IN THE DARK BACKWARD
379
ing public school boys degenerate enough "to conceal the obligatory
white collar" with a "scarf with its convincing air of negligence."
In a world too precarious for the old solid beliefs, Toynbee seeks,
in retrospect and reverie, reassurance that there is still meaning in
the struggle and that
all
may yet be made well.
Fear
is
the germ from which such dreams grow, fear lest des–
perate hopes betray their own illusory nature. But there are differences
in the quality of dreams.
An
old revolutionary, who saw his revolu–
tion whirl out of
his
grasp, gave over the months spent waiting for
the guillotine to recording analogous visions. But the
Tableau Histori–
que
of 1793 contained a far more authentic perception of the nature
of history, for Condorcet knew that
both
the measure and means
of the development of human society lay in the condition of the
human beings who are the subjects of history. Toynbee's dream of
the defiant individual who hurls himself against the mass, of man
and of matter, is atavistic. His hero is a very old hero, only less
recognizable because bandaged to cover the wounds of two world
wars and their consequences.
The dangerous dream is the dream of half lights, of gray dusks
that deepen into darkness and conceal the outlines of the waking
world. In the confusion of analogies and comparisons, every wish
calls forth its fulfillment and every fear its compensation. Anyone
who takes these grotesque images as a guide to action runs the risk
of a total loss of perspective.
