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166 and cohesion—they may be simply temporary habits of things, holding while the present cosmic order lasts, and perhaps not universally or permanently even here. All depends on the initial state of things, the way forces happen to have been collocated there. With one combination or constellation of forces one kind of world will result, and with another, another. There may be as many different kinds of worlds as there can be different arrangements and collocations of the primitive forces. To our world may then succeed a totally different kind of world, just as one totally different may have preceded it. There is no ordering of these things, no controlling design regulating them—it is all chance and accident. But—and here is the real turning-point of Nietzsche's thought—in the course of time, supposing that it goes on indefinitely, the different possible combinations of forces will have all been made. If the total amount of force, however vast and practicably incalculable, is definite, fixed, the number of combinations which its constituent parts can make is not limitless; the number may be myriad, but it cannot be infinite. If then the limit is reached, there can thereafter only be repetitions of the combinations that have already occurred—new ones are impossible (sixth point).

I may offer a very simple—seemingly too simple—illustration on my own account. Suppose that we—the reader and I—are playing dice. We throw various numbers, various combinations of numbers. There is no regularity in the succession—it is all haphazard (if we play a fair game and let chance be chance absolutely). Some time may elapse before either of us reaches any special combination, say double sixes. And yet, sooner or later we do reach it, both of us do—not because we will it, but because chance itself in the course of time is bound to give it to us. If we play on and on and do not reach it, we inevitably suspect that something is the matter with the dice, i.e., that they have been loaded, that pure chance does not rule. So of each and every combination—we are bound to throw them all, if we take sufficient time, and there has been no tampering with the dice. But after we have thrown all the combinations, what