Sidney Hook
MR. TOYNBEE ' S CITY OF GOD
One of the noteworthy things about Toynbee's
A Study of
History
is the uncritical character of its reception in England and the
United States. The explanation may simply be that it has been more
widely bought than read. But even among those who give evidence of
having read it, few have been able to move from under its overwhelming
bulk and survey it as a whole. And yet despite its many praiseworthy
adornments, never has such an imposing architectonic synthesis rested
on such spindly theoretical foundations. In comparison Spengler's fancy–
ridden
Decline of the West
is a model of solidity.
As
if
to shock his readers into reappraising his as yet uncompleted
magnum opus, Toynbee now publishes
Civilization on Trial*-a
slight
book of essays in which he discusses the important issues of our own
civilization
in extremis,
and reaffirms more boldly than ·ever the theo–
logical assumptions that underlie his historical writing. One turns eagerly
to its pages to discover what the remarkably learned historian and analyst
of all the great cultures of the past has to say about the problems to
which
we
must make a successful response or perish-the unification
of Europe, the crusade of Soviet Communism against the West, control
of economic and scientific technology, a viable form of international
goverm_nent. The keener the anticipation, the greater the sense of dismay
with which one reads these irrelevant and graceful commonplaces that
do not rise, except in some erudite asides, above the level of a good
newspaper editorial.
The explanation can be found in Mr. Toynbee's own explanatory
categories and in the absence of any verifiable hypothesis about the
nature of the historical process. His impressive achievement is to have
transcended Augustine's parochial conception of human history and
embraced all the known cultures in his historical ken. But he has retained
almost in its entirety the whole set of Augustine's parochial theological
*
Oxford. $3.50.
691
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