Books: Prophet of Hope & Fear

A STUDY OF HISTORY, Vols. VII-X (2,685 pp.)—Arnold J. Toynbee—Oxford ($35).

Above the high altar of the Benedictine Abbey of Ampleforth, in Yorkshire, hung a man. He was holding on precariously to the foot of the crucifix, while a voice said: "Amplexus expecta [Cling and wait] !"

Thus Professor Arnold Toynbee once saw himself in a dream. The eminent British historian (who dreams as fluently in Latin as he writes in Greek) tells this nighttime vision in the concluding volumes of his monumental Study of History. While to 20th century psychoanalysts the dream may...