Excerpt from The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim But, fortunately for humanity, each evil carries its own remedy in its bosom, each action is followed by a reaction, and the progression of the world resembles the move ments of a pendulum that swings from one side to the other, while it at the same time moves forward. Ages of bigotry are followed by periods of thought that may end in ages of scepticism; centuries of scientific or religious ignorance, intolerance, and superstition lead to revolutions of thought that may, again, end in atheism and crime; but each swing of the pendulum raises humanity a step higher on the ladder of progression. When it reaches the point of gravity, it would stop unless pushed on by the impulse coming from one or the other extreme. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.