During the first half of this period the original uniformity and order, which were impressed upon it by the Creator, are maintained under his guidance; but then it reaches a point from which it begins, as it were, to roll back; the Deity has loosened his grip of the machine, the order is disturbed, and the second 36,000 years are a period of gradual decay and degeneration.

At the end of this time, the world left to itself would dissolve into chaos, but the Deity again seizes the helm and restores the original conditions, and the whole process begins anew.

The first half of such a world-cycle corresponds to the Golden Age of legend in which men lived happily and simply; we have now unfortunately reached some point in the period of decadence.
Plato applies the theory of degradation in his study of political communities.

[Footnote: Plato's philosophy of history.

In the myth of the Statesman and the last Books of the Republic.