In the assurance of this all action is taken. But if
this fundamental article is admitted, it follows that if ever a complete
cycle were formed, so that the whole universe of one instant were to
repeat itself absolutely in a subsequent one, no matter after what
interval of time, then the course of the events between these two moments
would go on repeating itself for ever and ever afterwards in due order,
down to the minutest detail, in an endless series of cycles like a
circulating decimal. For the universe comprises everything; there could
therefore be no disturbance from without. Once a cycle, always a cycle.
Let us suppose the earth of given weight, moving with given momentum in a
given path, and under given conditions in every respect, to find itself
at any one time conditioned in all these respects as it was conditioned
at some past moment; then it must move exactly in the same path as the
one it took when at the beginning of the cycle it has just completed, and
must therefore in the course of time fulfil a second cycle, and therefore
a third, and so on for ever and ever, with no more chance of escape than
a circulating decimal has, if the circumstances have been reproduced with
perfect accuracy as to draw it into such a whirlpool.
We see something very like this actually happen in the yearly revolutions
of the planets round the sun.
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