Despite Nietzsche's conclusion that the known facts of existence do not bear it out, and the essential impossibility of discussing it to profit, the doctrine of eternal recurrence is by no means unthinkable. The celestial cycle put forward, as an hypothesis, by modern astronomy--the progression, that is, from gas to molten fluid, from fluid to solid, and from solid, by catastrophe, back to gas again--is easily conceivable, and it is easily conceivable, too, that the earth, which has passed through an uninhabitable state into a habitable state, may one day become uninhabitable again, and so keep seesawing back and forth through all eternity.
krytyka · Eternal Recurrence
Powrót nie jest nie do pomyślenia
Mencken ocenia, że choć Nietzsche nie znalazł dla wiecznego powrotu oparcia w faktach, nie jest on nie do pomyślenia, ponieważ astronomiczna hipoteza kosmicznych cykli od gazu do ciała stałego i z powrotem czyni go łatwym do wyobrażenia.
Tekst oryginalny (angielski)
- Wieczny powrótWaży wiarygodność tej nauki wobec nowoczesnych hipotez astronomicznych.