THE DECLINE OF THE WESTVol. IIPerspectives of World HistoryOswald SpenglerTranslated from the German by Charles Francis AtkinsonKnopf ($7.50).
Beset by doubts, historical philosophers base their theories on one certitude. Civilizations are never static. They are always in motion, creatively toward stronger outpourings of their spirit or destructively toward decay and dissolution. Thus Western civilization, with its vaulting expression in Gothic cathedrals, Beethoven, da Vinci, Einstein, Manhattan's sun-smitten towers, is either seething onward toward mightier transactions, more luminous cultural & scientific manifestations, or suffering the nervous, senile disintegration which desolated Rome, Egypt,...