376 LAW AND FREEDOM IN HISTORY

Moreover, there was at least one 'affiliated* civilization—the Western
—whose epiphany could be dated but whose growth-span nevertheless
could not be measured in A.D. 1952 because at that date it was still
impossible to tell whether this civilization had or had not yet broken
down.1

Subject to these still unclarified uncertainties, it was possible in A.D.
1952 to draw up the accompanying table2 of the approximate Time-
spans of the growth of the 'affiliated' civilizations in a descending order
of duration.

In this table there are, no doubt, certain traces of regularity. For
example, apart from the two extremes represented by the Western
Civilization and the Mexic Civilization respectively, the Time-spans
appear to fall into five groups: one of about 600 to 700 years length (in
four instances); one of about 400 years (in three instances); one of about
300 years (in two instances); one of about 175 to 200 years (in four in-
stances) ; and one of about 100 years (in two instances). It also seems un-
likely to be merely an accident that two civilizations so closely resemb-
ling one another in their structure as the Hellenic Civilization and the
Medieval Western city-state cosmos should have an identical Time-
span. Such appearances of regularity, however, are insignificant by com-
parison with the magnitude of the differences in a spread of Time-spans
ranging in length from 850 years or more to zero; and some of the greatest
of these chronological differences are to be found between the respec-
tive spans of twin societies that are affiliated to the same predecessor and
are coeval in their epiphanies. The Hellenic Society's growth-span of
some 700 years presents as great a contrast to the twin Syriac Society's
span of some 200 years as the Western Society's span of 875 years or
more presents to the twin Orthodox Christian Society's span of some
300 years.

2. A Diversity in the Relations of Religion to the Rises and Falls of
Civilizations in Different Generations

In a previous context3 we have observed that every social interregnum
between civilizations of different generations that had occurred in the
history of this species of society up to date had been marked by flashes
of religious light; but we have also observed that these successive flashes
had been strikingly unequal in the degree of their luminosity. The
higher religions which had made their epiphany during the falls of the
secondary civilizations had brought into the world a spiritual illumina-
tion which seemed beyond compare with the fainter light cast either by
the rudimentary higher religions that had appeared during the falls of
the primary civilizations or by the secondary higher religions that had
been appearing during the falls of the tertiary civilizations.* This dif-
ference in degree of spiritual power was so great that it amounted to a
difference in kind and quality; and there could be no clearer intimation
than this that the rotation of the sorrowful wheel of Human Life on

1 See XII, passim, below.

* Table V at the end of the present volume.

3 In VIJ. vii 420-5. + See Table IV in voL vii, ad fin.