The decline of the West : $b Volume 1, Form and actuality

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                          Transcriber’s Note:

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 THE DECLINE
 OF THE WEST








[Illustration]




                              THE DECLINE
                              OF THE WEST
                           FORM AND ACTUALITY

                                   BY

                            OSWALD SPENGLER

                        _AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION
                             WITH NOTES BY_

                        CHARLES FRANCIS ATKINSON








                   LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
                 RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1




                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                          THIS TRANSLATION IS
                              DEDICATED TO
                             ELLINOR JAMES

                                A FRIEND




                 _Wenn im Unendlichen dasselbe
                 Sich wiederholend ewig fliesst,
                 Das tausendfältige Gewölbe
                 Sich kräftig ineinander schliesst;
                 Strömt Lebenslust aus allen Dingen,
                 Dem kleinsten wie dem grössten Stern,
                 Und alles Drängen, alles Ringen
                 Ist ewige Ruh in Gott dem Herrn._
                                            —GOETHE.




                          TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE


It must be left to critics to say whether it was Destiny or Incident—
using these words in the author’s sense—that Spengler’s “Untergang des
Abendlandes” appeared in July, 1918, that is, at the very turning-point
of the four years’ World-War. It was conceived, the author tells us,
before 1914 and fully worked out by 1917. So far as he is concerned,
then, the impulse to create it arose from a view of our civilization not
as the late war left it, but (as he says expressly) as the _coming_ war
would find it. But inevitably the public impulse to read it arose in and
from post-war conditions, and thus it happened that this severe and
difficult philosophy of history found a market that has justified the
printing of 90,000 copies. Its very title was so apposite to the moment
as to predispose the higher intellectuals to regard it as a work of the
moment—the more so as the author was a simple Oberlehrer and unknown to
the world of authoritative learning.

Spengler’s was not the only, nor indeed the most “popular,”
philosophical product of the German revolution. In the graver
conjunctures, sound minds do not dally with the graver questions—they
either face and attack them with supernormal resolution or thrust them
out of sight with an equally supernormal effort to enjoy or to endure
the day as it comes. Even after the return to normality, it is no longer
possible for men—at any rate for Western men—not to know that these
questions exist. And, if it is none too easy even for the victors of the
struggle to shake off its sequelæ, to turn back to business as the
normal and to give no more than amateur effort and dilettantish
attention to the very deep things, for the defeated side this is
impossible. It goes through a period of material difficulty (often
extreme difficulty) and one in which pride of achievement and humility
in the presence of unsuccess work dynamically together. So it was with
sound minds in the post-Jena Germany of Jahn and Fichte, and so it was
also with such minds in the Germany of 1919-1920.

To assume the rôle of critic and to compare Spengler’s with other
philosophies of the present phase of Germany, as to respective intrinsic
weights, is not the purpose of this note nor within the competence of
its writer. On the other hand, it is unconditionally necessary for the
reader to realize that the book before him has not only acquired this
large following amongst thoughtful laymen, but has forced the attention
and taxed the scholarship of every branch of the learned world.
Theologians, historians, scientists, art critics—all saw the challenge,
and each brought his _apparatus criticus_ to bear on that part of the
Spengler theory that affected his own domain. The reader who is familiar
with German may be referred to Manfred Schroeter’s “Der Streit um
Spengler” for details; it will suffice here to say that Schroeter’s
index of critics’ names contains some 400 entries.