THE DAY CYCLE AND THE YEAR CYCLE 307
attested to be convincingly explained away. If these repetitions and uni-
formities have to be accepted as being realities, there are two obvious
main alternative possibilities to be explored. The human affairs with
which we are concerned in the present Part of this Study are, we may
here remind ourselves, Man's psychic and spiritual affairs, as contrasted
with his bodily physique and physiology, which, for our present purpose,
we are treating as part of his non-human environment. If human affairs
in this pertinent restricted sense of the term are subject to 'laws of
Nature', these laws that govern them may be either laws current in
Man's non-human environment which impose themselves on human
affairs from outside by force majeure without having any more intimate
relation than this with Human Nature, or alternatively they may govern
human affairs in virtue of being inherent in the psychic structure and
working of Human Nature itself. It may be convenient to look into these
two possibilities in the order in which we have just mentioned them.

We may perhaps venture to start by making the assumption that, in
the non-human provinces of Nature, there are 'laws of Nature' that are
not only operative but manifest. Post-Modern Western men of science
seemed to take the reign of Law over Non-Human Nature for granted,
and, so far as the present writer was aware, post-Modern Western
historians had not carried their Antinomianism to the length of chal-
lenging the savants of the non-human sciences on these sciences' own
ground. Nor again did the historians seem to dispute the thesis that, in
Man's non-human environment, there were some uniforrnities, regula-
rities, and recurrences that had an effect on human affairs. Some of the
astronomical cycles in the physical motion of the Stellar Universe are
obvious cases in point.

The Day-and-Night Cycle, for example, manifestly affects 'the every-
day life of ordinary people' in all human societies of every species, since
human beings have an ineradicable physiological need for sleep at least
once in every twenty-four hours, and night-time is the time for sleep that
is indicated to Man by the physiological laws governing his body. Though
fish-spearers, burglars, bakers, monks,1 and journalists may be con-

1 The monks of a monastery on Mount Athos in which the writer had been spending
the night as a guest in June 1912 courteously expressed to him, the morning after, their
hope that his sleep had not been disturbed by their frequent nocturnal celebrations of
the Liturgy. Wishing to return his hosts' courtesy in kind, the writer on his side ex-
pressed the hope that the monks did not find these never intermitted night-long vigils
too painfully exhausting. 'Not at all', replied the monks, 'considering that we are able to
sleep in the day-time.'—'And how do you manage to do that?' their English guest
inquired. 'O, well, because we have fine estates in Rumili, with peasants on them to work
them for us. You will remember our showing you yesterday our arsenal at the water's
edge, stored with provisions of grain, oil, and wine. All that comes from our estates, and
the peasants have to deliver it to us at the arsenal by water.'—"And how do the peasants
live ?' I asked. 'O, the peasants live like dogs', said the monks, 'but you can see for your-
self what an admirable arrangement ours is. As the peasants work for us and fetch and
carry for us, instead of our having to do any of this for ourselves, we can. afford to sleep
in the day-time and so keep_ ourselves fresh for praying at night, and this is really most
advantageous, as you can imagine. After all, most people in the World—including,
perhaps, Your Honour (TOV Ao'yov eras)—are in this respect in the less favourable position
of our peasants. Having, as they do have, to work all day, they are forced to spend the
night in sleep instead of in prayer, in order to be fit for work again next morning; so at
night-time the volume of prayers reaching God is at a minimum, and this means that
God can give to a prayer offered up to Him during the night an amount of individual
attention that would be out of the question in the day-time, when the great majority of