Oswald Spengler - Decline of the West, Vol 2 Perspectives of World-History (Knopf, 1966)
pdf | 23.48 MB | English | Author :Oswald Spengler | B007JL2Q46 | 2012


Book Description :

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

In the annotations to this volume I have followed the same course as in the first - namely, that of giving primary references to the Encyclopadia Britan-nica as being the most considerable work of the kind that is really widely distributed in both the English-speaking fields, though occasionally special encyclopaedias or other works are referred to. Owing to the more definitely historical character of this volume, as compared with its predecessor, and particularly its stressing of a history that scarcely figures as yet in a regular education - the "Magian" - such references are necessarily more numerous. Even so, more might perhaps have been inserted with advantage. The Translator's notes have no pretension to be critical in themselves, though here and there an argument is pointed with an additional example, or an obvious criticism anticipated. In each domain they will no doubt be resented by an expert, but the same expert will, it is hoped, find them useful for domains not his own.

In the first volume of the English version, references to the second were necessarily given according to the pagination of the German. A comparative table of English and German page numbers has therefore been inserted. A list of corrigenda to Vol. I is also issued with this volume.

London, July 1928 C. F. A.

CHAPTER I

ORIGIN AND LANDSCAPE

(A) THE COSMIC AND THE MICROCOSM

Regard the flowers at eventide as, one after the other, they close in the setting sun. Strange is the feeling that then presses in upon you - a feeling of enigmatic fear in the presence of this blind dreamlike earth-bound existence. The dumb forest, the silent meado, this bush, that twig, do not stir themselves, it is the wind that plays with them. Only the little gnat is free - he dances still in the evening light, he moves whither he will.

A plant is nothing on its own account. It forms a part of the landscape in which a chance made it take root. The twilight, the chill, the closing of every flower - these are not cause and effect, not danger and willed answer to danger. They are a single process of nature, which is accomplishing itself near, with, and in the plant. The individual is not free to look out for itself, will for itself, or choose for itself.

An animal, on the contrary, can choose. It is emancipated from the servitude of all the rest of the world. This midget swarm that dances on and on, that solitary bird still flying through the evening, the fox approaching furtively the nest - these are little worlds of their own within another great world. An animalcule in a drop of water, too tiny to be perceived by the human eye, though it lasts but a second and has but a corner of this drop as its field - nevertheless is free and independent in the face of the universe. The giant oak, upon one of whose leaves the droplet hangs, is not.[1]

Servitude and freedom - this is in last and deepest analysis the differentia by which we distinguish vegetable and animal existence. Yet only the plant is wholly and entirely what it is; in the being of the animal there is something dual. A vegetable is only a vegetable; an animal is a vegetable and something more besides. A herd that huddles together trembling in the presence of danger, a child that clings weeping to its mother, a man desperately striving to force a way into his God - all these are seeking to return out of the life of freedom into the vegetal servitude from which they were emancipated into individuality and loneliness.

The seeds of a flowering plant show, under the microscope, two sheath-

[1] In what follo I have drawn upon a metaphysical work that I hope shortly to be able to publish.

Category : | History of Civilization & Culture, Ancient Early Civilization History

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