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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. These critics are not
only, or even principally, general reviewers, most of them being
specialists of high standing. It is, to say the least, remarkable that a
volcanically assertive philosophy of history, visibly popular and
produced under a catchy title (Reklamtitel) should call forth, as it
did, a special number of _Logos_ in which the Olympians of scholarship
passed judgment on every inaccuracy or unsupported statement that they
could detect. (These were in fact numerous in the first edition and the
author has corrected or modified them in detail in the new edition, from
which this translation has been done. But it should be emphasized that
the author has not, in this second edition, receded in any essentials
from the standpoint taken up in the first.)
The conspicuous features in this first burst of criticism were, on the
one hand, want of adequate critical equipment in the general critic,
and, on the other, inability to see the wood for the trees in the man of
learning. No one, reading Schroeter’s book (which by the way is one-
third as large as Spengler’s first volume itself), can fail to agree
with his judgment that notwithstanding paradoxes, overstrainings, and
inaccuracies, the work towers above all its commentators. And it was
doubtless a sense of this greatness that led many scholars—amongst them
some of the very high—to avoid expressing opinions on it at all. It
would be foolish to call their silence a “sitting on the fence”; it is a
case rather of reserving judgment on a philosophy and a methodology that
challenge all the canons and carry with them immense implications. For
the very few who combine all the necessary depth of learning with all
the necessary freedom and breadth of outlook, it will not be the
accuracy or inaccuracy of details under a close magnifying-glass that
will be decisive. The very idea of accuracy and inaccuracy presupposes
the selection or acceptance of co-ordinates of reference, and therefore
the selection or acceptance of a standpoint as “origin.” That is mere
elementary science—and yet the scholar-critic would be the first to
claim the merit of scientific rigour for his criticisms! It is, in
history as in science, impossible to draw a curve through a mass of
plotted observations when they are looked at closely and almost
individually.
Criticism of quite another and a higher order may be seen in Dr. Eduard
Meyer’s article on Spengler in the _Deutsche Literaturzeitung_, No. 25
of 1924. Here we find, in one of the great figures of modern
scholarship, exactly that large-minded judgment that, while noting minor
errors—and visibly attaching little importance to them—deals with the
Spengler thesis fairly and squarely on the grand issues alone. Dr. Meyer
differs from Spengler on many serious questions, of which perhaps the
most important is that of the scope and origin of the Magian Culture.
But instead of cataloguing the errors that are still to be found in
Spengler’s vast ordered multitude of facts, Eduard Meyer honourably
bears testimony to our author’s “erstaunlich umfangreiches, _ihm ständig
präsentes, Wissen_” (a phrase as neat and as untranslatable as Goethe’s
“exakte sinnliche Phantasie”). He insists upon the fruitfulness of
certain of Spengler’s ideas such as that of the “Second Religiousness.”
Above all, he adheres to and covers with his high authority the basic
idea of the parallelism of organically-living Cultures. It is not
necessarily Spengler’s structure of the Cultures that he accepts—parts
of it indeed he definitely rejects as wrong or insufficiently
established by evidences—but on the question of their being _an_ organic
structure of the Cultures, _a_ morphology of History, he ranges himself
frankly by the side of the younger thinker, whose work he sums up as a
“bleibendez und auf lange Zeit hinaus nachhaltig wirkendes Besitz
unserer Wissenschaft und Literatur.” This last phrase of Dr. Meyer’s
expresses very directly and simply that which for an all-round student
(as distinct from an erudite specialist) constitutes the peculiar
_quality_ of Spengler’s work. Its influence is far deeper and subtler
than any to which the conventional adjective “suggestive” could be
applied. It cannot in fact be described by adjectives at all, but only
denoted or adumbrated by its result, which is that, after studying and
mastering it, “one finds it nearly if not quite impossible to approach
any culture-problem—old or new, dogmatic or artistic, political or
scientific—without conceiving it primarily as ‘morphological.’”
The work comprises two volumes—under the respective sub-titles “Form and
Reality” and “World-historical Perspectives”—of which the present
translation covers the first only. Some day I hope to have the
opportunity of completing a task which becomes—such is the nature of
this book—more attractive in proportion to its difficulty. References to
Volume II are, for the present, necessarily to the pages of the German
original; if, as is hoped, this translation is completed later by the
issue of the second volume, a list of the necessary adjustments of page
references will be issued with it. The reader will notice that
translator’s foot-notes are scattered fairly freely over the pages of
this edition. In most cases these have no pretensions to being critical
annotations. They are merely meant to help the reader to follow up in
more detail the points of fact which Spengler, with his “ständig
präsentes Wissen,” sweeps along in his course. This being their object,
they take the form, in the majority of cases, of references to
appropriate articles in the Encyclopædia Britannica, which is the only
single work that both contains reasonably full information on the varied
(and often abstruse) matters alluded to, and is likely to be accessible
wherever this book may penetrate. Every reader no doubt will find these
notes, where they appertain to his own special subject, trivial and even
annoying, but it is thought that, for example, an explanation of the
mathematical Limit may be helpful to a student who knows all about the
Katharsis in Greek drama, and _vice versa_.
In conclusion I cannot omit to put on record the part that my wife,
Hannah Waller Atkinson, has taken in the work of translation and
editing. I may best describe it by saying that it ought perhaps to have
been recorded on the title page instead of in this place.
C. F. A.
_January, 1926._
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
At the close of an undertaking which, from the first brief sketch to the
final shaping of a complete work of quite unforeseen dimensions, has
spread itself over ten years, it will not be out of place to glance back
at what I intended and what I have achieved, my standpoint then and my
standpoint to-day.
In the Introduction to the 1918 edition—inwardly and outwardly a
fragment—I stated my conviction that an idea had now been irrefutably
formulated which no one would oppose, once the idea had been put into
words. I ought to have said: once that idea had been understood. And for
that we must look—as I more and more realize—not only in this instance
but in the whole history of thought—to the new generation that is _born_
with the ability to do it.
I added that this must be considered as a first attempt, loaded with all
the customary faults, incomplete and not without inward opposition. The
remark was not taken anything like as seriously as it was intended.
Those who have looked searchingly into the hypotheses of living thought
will know that it is not given to us to gain insight into the
fundamental principles of existence without conflicting emotions. A
thinker is a person whose part it is to symbolize time according to his
vision and understanding. He has no choice; he thinks as he has to
think. Truth in the long run is to him the picture of the world which
was born at his birth. It is that which he does not invent but rather
discovers within himself. It is himself over again: his being expressed
in words; the meaning of his personality formed into a doctrine which so
far as concerns his life is unalterable, because truth and his life are
identical. This symbolism is the one essential, the vessel and the
expression of human history. The learned philosophical works that arise
out of it are superfluous and only serve to swell the bulk of a
professional literature.
I can then call the essence of what I have discovered “true”—that is,
_true for me_, and as I believe, true for the leading minds of the
coming time; not true in itself as dissociated from the conditions
imposed by blood and by history, for that is impossible. But what I
wrote in the storm and stress of those years was, it must be admitted, a
very imperfect statement of what stood clearly before me, and it
remained to devote the years that followed to the task of correlating
facts and finding means of expression which should enable me to present
my idea in the most forcible form.
To perfect that form would be impossible—life itself is only fulfilled
in death. But I have once more made the attempt to bring up even the
earliest portions of the work to the level of definiteness with which I
now feel able to speak; and with that I take leave of this book with its
hopes and disappointments, its merits and its faults.
The result has in the meantime justified itself as far as I myself am
concerned and—judging by the effect that it is slowly beginning to
exercise upon extensive fields of learning—as far as others are
concerned also. Let no one expect to find everything set forth here. It
is _but one side_ of what I see before me, a new outlook on _history and
the philosophy of destiny_—the first indeed of its kind. It is intuitive
and depictive through and through, written in a language which seeks to
present objects and relations illustratively instead of offering an army
of ranked concepts. It addresses itself solely to readers who are
capable of living themselves into the word-sounds and pictures as they
read. Difficult this undoubtedly is, particularly as our awe in face of
mystery—the respect that Goethe felt—denies us the satisfaction of
thinking that dissections are the same as penetrations.
Of course, the cry of “pessimism” was raised at once by those who live
eternally in yesterday (_Ewiggestrigen_) and greet every idea that is
intended for the pathfinder of to-morrow only. But I have not written
for people who imagine that delving for the springs of action is the
same as action itself; those who make definitions do not know destiny.
By understanding the world I mean being equal to the world. It is the
hard reality of living that is the essential, not the concept of life,
that the ostrich-philosophy of idealism propounds. Those who refuse to
be bluffed by enunciations will not regard this as pessimism; and the
rest do not matter. For the benefit of serious readers who are seeking a
glimpse at life and not a definition, I have—in view of the far too
great concentration of the text—mentioned in my notes a number of works
which will carry that glance into more distant realms of knowledge.
And now, finally, I feel urged to name once more those to whom I owe
practically everything: Goethe and Nietzsche. Goethe gave me method,
Nietzsche the questioning faculty—and if I were asked to find a formula
for my relation to the latter I should say that I had made of his
“outlook” (_Ausblick_) an “overlook” (_Überblick_). But Goethe was,
without knowing it, a disciple of Leibniz in his whole mode of thought.
And, therefore, that which has at last (and to my own astonishment)
taken shape in my hands I am able to regard and, despite the misery and
disgust of these years, proud to call _a German philosophy_.
OSWALD SPENGLER.
_Blankenburg am Harz,
December, 1922._
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
The complete manuscript of this book—the outcome of three years’ work—
was ready when the Great War broke out. By the spring of 1917 it had
been worked over again and—in certain details—supplemented and cleared
up, but its appearance in print was still delayed by the conditions then
prevailing.
Although a philosophy of history is its scope and subject, it possesses
also a certain deeper significance as a commentary on the great epochal
moment of which the portents were visible when the leading ideas were
being formed.
The title, which had been decided upon in 1912, expresses quite
literally the intention of the book, which was to describe, in the light
of the decline of the Classical age, one world-historical phase of
several centuries upon which we ourselves are now entering.
Events have justified much and refuted nothing. It became clear that
these ideas must necessarily be brought forward at just this moment and
in Germany, and, more, that the war itself was an element in the
premisses from which the new world-picture could be made precise.
For I am convinced that it is not merely a question of writing one out
of several possible and merely logically justifiable philosophies, but
of writing _the_ philosophy of our time, one that is to some extent a
natural philosophy and is dimly presaged by all. This may be said
without presumption; for an idea that is historically essential—that
does not occur within an epoch but itself makes that epoch—is only in a
limited sense the property of him to whose lot it falls to parent it. It
belongs to our time as a whole and influences all thinkers, without
their knowing it; it is but the accidental, private attitude towards it
(without which no philosophy can exist) that—with its faults and its
merits—is the destiny and the happiness of the individual.
OSWALD SPENGLER.
_Munich,
December, 1917._
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE ix
AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION xiii
AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xv
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1
Scope of the work, p. 3. Morphology of World-History, a new
philosophy, p. 5. For whom is History? p. 8. Classical and Indian
mankind ahistorical, p. 9. The Egyptian mummy and the burning of
the dead, p. 13. The conventional scheme of World-History
(ancient, mediæval, modern), p. 15. Its origin, p. 18. Its
breakdown, p. 22. Europe not a centre of gravity, p. 23. The only
historical method is Goethe’s, p. 25. Ourselves and the Romans,
p. 26. Nietzsche and Mommsen, p. 28. The problem of Civilization,
p. 31. Imperialism the last phase, p. 36. The necessity and range
of our basic idea, p. 39. Its relation to present-day philosophy,
p. 41. Philosophy’s last task, p. 45. The origin of this work, p.
46.