The apocatastasis, or, Progress backwards : a new tract for the times

Front matter

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CHAPTER I. Manilii Astronomicon, iii. 58

Ye stars celestial ! Children of black Night,

Effulgent, genitors of all events,

Who Fate obey, and who all fates dispose,

Their lot appointing unto mortal men,

All hail !

" The sun ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south and turneth about unto the north, it whirleth about continually ; and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full ; unto the place from whence the rivers came, thither they return again.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be : and that which is clone is that which shall be clone ; and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this-is new ? it hath been already of old time, which was before us." (Solomon.)

The Preacher, doubtless, speaks truth here, yet he speaks somewhat superficially, or as a mere outside observer. He does not unveil the causes, and announce to us the Law in obedience to Avhich all terrestrial things not only " flow" but revolve, evermore moving onward, and onward, without let or stay, yet evermore returning, and coming round, full circle, to the points through which, before, many times, it may be, they have already passed. Perhaps he had not investigated the' subject, — being of pretty extensive business engagements — and having, besides, much other literary work on hand : or perhaps the mere " weariness to the flesh," induced by " much study," which extorted " vanity of vanities ! all is vanity !" "of making books there is no end," may have made him content to assert the bare fact, of the incessant and stale iteration of things, while he was not in the mood to go into explanations, which, nevertheless, he may have been very competent to give. His silence, however, from whatever cause it may have originated, is the less to be regretted, because other wise men have spoken fully to the point which Solomon overlooked or neglected.

" The blessed body which revolves in a circle, (the visible heavens,) is the cause of the events in the sublunary world. For both are parts of the universe, and they have a certain relation to each other. If, therefore, the cause of generation in the things which surround us, originates in the natures which are above us, it follows that the seeds of things which happen here, descend from thence. . And if some one should add, since astronomy gives credibility to this, that there are apocatastatic periods of the stars and spheres, some of which are simple but others compounded, such a one will partly accord with the Egyptians, and partly with the Grecians. A man of this kind, therefore, will not deny that in consequence of the same motions returning, effects also will return together with their causes ; and that lives on the earth, generations, educations, dispositions and fortunes, will be the same with those that formerly existed." (Synesius de Providentia.) — These apocatastatic periods (tspioSoi, completed revolutions,) of the stars or spheres are of several kinds, as intimated in the above extract, and of course come round at different intervals. Two of the heavenly bodies may come to have the same relative position to each other which they had at some preceding time ; as when the earth, at any given point of its orbit, has the same relation to the sun which it had a year before ; — or the earth, sun, and moon ; or these with one, or with more than one, of the planets, may come to the same relative position which they have been in before, and this, happening at different intervals for each combination of bodies, will be, for each combination, their apocatastatic period. Or the entire number of astronomical bodies may come to the same relative position they have had before. "The end therefore of the mundane year is, when all the planets and all the fixed stars have returned from a certain place to the same place, so that no star in the heavens may be situated in a place different from that in which it was before. ****** This, however,, according to the decision of physiologists, will take place at the expiration of 15,000 years. * * * * This year, therefore, is called the truly revolving year" &c. (Macrobius, in Somn. Scip. lib. ii.)

According to Firmicius, (Mathesis lib. iii) this is called the greater apocatastasis, and consists of 300,000 years. If then we suppose this period to commence from the present position of the heavens, all events on the earth for the next 300,000 years, or 15,000 years, the difference is not much, will be identically the same that .they have been for the last 300,000, or 15,000 years. The successive apocatastatic periods of smaller numbers of heavenly bodies, instead of producing the same, will produce similar sublunary events, and these will be like in proportion to the number and sameness of siderial powers which combine to produce them. So much, and it would seem to be sufficient, as of unquestionable authority, we may rely upon, without the aid of Solomon, in explanation of his assertion of the perpeutual reiteration of things under the sun. But not only are these periods different in duration, but they are different in the character and quality of the terrestrial effects they produce ; the periods of different stars or combinations of stars, bringing about different results, — those of the same, the same, or similar results. " Not only with respect to terrestrial plants, but likewise in terrestrial animals, a fertility and sterility of soul as well as of body takes place, when the revolutions of the heavenly bodies complete the periphery of their respective orbits ; which are shorter to the shorter lived, and contrarywise to such as are the contrary." (Plato, de Re^ publica, viii.) That is, the apocatastatic periods of some stars are shorter, and of others longer ; those of some are periods of sterility and degeneracy of men, animals, and plants ; those of others, periods of fertility and excellence. Thus, though the great cycle of 300,000 years is constantly repeating itself with ail its same sublunary events, this does not prevent that it may include within itself many smaller revolutions which repeat themselves, with their similar terrestrial results, at various intervals ; in fact it consists of these shorter circumvolutions : " With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,

Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb." witness, as the celestial orbs revolve, and come to their various apocatastatic positions,the constant repetition of night and day ; the return of similar seasons ; the emergence from barbarism, the culmination, and the decay, of nations — return to the same point of barbarism from whence they started ; and this process repeating itself perpetually in the same nations, the several mutations exhibiting essentially the same phases at each successive revolution. Yet these historico-dramatic exhibitions of terrestrial events will be the same with a difference, — the players are different, or if they are the same (Plato, de Repub. Lib. X) they are, unfortunately, not permitted to remember how they played before ; and then in every large but partial cycle there may be some adjacent body which holds a different relation to it at different revolutions ; or some interloping comet may cross the orbit of the period, modifying or dislocating its history at some points. We are not, therefore, to understand Solomon quite literally. "We are not to expect, in comparing one partial apocatastatic period with another, or rather, the same period with itself in its successive revolutions, to find, in earthly relations, an exact parallel and identity. It is sufficient if we recognize a strong family likeness, a characteristic resemblance in most things, although there may be decided otherness in others, owing to temporary, accidental disturbing influences. Or single traits of the most decided similarity may characterize two successive periods, traits which may be quite accidental, and foreign to their true physiognomy and which may disappear in the third ; as where the tails of two different but equal comets happen to pass severally across the same portion of their orbit during the two contiguous revolutions.

In order to ascertain, in regard to two historical periods which remind us of one another, whether they are really apocatastatic, it is not always necessary to consult the astronomers, or the astrological doctors, to know whether their beginnings coincide chronologically with the apocatastatic position, and as it were, meeting in conclave, of the same celestial notabilities ; it will be sufficient to determine by inspection whether they both belong to Plato's periods, either of fertility or of sterility, that is, whether they are both fertile or both barren periods in the Platonic sense. And by way of example and specimen of such periods, and of the proper method of detecting them, I will make a quotation from a most learned and very extraordinary man, one peculiarly well qualified to have an opinion in such abstruse matters, a sort of christian heathen, in the midst of Christendom in the nineteenth century, a man who honestly and manfully went over from Jehovah to Jupiter, a Julian on a small scale. Listen to his profession of faith in a Note on the following passage in his translation of Marinus' Life of Proclus. " But he purified himself every month, by the sacred rites in honour of the mother of the gods, celebrated by the Romans, and prior to them by the Phrygians : he likewise more diligently observed the unfortunate days of the Egyptians, than they themselves ; and besides this, fasted on certain clays in a peculiar manner on account of the lunar appearances." So far from the Life ; — the Note is as follows : " A genuine modern will doubtless consider the whole of Proclus' religious conduct as ridiculously superstitious.

And so? indeed, at first sight, it appears ; but he who has penetrated the depths of ancient wisdom, will find in it more than meets the vulgar ear. The religion of the Heathens, has indeed, for many centuries, been the object of ridicule and contempt ; yet the author of the present work is not ashamed to own, that he is a perfect convert to it in every particular, so far as it was understood and illustrated by the Pythagoric and Platonic Philosophers." I have called the author of the above an extraordinary man, not because a christian heathen is anything extraordinary at the present time, they are thick as autumn leaves, but because few of them have the magnanimity to renounce their baptism, and profess publicly their adhesion to the " Dii Majores et gentium." I desire, however, to take this occasion to acknowledge my obligations to the gentleman in question, — not for his heathenism but for his learning — for I shall often, in the course of this work, find it muehmore convenient to use his translations than to make them for myself, besides that, in many cases, the originals are not within my reach. "Where I cannot avail myself of his aid I must not be expected to translate with his admirable closeness to the original ; I shall however hope to give the true meaning of the passages cited, or where I am in doubt I will give the original itself. Such show of learning is not to my taste, but in the present instance, as the reader will perceive bye and bye, it appears to be unavoidable.

But to the promised quotation. — " The different periods in which these mutations happen, are called by Plato, with great propriety, periods of fertility and sterility ; for in these periods a fertility or sterility of men, irrational animals, and plants, takes place ; so that in fertile periods mankind will be both more numerous, and upon the whole, superior in mental and bodily endowments, to the men of a barren period. And a similar reasoning must be extended to animals and plants. The so much celebrated heroic age -was the result of one of these fertile periods, in which men, transcending the herd of mankind, both in practical and intellectual virtue, abounded on the earth. And a barren period may be considered as having commenced somewhat prior to the Augustan age, the destruction of all the great cities, with all their rites, philosophy, (fee, being the natural consequence of such a period. It appears to me that this period commenced in the time of Sylla, and I found this opinion on the following passage in Plutarch's life of that great commander. " But the greatest of all (the signs prior to the civil wars) was the following : On a cloudless and clear day, the sound of^a trumpet was heard, so acute, and mournful, as to astonish and terrify by its loudness, all that heard it. The Tuscan wise men and soothsayers, therefore, declared that this prodigy signified the mutation into, and commencement of another age. — For, according to them, there are eight ages, differing from each other in lives and manners, each of which is limited by divinity to a certain time of duration, and the number of years of which this time consists is bounded by the period of the great year. Hence when one age is finished, and another is about to commence, a certain wonderful sign will present itself, either from the earth or the heavens. The moumfulness of this sound of the trumpet was evidently an indication that a barren period was about to commence." (Thomas Taylor, Translation of Firmicius, Note d.)

Thus we find the weight of authority in favor of the controling influence of apocatastatic periods to be very great, and w e need no longer be in doubt in regard to the reasons of the iterations of things earthly. "We see too why the smaller cycles of events may repeat themselves with a difference, for only the " greater apocatastasis" can have all its relation identically the same. It is manifest too, that the same apocatastatic series may take place in one part of the earth in one period, and in another part of it in the next period. For, suppose the earth itself not to be one of the celestial bodies whose return to their apocatastatic position is to give character to the period in question ; it follows that the earth may be in different parts of its annual orbit, and of its diurnal revolution, at the two successive apocatastatic moments or points of time, that is, for I wish to be understood, at the instant of one apocatastatic position of the stars that rule the period, the earth may be in one place, and at the next apocatastasis of the same stars, in another place. Hence, plainly, if the "seeds of things which happen here descend from thence," and the apocatastatic moment is the seed-time ; the seeds which descend may, at different apocatastases, fall upon different parts of the earth's surface ; so that events which before happened in one hemisphere, may have their second rehearsal in the other ; or what was before in one longitude may have its next event in another. Hence, too, the same specific events, products of the same "seeds," may exhibit widely differing varieties at the different plantings ; just as specifically the same tree in Italy will differ from itself in America and that at the base of, a mountain will be quite unlike itself at the top.

But whither, quoth the practical reader, does this talk tend ? Do you not, then, immediately perceive, my sagacious friend, that its direction is towards the most practical results imaginable 1 For, if it were made known to you that on Wednesday next you were to start a journey, would you not be looking afteryour trunks 1 Or if a voyage were announced, would you not hasten to provide sea stores ? Does not the husbandman, in winter, make ready for the joyous labors of spring, because he knows that the apocatastasis of the earth and sun will then open his fields for cultivation ? Does not the merchant raise his wharves above the ordinary level of the Ocean, and even above that of everyday tides, because he foresees that the return of the Sun and Moon to certain former relative positions will be attended with high water ? But these are small influences of one or two astronomical bodies, repeated at short intervals ; how much more, then, where numbers of the celestial spheres meet in solemn conclave to determine again, and predetermine, the whole series of earthly events, it may be, for a thousand years, not only in the physical and physiological, but in the intellectual and moral regions ; — how much more, could that order of events be foreknown to men as they fore know the succession of the seasons and the times of the tides, might such a knowledge be of the utmost practical value to mankind. If, then, by the aid of the genethliaci, or other mathematical and star-gazing people, or by other means, as intimated and exemplified in the quotation from Mr. Thomas Taylor, it could be certainly determined to what historic period our own, for instance, holds apocatastatic relation ; what a chart were it in this uncertain sea, for the statesman, the philanthropist, the divine, and indeed for all men. How might nations provide for foreseen collisions Avith other nations, or guard themselves, like the prescient ruler of Egypt, against a coming scarcity ; — how might the philanthropist prepare and adapt his charities to the very needs that were about to demand them ; — the physician prearm himself to do battle with the pestilence which he saw in the distance ; — the divine furnish himself with arguments wherewith to combat the errors, delusions, and false religions, the character of which, and the time of whose arrival he knew beforehand ; — how might the fortunate man be more than doubly fortunate in the preenjoyment of his coming prosperity ; — and the unfortunate strengthen himself against evils which he saw to be inevitable. How might it not be, for all men, almost as if each individual should be permitted to repeat his own life, in order to avail himself of the experience acquired in his first crude and unsatisfactory experiment, in order not to do what he had before done wrong, and to do better what little if any he might have done well ; — which, who would not rejoice at the opportunity of attempting ?

Do you, 0, doubting reader, doubt the reality of such apocatastatic repetitions of terrestrial events ? how then do you account for the solemn asseveration of Solomon 1 or what presumption must you be possessed of if you yield not to the authority of the " divine Plato," the " divine Plutarch," the " divine Proclus," the " divine Iamblichus," and the Divine. Synesius, who was besides a bishop.

Or do ? you profanely answer me that if all events on earth are thus planted and predetermined by the celestial conclaves, the " conscia fati sidera," that human foreknowledge cannot avail to alter or avoid what is preordained to be ? my unthinking friend, you are like a non-orthodox sinner caviling at the foreknowledge[of God, which as any old theologian can inform you, is one of the most pregnant signs of reprobation.

Chapter II

Look here, upon this picture, and on this; The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. Hamlet.

Inasmuch, therefore, as it has now been sufficiently demonstrated, to all men capable of appreciating an argument, that all mundane, and especially all sublunary, and terrestrial, affairs recur, come back, and copy themselves apocatastatically, as the tides follow the moon incessantly round the earth ; and since it must be obvious to all properly disciplined, and truly •thoughtful, minds, — notwithstanding the irreverent scoffs of shallow sciolists, — that a knowledge of its apocatastatic whereabouts may be, to any age or nation, of unspeakable practical value ; may I, benevolent reader, in your opinion, hope to be pardoned, if pardon it need, for what, doubtless to many, may look like a very presumptuous attempt, viz : the philanthropic attempt to point out to this age, and to this nation especially, its true apocatastatic relations to the past.

First of all, then, is the present, a fertile period in the Platonic sense, or is it a period of sterility ; that is, according to Plato's own commentary upon himself, a period of dissolution, degeneracy, and corruption (<pdopa) ? It is to be remembered that the baleful influence of the conjunction of malignant stars extends to animals, and plants, and to all social institutions, as well as to men personally. (See Repub. Lib. viii.) To begin with, the vegetable kingdom, — witness the late Irish famine ; and do not the dealers in flour already announce the approach of another ? and more than ten famines, as likely to result in a standing famine, and, a thousand years hence to stand forth as the great historic event characteristic of the present times ; witness the potato-rot ! ! Besides, all men must have observed that certain species of trees, in all places, and in all circumstances, seem to be struck with a fatal blight, as if a curse had been pronounced upon their race. Witness also the exorbitant prices of all articles of human food, that infallible criterion of scarcity : and I think that, without further proof, it must be acknowledged that the present is anything but a fertile period for the vegetable, and of course for the animal world. For can beasts flourish without browse, or men be prolific without potatoes ? In regard to the human race moreover, — witness that terrible, and so often repeated scourge, of Cholera, and the hitherto unusual extent and malignity of yellow fever ; and are not these sufficient evidence of the moral as well as of the physiological degeneracy and corruption of the present race of men? And, then, consider the institutions of the present ; are not all the thrones of the old world trembling like an aspen in the wind, or at least so aguishly disposed that they shake " at the shaking of a leaf?" and are not we on the very verge of the dissolution of the Union ? All things tend to change, that is, to dissolution, decay, corruption ; it is manifest therefore, that we have entered upon one of Plato's periods of sterility.

What historic period, then, is calculated to remind us of the present time ? of what period have the characteristic features and lineaments a strong family resemblance to those of the present ? Do not all men of historic reading turn at once to the latter times of the Roman Republic ? Has there ever been on earth any other republic with which our own can be. for a moment paralleled ? Thanks to Plutarch, and Mr. Thomas Taylor, we know that that also was a period of sterility, and also, still more fortunately, the very apocatastatic point of time at which it commenced ; for it would avail us very little to know to what apocatastatic period we have succeeded, unless we can also ascertain in what part of its orbit we are now situated. But in order to arrive at this indispensable condition of available knowledge, it becomes necessary .mine also when the succeeding period, that is our own, had its commencement. From what date, now — or have we any < which to settle so nice a point of chronology J I

fear we shall not be able to find any record of the repetition of that loud and mournful sound of a trumpet "on a cloudless and clear day," which heralded the birth, and indicated the exact moment of the advent, of our apocatastatic elder brother, (that is, provided we prove our relationship). And had there been such, — unless we are further advanced into the period than I incline to think,— beyond all doubt, the second advent people would not have failed to make a note of it. It is not however necessary, as I understand the Tuscan wise men, that identically the same wonderful sign should present itself at the ushering in of each corresponding period, but only that some equivalent sign should manifest itself from the earth or the heavens. It is recorded by the elder Pliny, (Natur. Histor. Lib. ii. 58) who also mentions the sound of the trumpet spoken of by Plutarch, that, about the same time, there was heard in the sky sounds as of a battle, and that armies were actually seen to approach each other and fight in the heavens. Now unless I remember incorrectly, it was recorded not more than thirty years ago, that. " on a cloudless and clear day" as I believe, there was heard in the heavens a pretty smart cannonading, and I think armies were seen also at this time. The portent was supposed, at the time, if I remember, to have some relation to some of the Creek or Seminole wars, while in fact it might have been intended to announce much more important events. But as this "sign," though perhaps as "wonderful," is not quite as well attested as that recorded by Pliny and Plutarch, it will not perhaps be safe to rely wholly upon it as a-chronological, or apocatastatical, starting point, on an occasion of so much importance.

How, then, shall we find our initial point ? A sarcastic whig proposes a solution of the difficulty which looks extremely plausible, and which, so far as I know, does not violate any law of interpretation laid down for such cases. I am so well pleased with his theory that I propose to adopt it, but as I am not a fighting man, in case I should, instead of being, in the usual slang, newspaper way, called upon, be politely called out, to defend it, I expect he will have the goodness to take my place. He says, then, that Sylla, being a consummate general and Consul, that is president of the Roman Republic, is to be considered a historical, or representative character, and that, as the period of sterility to which our own may prove to be second, is known to have begun in his time, we must, therefore, look for some corresponding representative individual of our own time. That is, we must find some individual holding equivalent offices in the Republic, and whose public or representative acts, moreover, correspond to those of Sylla. What, then, did Sylla 1 My friend says that he began " new measures" in the State by putting to death two of his enemies, or those who were setting on his enemies ; — he does not say whether they were hanged, — that he first set the example of proscription, for opinion's sake, on a large scale ; that he made himself Dictator ; that he trampled not only on his enemies, but on all the other departments of the government ; and that, instead of executing the laws, he administered the constitution, as he understood it.

And I think it must be confessed that history bears him out. He says moreover, with a lurking smile, which is rather a sneer, as if he himself may perhaps have been among the proscribed, that it is no slight confirmation of the correctness of his theory, that there has been an individual in our time, holding the same offices, and in all his public acts and relations copying so exactly this " old Roman," that, even without naming him, there is not a man in the United States who does not at once recognize the portrait ; that the public character and conduct of the one are so perfect a counterpart of those of the other, that it is impossible to account for it except on the supposition of an apocatastatic " damnable iteration." Here, then, we have been enabled, with apparent certainty, to fix upon exactly corresponding and coincident points in the two periods, which, of course, determines their chronological relations throughout ; for any other such points are equally available for that purpose as the initial points. We may, therefore, feel quite independent of any "certain wonderful sign," either from the earth or the heavens, as it is no longer of consequence to us whether it was accurately observed and recorded or not. Let us now suppose, for the present, that the ^historic and representative acts of our "old Roman" president are really, what they are apparently, apocatastatic copies, or repetitions, and we have not only coincident points of the two periods having apocatastatic relation, but those points are obviously — if any one may feel curious in that regard, — very near their respective beginnings ; probably a little posterior, for the "mournful sound of the trumpet," according to Pliny, was heard during the Cimbric war, which was some years before the first consulship of Sylla, and this also is not at all discordant with the time mentioned by Plutarch : and we are prepared for a somewhat more detailed comparison and parallelism of the two periods assumed, to see whether they can really make out their apocatastatic identity. And first, and most strikingly characteristic, standing out from the historic canvass, obvious even to the blind, are the two grand, haughty, all-absorbing, overshadowing, Republics ! ! The thoughtful reader will also take note that these Republics are not only wonderfully parallel in all their essential relations — for how they may have happened to be in different parts of the earth has already been explained, — but also that they are unique, having no similarity to anything except to each other ; — for their third preceding advent lies beyond the horizon of history, with the Trojan wars &c, "before Agamemnon," devoured, record and all, by that old Saturn, who, swine like, eats up his own offspring.