 



