priori_ notion of infinity, expressed in the name _die ewige Wiederkehr_ ("Eternal Recurrence"). It is a staggeringly imaginative concept, formed apart from any evidential grounds, and yet fortified with a fair amount of logical armament. The universe is imagined as endless in time, although its material contents are not equally conceived as limitless. Since, consequently, there must be a limit to the possible variety in the arrangement and sequence of the sum total of data, even as in the case of a kaleidoscope, the possibility of variegations is not infinite. The particular co-ordination of things in the universe, say at this particular moment, is bound to recur again and again in the passing of the eons. But under the nexus of cause and effect the resurgence of the past from the ocean of time is not accidental nor is the configuration of things haphazard, as is true in the case of the kaleidoscope; rather, history, in the most inclusive acceptation of the term, is predestined to repeat itself; this happens through the perpetual progressive resurrection of its particles. It is then to be assumed that any aspect which the world has ever presented must have existed innumerable millions of times before, and must recur with eternal periodicity. That the deterministic strain in this tremendous _Vorstellung_ of a cyclic rhythm throbbing in the universe entangles its author's fanatical belief in evolution in a rather serious self-contradiction, does not detract from its spiritual lure, nor from its wide suggestiveness, however incapable it may be of scientific demonstration. From unfathomed depths of feeling wells up the pæan of the prophet of the life intense. O Mensch! Gib Acht! Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht? Ich schlief, ich schlief--, Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht:-- Die Welt ist tief, Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht. Tief ist ihr Weh--, Lust--tiefer noch als Herzeleid: Weh spricht: Vergeh! Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit-- Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!(26) (26) O man! Lose not sight! What saith the deep midnight? "I lay in sleep, in sleep; From deep dream I woke to light. The world is deep, And deeper than ever day though! it might. Deep is its woe,-- And deeper still than woe--delight." Saith woe: "Pass, go! Eternity's sought by all delight,-- Eternity deep--by all delight. "Thus Spake Zarathustra," The Drunken Song, p. 174.--The translation but faintly suggests the poetic appeal of the original.