Spengler Views the Machine Age

Seldom has a book, so massive and so erudite, caused such a widespread commotion as did Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West. It appealed to a variety of tastes. The preacher of imminent and sensational doomsdays has not lost his attraction with the decline of the religious sanctions attributed to bygone apocalyptics. But a scientific age demands a scientific eschatology, and this Spengler supplied. Popular science had promised only a long protracted cooling of the earth's crust, or, in moments of soaring imagination, the possibility of a collision with a comet or an invasion from Mars. It was too remote to be really scaring. The morbid eschatological appetite wants the world to go out, not with a fizzle, but with a bang, and the sooner the bang the better. Spengler promised something at once scientific, catastrophic, and fairly soon; though perhaps it was not generally realised that 'soon' on the lips of this juggler with milleniums might mean quite a number of centuries.But the appearance of these volumes-they were first published in 1918-was also well timed to meet a more passing mood. In those days of disillusionment it was gratifying to read this comparative study of the rise and fall of civilisations, this deterministic conception of repeating historical cycles, with its assurances that the signs of the times pointed to a speedy downfall of our own discredited culture. It was particularly gratifying to defeated Germany

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