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one is simpler than numbers. And the Platouic age affords us 
an illustration of that mysterious Law of Circle, which rules 
alike in nature and in thought. The heavenly bodies, circular 
in form, constantly describe their circling movements ; the sun 
has his zodiac, and annus the year is but annulus, a ring. 
Eternity is fitly symbolized as a serpent, tail in mouth, and 
“ He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth,” has, from 
remote antiquity, been described as a circle whose centre is 
everywhere, and its circumference nowhere. Nature abhors 
a straight line as she is said to abhor a vacuum, and Nature is 
“ the earliest gospel of the wise; ” poetry, philosophy, religion 
are essentially cyclic, and history repeats itself.* Human 
progress is no straight line of continuous advance. The 
world-poet saw this when he spoke of “ the whirligig of time,” 
and told us that “ our little life is rounded .” And the great 
truth is “ an anchor of the soul,” for it assures us that as from 
God we come, so to God we shall return. The poor, blind, 
stumbling world, at whose ignorance heavGn winked, despised 
by chosen nations and peculiar people, still dreamed of its 
divine Asura, still chanted that archaic song heard amid the 
oaks of Dodona, “ Zeus was, Zeus is, Zeus will be. 0 great 
Zeus ! ”f or raised the piteous cry, “ Doubtless thou art our 
Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel 
acknowledge us not; thou, 0 Lord, art our Father, our 
Redeemer.” And in the latest days of the old-world of 
heathenism, “a pagan suckled in a creed out-worn, 5 ’ could 
yet so distinguish substance amid shadow and reality from 
illusion, as, addressing the Asura of heaven by a name 
known centuries earlier on the banks of the Indus, and 
grasping the grand principle of circle, to exclaim : — 
“ 0 Thou whose power o’er moving worlds presides, 
Whose voice created, and whose wisdom guides ! 
From thee, great Zeus ! we spring, to thee we tend, 
Path, motive, guide, original, and end ! 55 
* Thus the philosophical Thucydides is satisfied if his history “ is judged 
useful by those who may desire an accurate knowledge of the past as a clue 
to that future which, in all human probability, must repeat or resemble the 
past.” (Prof. Jebb, Greek Literature, 108.) 
f Pausanias, x. 12. “There is little or no trace of mythology in this” 
[song]. (Prof. Max Midler, Lectures on the Science of Language , ii. 482.) 
As Prof. Jebb well observes, “ There was a time when they [i.e. archaic men] 
had begun to speak of the natural powers as persons, and yet had not forgotten 
that they were really natural powers, and that the personal names were merely 
signs." ( Greek Literature, Hi. Vide sup. secs. (>, 21, 80.) 
