RECONSIDERATIONS (740 pp.)—Arnold J. Toynbee—Oxford ($10).
THE INTENT OF TOYNBEE'S HISTORY (224 pp.)—Edifed by Edward T. Gargan —Loyola ($5).
Scholars are not a notably generous lot. When they review one another's work, the friction of dry skin is almost audible as they rub their hands over a colleague's failure to sustain a thesis, his reliance on a wrong date, a superseded document or, better still, a bogus one. An expert on the receiving end of this kind of abuse is famed Historian Arnold J. Toynbee. His massive, ten-volume Study of History (TIME, Oct. 18, 1954) left him vulnerable on at least two scores: 1) it became the most widely discussed history of modern times, and popularity is a crown most scholars professionally deplore with the same fervor that they secretly pray for it; 2) Toynbee had attempted to rise above "microscopic" research, impose a grand order on world history in terms of civilizations, and then to move beyond even that to the great religions. There, Toynbee declared, man's summit goal was nothing less than God.
So vast was his canvas that mistakes were inevitable. Not even his astonishing erudition could save him from them, and his colleagues pounced on them with cries that expressed responses all the way from learned indignation to simple glee. He has been accused of ignorance, of dabbling in mythology at the expense of fact, of distorting fact to bolster false theories, of writing a prose poem, of trying to achieve an education in the process of writing a book. The fact is that a lot of the criticism was justified. It was also fact that with all of its errors of detail, the History was the boldest and most exciting effort yet made by a modern historian to chart man's troubled, inspired climb from primitive morass to a fellowship of man and God.
Meo Culpa. Toynbee was stung by the criticisms, perhaps even shaken. The proof lies in Toynbee's Reconsiderations, a massive overhauling of his previous positions, which is at the same time an astonishing admission of error. At the same time, The Intent of Toynbee's History provides a broad platform for nine of his keenest critics to have a fresh go at an already well-clobbered classic. On the whole, the critical lash falls with less severity than formerly. It is true that Professor David M. Robinson, an expert on Toynbee's favorite "Hellenic" world, hardly tries to conceal his conviction that Toynbee is profoundly ignorant of some of the basic sources of study in his favorite field. Professor Matthew A. Fitzsimons of Notre Dame says flatly that Toynbee's treatment of the U.S. "is in accurate and distorted, insufficient and indefinite." Yet most of these experts pay homage to his scope, his overall grasp, the boldness of his vision. Relatively, time has been on Toynbee's side. In 1935, reviewing the first three volumes of the Study, the Journal of Modern History sniped: "A Gargantuan feast, shall we say? Or is it hash and not chopped up fine enough at that?"