It is not often that a book excites such comment as did Spengler’s Decline of the West in postwar Germany. Only the first volume of this has been translated into English, as yet. It is an exposition of determinism involving the methodic rise and fall of cultures. And in spite of some exaggerations, and the arbitrariness of its thesis, it is of the greatest interest. Possibly its greatest value lies in this, that the author contrives to awaken in his reader an understanding of the diversity of civilizations. We are so accustomed to look from out our own culture without adjusting our prejudices, and to form judgments in a moment of time upon an almost eternal phenomenon. We take no account of the changes in culture, of the shifting perspectives, and alien outlook in countries which are spiritually as remote as another world. We condemn or praise with no real sympathy. In the hope of deepening understanding a few comparisons between civilizations are suggested in this article.

The natural opposite of Europe has been always the East. But Roman Europe was, and modem Europe is, confronted by an Orient feverish and decadent. Syria and Egypt then can be compared to India now. We can find parallels between the local cults of those countries that rose to sudden prominence as fashions at Rome and those that do the same to-day; or between the atmosphere of the Trismegistists and that of the followers of Shankara. Between that period and the present the true East and true West were separated by the vigorous world of Arab culture, alien alike to its eastern and its western neighbours.