A SURVEY OF THE CYCLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL PROCESS.

This article gives historical survey of the theories which run throughout the whole history of social thought. Cyclical conception of social change is one of the oldest in the history of social thought. An old expression of belief in a cyclical character of social change is ancient astrology. A periodicity of the appearance of certain stars, and a belief in their influence on human affairs led to the belief that many social phenomena repeat themselves periodically in the course of time. A vague manifestation of a cyclical conception may be found also in the ancient thought of India. The dominant philosophy of ancient India seems to have been the philosophy of an unchangeable Being but not that of a changeable Becoming. The really existing is neither this nor that, as neither effect or cause, as neither past nor future, it is without sound, without touch, without form, without decay, without taste, eternal, without smell, without beginning, without end, beyond the Great, and unchangeable: it sprang from nothing, nothing sprang from it. Through the biblical theory of the fall, through Hesiod's theory of the five regressive stages, through Cicero, Seneca, and the church fathers' theory of the fall, through Rousseau's hypothesis of the idyllic and innocent primitive stage, up to the modern theories of social regress and degeneration, this conception constantly runs throughout the whole history of social thought.