nd
calculations we shall presently refer. A very suggestive work by a
well-known German scientist, E. Zasse, appears in the Prussian Journal
of Statistics, powerfully corroborating the ancient theory of cycles.
These periods which bring around ever-recurring events, begin from the
infinitesimally small--say of ten years--rotation, and reach to cycles
which require 250, 500, 700, and 1000 years to effect their revolutions
around themselves, and within one another. All are contained within the
Maha-Yug, the "Great Age" or Cycle of Manu's calculation, which itself
revolves between two eternities--the "Pralayas" or Nights of Brahma.
As, in the objective world of matter, or the system of effects, the
minor constellations and planets gravitate each and all around the sun,
so in the world of the subjective, or the system of causes, these
innumerable cycles all gravitate between that which the finite intellect
of the ordinary mortal regards as eternity, and the still finite, but
more profound, intuition of the sage and philosopher views as but an
eternity within THE ETERNITY. "As above, so it is below," runs the old
Hermetic maxim. As an experiment in this direction, Dr. Zasse selected
the statistical investigations of all the wars recorded in history, as a
subject which lends itself more easily to scientific verification than
any other. To illustrate his subject in the simplest and most easily
comprehensible manner, Dr. Zasse represents the periods of war and the
periods of peace in the shape of small and large wave-lines running over
the area of the Old World. The idea is not a new one, for the image was
used for similar illustrations by more than one ancient and medieval
mystic, whether in words or pictures--by Henry Kunrath, for example.
But it serves well its purpose, and gives us the facts we now want.
Before he treats, however, of the cycles of wars, the author brings in
the record of the rise and fall of the world's great empires, and shows
the degree of activity they have played in the Universal History. He
points out the fact that if we divide the map of the Old World into six
parts--into Eastern, Central, and Western Asia, Eastern and Western
Europe, and Egypt--then we shall easily perceive that every 250 years an
enormous wave passes over these areas, bringing to each in its turn the
events it has brought to the one next preceding. This wave we may call
"the historical wave" of the 250 years' cycle.

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