Thomas Burnet's Battleground of Time - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 47

certain periods: and what was originally good and happy, to make it so
again" (376). (Burnet uses the word "revolution" in its Newtonian, pre-1776
and pre-Bastille sense to mean turning, not upheaval.)
Cycles also embody an aesthetic necessity, for the world would be
impoverished and ill-formed without a concept of renewal for those parts of
nature that wear out:
There would be nothing great or considerable in this inferior world, if there
were not such revolutions of nature. The seasons of the year, and the fresh
productions of the spring, are pretty in their way; but when the Great Year
comes about, with a new order of all things, in the heavens and on the earth;
and a new dress of nature throughout all her regions, far more goodly and
beautiful than the fairest spring; this gives a new life to the creation, and
shows the greatness of its author. (246)
Burnet pays special homage to time's cycle in discussing the recovery of
paradise following the conflagration. The renewal of perfection shall be so
precise that only an inherent cyclicity of time could underlie such a
restoration—for topography shall be smooth again, and by the same method
(sorting by density of a chaotic mass of particles into concentric layers);
while restored radial symmetry shall rectify the earth's axis to its original
upright position. Thus, all parts of the globe shall "be restored to the same
posture they had at the beginning of the world; so as the whole character of
the Great Year would be truly fulfilled . . . A general harmony and
conformity of all the motion of the universe would presently appear, such, as
they say, was in the Golden Age, before any disorder came into the natural or
moral world" (257).
As Burnet developed a suite of metaphors to capture time's arrow, his
discussions of time's cycle invoked a set of analogies to capture the other
face of history. Some are geometric (contrasting with the "line" or "channel"
of time's arrow)—"the circle of successions"; "the great circle of time and
fate" (13). Others invoke the seasonal and annual cycles of our own
experience (contrasting with analogies