Page:The Decline of the West.pdf/11



and cach brought his apparatus critecus to brat on that pirt of the Spengler theory that affected his own domain The reader who ts familiar with German may be referred to Manfred Schroeter s “Der Streit um Spengler" for details, xt will suffice here to say that Schrocter s index of critics’ names contains some goo entries These critics are not only, or even principally, general reviewers, most of them being specialists of high standing It 18, to say the least, remark- able that a volcanically assertive philosophy of history, visibly popular and produced under a catchy title (ReMamtite}) should cal! forth, as st did, a special number of Legos in which the Olympians of scholarship passed yudgment on every maccuracy or unsupported statement that they could detect (These were in fact numerous tn the first edttton and the author has corrected or modified them in detail in the new edition, from which this translation has been done But rt should be emphasized that the author has not, 1a this second edition, receded 1m any essentials from the standpoint taken up in the first }

The conspicuous features in this first burst of criticism were, on the one hand, want of adequate critical equipment in the general critic, and, on the other, in- ability to sce the wood for the trees in the man of learning No one, reading Schroeter’s book Gvhich by the way 1s one-third as Jarge as Spengler’s first volume itsclf), can fail to agree with his judgment that notwithstanding paradoxes, overstramings, and inaccuractes, the work towers above all tts com- mentators And xt was doubtless a sense of this greatness that led many scholars — amongst them some of the very high — to avoid expressing opinions on 1t at all It would be foolish to calf their silence a “sitting on the fence”’, it 15 2 case rather of reserving judgment on a philosophy and a methodology that challenge all the canons and carry with them immense smplications For the very few who combine all the necessary depth of learning with al} the necessary freedom and breadth of outlook, 1v will not be the accuracy or inaccuracy of details under a close magnifying-glass that will be decisive The very idea of accuracy and inaccuracy presupposes the selection or acceptance of co-ordinates of reference, and therefore the selection or acceptance of a standpoint as “ ori- gin’ That ts mere elementary science — and yet the scholar-critic would be the first to claim the merit of screntific rigour for his criticisms! Jc 1s, 10 history aS 1 scicnce, impossible to draw a curve through a mass of plotted observations when they are looked at closely and almost individually

Criticism of quite another and a higher order may be seen in Dr Eduard Meyer's article on Spengler in the Deursche Leteraturgestung, No 25 of 1924 Here we find, in one of the great figures of modern scholarship, exactly that large- minded judgment that, while noting minor errors —- and visibly attaching little amportance to them deals with the Spengler thesis fairly and squarely on the grand issues alone Dr Meyer differs from Spengler on many serious questions, of which perhaps the most important 1s that of the scope and ortgin of the Magian Culture But snstead of cataloguing the errors that are still to be