6.
Henceforth, the cosmos definitively entered the
historical scene.
Newton's system was the last to have
placed the “Harmony of the
World” outside of time,
installed and maintained by God, and
transfigured by
him on the “Last Day.” Now, among
Newton's disci
ples there was a slipping away; for the majority of
minds
curious about astronomy the fate of the universe
was being progressively
consummated in time.
As we have already indicated, starting from the
middle of the eighteenth
century there occurred a
return of the imagination in favor of a cyclical
concep-
tion of that destiny (such as
Vico had just installed in
human history). The “Eternal
Return” may be a way
of saving Parmenidean changelessness, but
such was
not the case with the men of that century, for it was
the
life cycle that mattered to them; we shall come
back to this matter.
Euler's calculations (Mémoire,
1746) on the
progressive recession of the orbits of the
planets provided an astronomical
excuse for reviving
an obscure desire. The idea spread that the planets
of
each system would return to the sun, and the latter
to the
“Sun of Suns,” which periodically would absorb
them,
and then would disperse new worlds into space.
Thus Unity alternated with
Diversity. This obsession
was exceptionally strong in the troubled time of
the
turn of the eighteenth into the nineteenth century, and
inspired
such visionaries as Delisle de Sales, Restif de
la Bretonne, and Fabre
d'Olivet; it was also to give
birth to its masterpiece, the Eureka (1848) of Edgar
Allan Poe. In this work, the
cyclical idea retained only
a minimal relation to obscure pulsations, and
assumed
a maximum of aesthetic satisfaction. Poe's idea of the
cosmos
as a poem inspired him with a pure intellectual
joy resembling Kant's. What
constituted Poe's delight
was the law of Reciprocal Adaptation in virtue
of
which cause and effect flow into each other and be-
come indiscernible. The Circle of Perfection was re-
established on an intellectual plane.
“Beauty is truth,
truth beauty,” and that is all
there is to know. Diversity
was integrated with Unity in the form of the
greatest
possible totality of relationships in continuous growth
until
they are resolved. Matter was integrated with
energy and the latter with
pure Spirit. Finally the
yearning to return to the Source was sublimated
here
into a mystical unity.
