The decline of the West

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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.