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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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2. Greece and Rome. In Greece a distinction must
be made between those philosophers who believed in
cycles and those who believed that each cycle repeated
the characteristics of its predecessor, or what was
called by Friedrich Nietzsche the Eternal Recurrence.
Among the latter was Empedocles (fifth century B.C.),
but even he, as far as the evidence goes, did not say
that every event was endlessly repeated. Yet Empedo-
cles did assert that the general course of each cycle
was repeated in its successor and he also seemed to
believe in the transmigration of souls. The course of
cosmic history ran from a period when the force of
Love was in command, a time very like the Golden
Age or the Age of Kronos. This was followed by the
entrance of Strife upon the scene, to be followed in
turn by the predominance of Strife, apparently the
worst of times. But when Strife was uppermost it began
to give way again to Love, and finally Love returned
to take over the management of the universe. The
rhythm was endless.

None of the Greek philosophers believed that the
cosmos had a beginning in time; that idea entered the
Western world with Judaism and Christianity. In
contrast to the mythographers, the philosophers all
believed the world to be everlasting, though the pres-
ent condition of the world might come to an end. Even
Plato in his Timaeus, which was later used as a creation
myth, held that the matter out of which the world was
made was everlasting, and for him the work of creation
was the forming of this preexisting matter into a cos-
mos. If then the world was endless in its duration, there
were either no changes in it at all, or the changes must
have occurred in random or orderly fashion. The Greek
philosophers, like their modern successors, were un-
willing to accept a chaotic world and indeed some
changes were so obvious that they could hardly escape
the notice of a normal man. Among such were the
familiar examples of birth and death, the apparent
disappearance of matter when it is burned or dissolved
in water, the freezing and melting of liquids and solids,
sickness, growth, decay, the processes of digestion, and
the chemical changes involved in metallurgy. It was
one of the intellectual achievements of the early Greek
philosophers to attribute all such changes to various
phases of one or more of what were later to be called
the “elements.”

By the time of Heraclitus (early fifth century B.C.)
three and possibly four of the elements were already
distinguished: fire, air, and water. This might seem to
be a great reduction in itself of complexity to simplic-
ity, but Heraclitus went further. We find him saying
in one of his fragments, “Fire lives the death of air,
and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death
of earth, earth that of water.” There are justifiable
grounds for doubts about the authenticity of the details
in this series of changes, but that the author believed
in a general pattern of elemental transmutations is
clear. This pattern becomes even clearer in Aristotle
and the changes occur in definitely described manners.
Fire changes to air by losing its heat and earth changes
to water by losing its dryness. But Aristotle does not
say that at one time the cosmos was entirely composed
of one of the four elements and then produced the
others step by step, after which they all eventually
returned to their primitive material unity. The changes
occur as the sun moves along the ecliptic and to that
extent there is a cosmic cycle in Aristotle's thinking.
Each year brings about the same series of elemental
changes but the whole never changes as a unit.

The Stoics are responsible for the clearest theory
of cosmic cycles, though they attributed the source of
the idea to Heraclitus. According to Stoicism there
would occur at a given time a general conflagration,
the ekpyrosis, after which the world would begin again
as it was in the distant past. The cycle as a whole was
called by Cicero the Great Year (Annus Magnus). Its


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length was variously calculated, now being 18,000 solar
years, now 10,800. But that it was the year of all years
is clear enough. What was desired was the length of
time which it would take for the heavenly bodies to
return to the position that they had held at a defined
time, thought of as a beginning.

One of the founders of Stoicism, Cleanthes (early
third Century B.C.), is said to have described the ekpyr-
osis
as a process of death and growth. The fire burns
up all things but is followed by a period of moisture
in which the “seeds” of everything remain. These seeds
begin to grow again at the proper time and eventually
the cosmos is restored to what it was. The seeds in
question were called the spermatic logoi or perhaps
“principles,” (for only a vague word can name them),
which are material but probably as everlasting as fire
itself. Mysterious as the doctrine is, the world turns
out to be self-destructive and self-regenerative, like the
phoenix which may indeed be a symbol of the process.

According to Cicero one of the later Stoics, Panae-
tius (second century B.C.), did not accept the doctrine
of the ekpyrosis. But in spite of Cicero's well-known
admiration for Panaetius, he himself did accept it. He
describes it in his treatise On the Nature of the Gods
(Book II, 46): “There will ultimately occur a conflagra-
tion of the whole world, because when the moisture
has been used up neither can the earth be nourished
nor will the air continue to flow, being unable to rise
after it has drunk up all the water; thus nothing will
remain but fire, by which, as a living being and a god,
once again a new world may be created and the or-
dered universe restored as before.” The process is based
on sensory observation. Moisture, i.e., water, is dried
up by fire; the air, which normally is found between
the level of fire and that of water, is exhausted by the
combustion, and thus fire alone is left. What happens
to earth is not revealed. But by the time of Cicero
Greek science was either the collection of data, such
as are found in Pliny and Seneca, or it had turned to
mathematics, astronomy, and geography. One finds
little scientific clarity in the philosophers.

The other pagan witnesses to the Stoic belief in the
ekpyrosis and the renewal of the world are Seneca,
Diogenes Laërtius, and Plutarch. But they add little
in the way of detail, and for the most part we are
forced to rely on Christian writers who referred to the
process in order to combat the ideas on which it was
based or its supposed implications. It is they who tell
us that the details of a given age will be repeated
identically in later ages. Tatian (second century A.D.),
for instance, in his Adversus Graecos says, “Zeno [the
founder of Stoicism] has shown that after the ekpyrosis
... men will be resurrected as they were. And I say
that this must imply that Anytus and Meletus will again
bring their accusation [against Socrates] and Busiris
slay the Strangers, and Hercules perform his labors.”
It is Tatian clearly who draws this inference, though
Eudemus, a pupil of Aristotle, had attributed the same
belief to “the Pythagoreans.” In fact the accusation
and trial of Socrates became a favorite example of what
the eternal recurrence involved.

Yet Vergil in his Fourth Eclogue also plays on the
theme and mentions specific events and individuals that
will reappear in the new age which is to come. In our
own time Shelley in the final chorus of his dramatic
poem, Hellas, imitated Vergil, verbally in places; and
a less important literary figure, George Moore, the Irish
novelist, in his story “Resurgam,” depicts the destruc-
tion of the world and its restoration in some detail.