Page:The Decline of the West.pdf/10

 TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

tr 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 Abend- Jandes”’ appeared in July, r9r8, that 1s, at the very turning-point of the four years World-War ‘Ic was conceived, the author tells us, before 1914 and fully worked out by 1917 So far as he 1s concerned, then, the rmpulse to create 1¢ arose from a view of our crvilization not as the late war left 1t, but (as he says expressly) as the comng war would find it But inevitably the public umpuise to read 1t arose 1n and from post-war conditions, and thus 1t happened that this severe and difficult philosophy of history found a market that has justified the printing of 90,009 copies. Its_very title was so apposite to the moment as to predispose the higher intellectuals to regard 1 as a work of the moment — the mote so as the author was a simple Oberichrer 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 conyunctutes, sound minds do not dally with the gravet 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 asitcomes Even after the return to normal- ity, it 1s no longer possible for men — at any rate for Western men — not to know that these questions exist And, if 1¢ 1s none too easy even for the victors of the struggle to shake off sts sequela, 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 ts impossible It gocs through a period of matertal difficulty Coften extreme difficulty) and one in which pride of achteve- ment 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 1t was also with such minds in the Germany of 1919-1920 To assume the réle of critic and to compare Spengler's with other philoso- phies 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, 1t isunconditionally necessary for the reader to realizethat the book before him has not only acquired this large following amongst thoughtful Jaymen, but has forced the attention and taxed the scholarship of every branch of the learned wotld Theologians, historians, scientists, art critics — all saw the challenge, ix