ference between the ancient and the Occidental mind. Greece conceives of the cosmos as complete and finished, consisting of corporeal entities measured by definite number, expressed in the plastic arts. The Occidental mind aspires for the remote, finds expression in constant effort, seeks to conquer endless space, represents itself in music, portraiture, history, and the mathematical theory of limits and functions. The Greek did not ponder on the future and the past. He lived carelessly in the present. The mind of the Occident thinks in terms of history, and invents mechanical time-pieces, 'visible symbols of the transitory, striking the hours by day and night from countless clock towers in every part of Western Europe; and constituting perhaps the most tremendous expression of a historical, universal sentiment which it has hitherto been possible to conceive.'

Innumerable examples of this kind are interpreted with such a wealth of suggestion, perspicuity, and vision, that an unprejudiced reader cannot fail to lay down the book with gratitude and stimulated thought. Perhaps he will also be deeply moved. And criticism? The new theory presents facts in a completely new light, and conversely these facts and illustrations serve in turn as supports for the whole theory. But prophecy is not combined with a strict observance of scientific method. The reader is often aware of a forced construction of facts, after the style of Hegel. Yes, even a fantastic, mystical interpretation of numbers, like that affected by the apocryphal writers of the old Jewish period. Spengler's book is the work of an artist. It is a poetic interpretation of world history, highly suggestive, arbitrary, and individual. To be read with profit it must be read with faith.

Let us turn back a moment. Spengler's object is to create a new philosophy of unprecedented value. His narrower purpose, however, is to analyze our present culture and the indications of its speedy death.

A wealth of original historical phenomena forms the background of his conception of the world. The historical ideal is its intellectual centre. The substance of history is things that occur but once things which are never repeated, which are dictates of destiny, marked with the seal of mortality. The infinite variety of individual cultural facts cannot be systematized and rationally comprehended. It can only be apperceived and recognized. Throughout his work he constantly combats a mechanical conception of history and its causal explanation.

However, his laws of 'morphological relationships' and of 'homology' based upon generalization from definite experiences, are not consistent with this attitude at least in the strict interpretation which Spengler insists upon. History does deal with incidents which occur but once and which cannot be specifically predicted; chance and imponderable influences have much to do with these. Spengler's theory is pervaded by a peculiar apocryphal metaphysics; a popular, almost superstitious, rationalism, upon which the possibility of his historical prognostication is based. Likewise the conception of original historical phenomena, or 'typical forms evolved by vital processes' is only of relative value. term borrowed from Goethe, and one which is by no means a classical expression of the great poet's peculiar conception of the universe, is deceptive. It contains the idea of a definite preformed pattern, which requires nothing more for its corporeal realization than an empty period of time. All the

This

wealth of phenomena exists from the beginning; time, accident, circumstances, influence, evolution do nothing. This has been a fruitful but misleading hypothesis of many great philosophers. Kant presumed that had we sufficient insight into the mind and heart of a man, we could calculate his future with the same prevision as the orbit of a planet; Schopenhauer declared all education was useless; Spengler fancies that he can describe the future of great cultures for centuries in advance.

However, what will these objections amount to in face of the prodigal wealth of fact and incident in this book? It is an unexampled, masterful exhibition of a genius for concentration and summarization. From beginning to end it is vital and vigorous, and inspires a reader with the feelings he has when driving out to sea under full sail, or viewing from a mountain top the world in all its wealth and glory. His æsthetic analyses of music and lyric, the multitude of inter-relations he traces between religious, scientific, economic, and ethical problems, are so stimulating of thought, they open so many new vistas to the intellect,that the work is almost more valuable to the man who rejects its fundamental hypotheses, and denies the application of many of its citations, than it is for an uncritical disciple. In spite of all the points which may be raised against it, Spengler's book must be classed among the great masterpieces of the German intellect.

Admitting that Spengler's uncanny prophecy is true, what then? What practical consequence might we draw from it. Are we to contemplate the fall of our civilization passively? Indeed this demonic book, in spite of its vigor and youthful verve has almost the influence of a dangerous narcotic. This is partly due to the fact that it is

only half understood. Spengler foresaw how deeply impressed many would be by his predictions. He evidently assumed that profounder thinkers would be intellectually immune to the depressing influence of his dark prophecies and that these might be helpful to the coming generation; 'if men of the coming generation are moved by the influence of this book to devote themselves to engineering instead of poetry, to seafaring instead of painting, to public life instead of metaphysics, they will be doing what I hope, and making the best choice in their power.'

But there is another possibility. The glance he gives them into the fearful visible abyss, which yawns directly in front of us, may inspire men to desperate resistance, to a despairing effort to escape the inevitable; just as Fichte in another dark and hopeless period of our history, sought to inspire to the utmost our moral vigor and faith in the future.

Neither assumption is quite logical. For either Spengler's doctrine is false and in that case our faith in the world is not in danger; or it is true and resistance is hopeless. If Spengler is right, and to the extent to which he may be right, we are not dealing with a sin to be expiated or with an error which might be avoided, but with the course of destiny. Nature is good and it is omnipotent. Spengler's conceptions are characterized by lofty faith. Herder gave a reply to the foolish fear which men cherish of annihilation, which might be applied to civilization.

When the torch of my life grows dim,
Though I may pray for much, I shall not pray to
be.

For what would that gift mean? Childhood?
Youth? Old age? I've known them all;
And gladly I drain the cup of Lethe to the dregs.
Like Decius I dedicate myself to the Gods,
With thanks profound; and with trust unbounded
I confide myself to rich, bounteous,
Life-giving, ever-rejuvenating nature.

I

TRAVELING for four hours in an express train, at a rate we seldom see in Switzerland, we pass through the great plains which extend from Dublin to the south Irish coast. For another hour and a half we have the same level landscape, but here the loneliness suggests the Roman Campagna. To be sure, the herbage is brighter than on the arid flats of Central Italy, and indeed, there is a vigorous vegetation, and bright yellow blossoms dot the plains as far as the eye can see. But the practical farmer will view with little enthusiasm these stretches of untilled country. Beautiful cattle, and even more often fine horses, are pasturing in the meadows. For this is the land of great estates, and to that fact is due the inadequate cultivation of the soil. The owners are absentees. Most of them live in England, and find it profitable to work their land with a minimum of human labor. Seldom do you see a manor house surrounded with fine farm buildings; but there are many deserted peasant huts, falling into ruin, to testify to the declining population.

Now and then a round, sharppointed church tower appears in the horizon. Near by stands some curious Gothic church, quite out of harmony with its still more primitive campanile. A moment later we are viewing a quiet country hamlet, with a vaulted bridge over a stream, and ancient houses. Low hills appear in the horizon. Then villages become more numerous, and between the hedged

meadows one begins to see gardens and well-cultivated fields. The earth is dark and fertile.

Tipperary a little town whose name has been sung the whole circumference of the world-lies an hour's distance from the railway. Was the song a reminiscence of the numerous marches English troops have made in Ireland to suppress evasive outbreaks? At least the station is now thronged again with soldiers in khaki. A half dozen stalwart constables in black uniforms, carrying rifles and bayonets, descend from the mail car, from which brand new boxes, labeled munitions and explosives, are unloaded. Two trucks are filled with this dangerous freight.

Now little settlements become more numerous. The land is somewhat better cultivated; but wide stretches of pasture, not relieved by even a single fruit tree, continue to interrupt the tilled fields. Every now and then we pass a gigantic racing park, with grand-stands and hurdles, indicating the passion of the people for this sport, and the strong hold horse-breeding has upon this country. More frequently, however, our attention is caught by the ruins of peasant cottages, or by inhabited cabins, white and tidy under their thatched roofs, but as tiny and cramped as the diminutive farms of their occupants.

We have to go back centuries in order fully to understand the reasons for this lamentable condition of agriculture in one of the most fertile parts of

Europe. Neither in the Middle Ages nor in the modern period have economic policies been shaped by sentiment. The English conquerors regarded Ireland as a convenient source of profit. In the sixteenth century the English wool manufacturers and traders insisted that Irish competition should be prevented by law and thus succeeded in destroying a promising industry. The property of natives who violated British laws was confiscated and granted to great English proprietors. Up to the present time the estates are largest in the vicinity of the first English settlements. The small farmers were able to maintain themselves a longer time in the interior, to which the conquest did not extend until later. After the English Reformation Ireland's loyalty to Catholicism afforded another excuse for continuing this policy. The Protestant landlords, who alone possessed political rights and were represented in the Parliament of Dublin, were to a much greater extent than their colleagues in England a landed nobility. They shrank from no measures to get possession of all the soil of Ireland. For eighty years of the eighteenth century, the so-called century of enlightenment, it was the law in Ireland that no Catholic could own land. The practical enslavement of the native population would have been an inevitable result of such laws, if it had been possible actually to enforce them. Moreover, the prosperity of the country was further undermined by the fact. that most of the great landlords who drew their income from the island lived abroad, and spent their money in London and other English cities. Not only did the crops of Ireland go over seas to feed England, often leaving too little for the subsistence of the people who produced them, but the price which English consumers paid

for this produce was turned over as a tribute to the British government and English landlords.

When, early in the nineteenth century, the Parliamentary Union placed the direct responsibility for Ireland's welfare in the hands of the Westminster government, the English landlords saw their property rights threatened by the rapidly growing Irish peasantry. They had two ways of relieving the situation. They could either subdivide their large estates or introduce industries for which Ireland offered particular advantages. It was to the interest of England to have the land subdivided, because that would have rapidly increased agricultural production and have provided England with the food which its growing population required. However, the private interests of the landlords themselves prevented it. At the same time the growth of manufactures in Ireland was made impossible, if not by direct legislation, by equally effective financial measures; since the British banks in Ireland controlled the investment of capital in that country. England, which was becoming more and more industrialized, did not understand the real interests of its agricultural neighbor, even had it desired to promote them. The Irish delegation in Parliament could give no assistance. It was too small to have a determining influence upon the policy of a British cabinet, although its hundred votes might in certain crises extort minor concessions and more generous promises. The faster the population of England grew, the larger the export of Irish produce, and the more profitable the trade which this supported. Scarcely any of those profits went into the pockets of the Irish; rather the inevitable rise in prices made the export of provisions a curse for the landless farm hands of the island. By the end

of the 'forties the system had led to an inevitable catastrophe. This export trade, practically all to England, reached such an unwholesome height, that in spite of excellent crops Ireland suffered an unexampled food shortage. Hundreds of thousands are said to have died as a direct consequence.

As an immediate result of this economic collapse, emigration increased to a volume never previously experienced by any European country. The population of the island in 1840 was more than eight millions, and probably exceeded this considerably five years later. By 1851 it had but six and one half millions. During the next decade, although Ireland has one of the highest European birth rates, the population fell eight hundred thousand more. An unsuccessful revolt still further stimulated emigration, which at this time was going almost exclusively to the United States instead of the British colonies. At first England viewed this movement with some satisfaction, fancying that after the 'flight of the Celts' it could settle the country with its own people. This idea soon proved Utopian. Most of the excess population in England was immediately drafted into manufacturing. Those Englishmen who from love of adventure or taste for agriculture wished to leave their native country, showed a preference for America and other new lands, which afforded greater opportunities than the neighboring island with its cheap labor and hostile local population. The wave of emigration did not subside even after Belfast and northeastern Ireland became great industrial centres. Since that time the population has continuously declined; and to-day an area twice that of Switzerland supports only four and one half millions of people, but little more than half the number of inhabitants eighty years ago. When Ireland was

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united with England the smaller island had the denser population. To-day that density is not one fourth what it is in the latter country. There is no European land which has had a similar experience. In every other country where the population has been even stationary for there have been no appreciable declines this condition has been due to a fall in the birth rate. But Ireland's birth rate is even to-day one of the highest in Europe, exceeded only by that of Holland, and it is still increasing. The Irish have also shown that they are a vigorous race in their new American home. The descendants of some five million six hundred thousand emigrants who have migrated from that country to the United States are estimated to number twenty millions.

A change for the better seemed to be promised in the 'eighties, when the English Liberals took over the government. They were ready to listen to the claims of the Irish middle class which had meantime arisen. The political fruit of this combination was the first Home Rule Bill, introduced by Gladstone. This did not bring about a solution of the Irish problem, but it induced the Irish Nationalists to commit themselves to legal agitation. They followed that policy consistently until the 'Ulster Rebels,' in 1914, turned agitation back into its earlier channels. The economic result of Gladstone's policy was the Irish land law which aimed, like the Russian land law of Stolypin, to subdivide the great estates into independent peasant holdings. A so-called 'Congested District Board' was entrusted with carrying out this mission. It was far less successful during its longer period of labor, than was Stolypin in the seven years during which he devoted his iron energy to agrarian reform in Russia. The reason for this moderate success