Abstract

This book covers ground which authors like Mircea Eliade have treated more adequately, if not as inclusively. The "cosmic cycles" of Mesopotamia and Indian thought are related to the historical cyclic theories of the moderns, Vico, Spengler. Toynbee, and Sorokin. Because of her mystical vision, Cairns fails to see clearly that modern cyclical ideas of history are based on an analogy of the present with the past and are animated by empirical observation. The information used is accumulated rather than analysed, the ideas are opinions, the conclusion science-fiction.--A. R.