in their history—­namely, the inevitable recurrence of similar events, and after equal periods of time.  This relation between events is found to be substantially constant, though differences in the outward form of details no doubt occur.  Thus the belief of the ancients in their astrologers, soothsayers and prophets might have been warranted by the verification of many of their most important predictions, without these prognostications of future events implying of necessity anything very miraculous.  The soothsayers and augurs having occupied in days of the old civilizations the very same position now occupied by our historians, astronomers and meteorologists, there was nothing more wonderful in the fact of the former predicting the downfall of an empire or the loss of a battle, than in the latter predicting the return of a comet, a change of temperature, or perhaps the final conquest of Afghanistan.  Both studied exact sciences; for, if the astronomer of today draws his observations from mathematical calculations, the astrologer of old also based his prognostication upon no less acute and mathematically correct observations of the ever-recurring cycles.  And, because the secret of this ancient science is now being lost, does that give any warrant for saying that it never existed, or that to believe in it, one must be ready to swallow “magic,” “miracles” and the like?  “If, in view of the eminence to which modern science has reached, the claim to prophesy future events must be regarded as either child’s play or a deliberate deception,” says a writer in the Novoye Vremja, “then we can point at science which, in its turn, has now taken up and placed on record the question, whether there is or is not in the constant repetition of events a certain periodicity; in other words, whether these events recur after a fixed and determined period of years with every nation; and if a periodicity there be, whether this periodicity is due to blind chance, or depends on the same natural laws which govern the phenomena of human life.”  Undoubtedly the latter.  And the writer has the best mathematical proof of it in the timely appearance of such works as that of Dr. E. Zasse, and others.  Several learned works treating upon this mystical subject have appeared of late, and to some of these works and 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