A Study of History by Arnold Toynbee, and: The Lie About the West by Douglas Jerrold (review)

BOOK REVIEWS A Study of History. By ARNOLD TmiNBEE. Vols. VH-X. New York: Oxford University Press, 1954. $35.00. The Lie About the West. By DouGLAS JERROLD. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1954. Pp. 85. $1.75. The writings of Professor Arnold Toynbee have received a warm welcome in America since the last war. Perhaps this is because the intensifying world crisis has made us all wonder whether our civilization may not also perish, like all the others known to history. Perhaps it is also because Professor Toynbee stresses the importance of freedom and activity in history , and because he points to an unending natural, spiritual progress in a religion without creeds. Toynbee's view of history is universal, comprising all known ages and places on earth. His aim is " to throw some light on the mysterious unfolding of human life through time-space." (Civilization on Trial, N. Y.: Oxford, 1948, preface) For him the smallest intelligible unit of history is a whole civilization, not a national state like England. Toynbee's key to the riddle of history is his hypothesis of challenge and response. According to this theory, the rise and fall of civilizations result from the successful or unsuccessful response of a society to a physical or moral challenge. There are four stages in every civilization: 1) Birth, when the initial challenge, usually physical, coming from the geographical environment, is met; ~) Growth, in which material obstacles are overcome and there is a progress in meeting spiritual (moral) challenges; 3) Breakdown, which is caused by the failure to meet a moral challenge; 4) and finally Disintegration. The last is characterized by three conflicting classes: a dominant minority, which establishes a universal state, like the Roman Empire; an internal proletariat, which creates a universal church, like Christianity;· and an external proletariat, which produces barbarian war bands and attacks the dying civilization from without. There is a rhythm of dissolution in a dying civilization, following a pattern of rout-rally-rout, as rebellions are put down or as various invasions are repelled only to occur again. Toynbee tells of the genesis of his hypothesis in the first chapter of Civilization on Trial and in his Study, vol. I, pp. ~7~-99. Finding race and environment inadequate explanations of the rise and fall of civilizations and Spengler's theory too rigid and deterministic, he turned to mythology and received his inspiration from Goethe's Faust. In the prologue to this poem, the heavenly choirs are praising the works of God, which are so perfect that there is no room for His further creative activity. Fortunately, however, God is freed from this impasse by the Devil, who challenges God to allow him to spoil the perfection of one of His noblest creatures. God's response is to accept the challenge and thus gain the opportunity of continuing and advancing His creative activity. BOOK REVIEWS ~93 Toynbee's challenge and response are closely related to Hegel's thesis and antithesis. He considers Hegel's account of creation an "academic abstract of the living truth," which " makes nonsense of it " by reducing it to the purely logical process of the absolute intellect (Study, IX, 395). Hegel's idealistic, pantheistic evolution is a dialectical process. It is dialectical because its dynamic force is a conflict of opposites-being and non-being, thesis and antithesis-which are resolved in a higher synthesis, becoming. This synthesis when opposed by its negation results in a new ascent in the evolutionary spiral. Hegel's philosophy is pantheistic because the absolute spirit (Hegel's " God ") is in each and all things. It is idealistic because this evolutionary process is the purely logical workings of the absolute spirit. Toynbee in asserting the reality of matter and spirit, drops the idealism of Hegel, and denies the pantheism, though he seems unable to avoid it entirely. He keeps the dialectical evolution but rejects the determinism of Hegel, for the will of man is free, being determinable by an infinite number of possible objects. Although he does not claim to have discovered any absolute, universal laws of history, he does find some apparently constant patterns according to which men freely work out their destiny. The most...