Alpha to Omega
TuEsE three volumes are the first half of an extremely interest- ing and ingenious study of history in the widest sense of the term ; the emergence and rise, the decline and fall of civilizations. Professor Toynbee's argument, put shortly, is as follows : historians in the last hundred years have been influenced overmuch by the technique and outlook of an industrial and " scientific " society, and by the nationalism of their political environment. The work of these historians, therefore, over-emphasizes the division of labour, the examina- tion of raw materials, and the possibility of treating fractions of human society as though each fraction were the whole. Modern historians are busy at a vast building composed of innumerable rooms with few windows and connecting stair- cases or corridors.
Professor Toynbee aims at restoring the balance of history, and at providing the windows and staircases. He sets out to study all the civilizations of the world, past and present. This study might appear overwhelmingly difficult, but civilizations—so runs the argument—are relatively few ; twenty-one at most, ten on the strictest count. After classifying these twenty-one units, and establishing the possibility of comparison, Professor Toynbee turns to the question of origins. Neither race nor environment can provide in themselves an adequate solution ; the language of mythology, free from the self-imposed limitations of modern scientific technique, directs one to the real solution, which is to be found in the significance of " challenge and response." Civilizations are the result of struggle ; conversely, ease is dangerous, and a cause of decay. This challenge may come from " hard countries," new ground, the psychological effect of change, the stimuli of calamity, external pressure, individual or social penalization. Professor Toynbee examines the genesis of civilizations from the point of view of " challenge and response," and attempts to find the golden mean between too severe and too feeble a challenge, too violent and too half-hearted a response.
The enquiry is then extended to the problem of growth. Why is the growth of certain civilizations " arrested " What is the secret of growth ? The reader is again referred to mythology, and is told that civilizations possess an élan which carries them on from challenge to response, and from response to further challenge. This " progress " cannot be described in spatial terms, such as " direction " ; it must be seen in increasing command over the human or physical environment, geographical expansion or technical advance bringing in its train the liberation of energy and freedom from drudgery. From another angle the phenomenon of growth may be described as " progress towards self-determination." This-description leads Professor Toynbee to consider the pro- blem of personality, and the place of " creative personalities " and " creative minorities " in history. Again the conception of " challenge and response ".provides the best explanation, and gives the key to that " differentiation through growth " which is the characteristic feature of civilizations.
Here the third volume ends ; one awaits with the greatest interest the three remaining volumes in which the survey is brought to a conclusion. Pirofessor Toynbee explains his thesis in dear, and at times, vivid paragraphs, with great wealth of comment and illustration drawn from every quarter of the world. A full criticism of a work of this kind is impossible in short compass, and must be reserved in any case until the whole tale has been told. One can only make a few comments on the technique of the book, and the general argument put forward. It may seem a paradox to say that the book is too long ; three volumes would appear all too short for a study of every civilization since the emergence of civilized man. Yet the length of a book of a philosophical kind—an essay in interpretation—depends, ultimately, upon the number of words and sentences strictly necessary for the exposition of the argument. From this point of view the very richness of these volumes is a disadvantage. The argument is overloaded with analogies, metaphors, illustra- tions. Each volume contains, a number of appendices ; not all these appendices are equally valuable and relevant in a book which does not set out to be an investigation of detailed historical material.
One may notice two other tendencies : (1) a certain prefer- ence for choosing examples and terms (e.g., Yin and Yang) which are beyond the range of the reading of most English scholars—not, as Professor Toynbee is inclined to suggest, because these scholars are too narrowly specialized in their subjects of historical study, but because the wisdom con- tained in such remote examples can also be found in a close study of material near at hand. (2) There is a certain petulance, at times even a lack of balance, in the treatment of modern western civilization. This petulance can be understood at a time when fantastic nonsense is talked about " Nordic man " ; nevertheless it is out of place in a philo- sophical study. Professor Toynbee might say that, on his return from travels far afield in the remoter and almost forgotten countries of knowledge, he is out of patience with the parochial outlook and complacency of western scholars ; but one might refer him to the story of Nasunan, and suggest there is a danger in thinking that Abana and Pharpar, those great rivers, are necessarily better than all the waters of Israel.
The analogy of the great rivers is not inapplicable to the argument of the book. One might ask whether the argument, though it is put in an original way, really expounds a new thesis. It has been known that certain civilizations have reached a term ; it has been known that " strife is the mother of all things." The spectacle of the rise, efflorescence, and decline of empires is a bewildering spectacle ; it is not new to historians. The trouble is not that the facts are ignored, but that the explanations are so many and so very uncon- vincing. Professor Toynbee's argument thus falls into two parts ; the answer to the question " how," and the answer to the question " why." The answer to the first question, if the whole of history is taken into account, demands immense reading and knowledge. Here, for all the astonish- ing number of particular facts brought together, one may wonder whether Professor Toynbee (or any single man, in the present state of learning) can really be sure that his selection from the accumulated data about the past is not open to attack.
The answer to the question " why " would appear to lie outside the scope of history. In a sense Professor Toynbee realizes, by turning to mythology, that he is looking in history for something which he will never find ; but the answers from mythology are really only guesses at the question " how," and guesses which are not so near to the point as the patient work of modern specialists. The answer therefore appears as far off as ever. The word élan explains nothing ; a definition of " the growths of civilizations " as " in their nature progressive movements " is, for all the heroic efforts made to explain and deepen the meaning of these words, scarcely more enlightening. Yet, at the last, the failure to answer the question which of all questions one would wish answered is no argument against continuing to look for a solution. Only one must remember the words of Symmachus in the latter days of that ancient world which Professor Toynbee knows so well : uno itinere non potent perveniri ad
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