by Talbot Mundy
It certainly was scandalous. Professor Morris boldly taught that we are not the last word in civilization, morality, intelligence, government, artistic enlightenment, philosophy, or in any other field; that, on the contrary, the storied past holds records of peoples who have far surpassed us, as the crest-wave of the Force that causes evolution lifted each in turn.
We were parceling up China when he made his first explosive observations. Races, whose progenitors were savages when China reached her apogee of art and scientific government, were landing missionaries then, under the guns of warships, to teach the Golden Rule to ‘yellow heathen’ while their governments greedily watched for the first chance to avenge a murdered missionary and seize the richest slice of the defenseless country. From burned and rifled palaces of Peking, loot was being brought by stokers and their commanding officers — loot such as no modern hand could imitate nor any auctioneer appraise — to be sold in second-hand shops to the heirs of what has been politely called ‘the white man’s burden.’
The future is likely to prove that burden to be heavier than the loot was that the sailors freighted home; but it was more unfashionable then than now to mention Karma. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” was a nice theoretical, incomprehensible, quotable, innocuous abstraction meant, if anything, to absolve men of responsibility for what they do.
Men bent on proving to themselves that temporary might is final right were not in any mood to listen to the doctrine of the cycles. To have believed that all our boasted superiority is as evanescent as “the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la,” and will have “nothing to do with the case” when Nature-Forces acting in obedience to Law withdraw the energy so many of us have abused, and concentrate it elsewhere, would have robbed supremacy of zest. It might have lessened zeal. The second-hand shops might have had to change the signs above their plateglass windows.
I remember being warned against Professor Morris. I was told he was not ‘recognised’ by the ‘authorities’ and that his ‘iconoclasm’ was only atheism in disguise. According to my informant, a college-principal who had charge of the education of several hundred youths, there would be anarchy in education as well as religion and ‘disaster would undoubtedly ensue’ if such ‘red heresies’ should be allowed to gain a footing. He argued that if children were allowed to question the infallibility of text-books; to consider the possibility that ‘heathendom’ has ever reached our heights of intellectual attainment; or to believe that ‘heathen’ ever shall be able to surpass us unless, or until, they adopt our standards of civilization and morals; then patriotism would cease to exist and within a generation ‘culture’ would vanish along with it.
He admitted that he himself had not read the works of Professor Kenneth Morris, and he advised me for the future to confine my reading to the books of standard authors, of whom he very kindly made a penciled list on the back of an envelope. The name of one of them was Flinders Petrie.
“You will find those writers safe and sane,” he assured me. “If they differ here and there in detail, they agree as to essentials. Their interpretation of the meaning of the facts of history will give you plenty to think about and will help you to appreciate the glories of our present civilization.”
However, Kenneth Morris had given me ‘plenty to think about,’ so it was only very recently that there was time to study Flinders Petrie, whose historical works on ancient Egypt long ago won him recognition as one of the ablest of modern historians. Books that can be slipped into the pocket are attractive in this hurried age, so it was almost by Darwinian selection that the first of Petrie’s books to be attempted was Revolutions Of Civilization, the first edition of which was published in April 1911.
That date is important. There seem to have been only three editions of the book, so it is fair to presume it is much the least popular of Flinders Petrie’s works — a circumstance that hardly causes wonder. He agrees with Kenneth Morris!
It appears that at the time when Morris, the Point Loma ‘heretic,’ was formulating his ‘dangerous iconoclasms,’ Petrie had already ventured into print with arguments and illustrations — and the statement (page 5) that “civilization is an intermittent phenomenon.” He outlines a theory of a law of cycles and crowds his short book with evidence in proof of it. He refers to the ‘summer’ and ‘winter’ of racial rise and decay as the recurrent phenomena produced by natural causes which should be “examined like any other action of nature.”
Instances in the realm of astronomy and other sciences are numberless in which individuals, working alone and in ignorance of each other’s efforts, have made identical, or almost identical discoveries simultaneously. There is sufficient evidence of this to justify a theory (even if the law were not already known and understood by those who keep alive the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom), that Truth, being universal, and its manifestations being also obedient to the law of cycles, finds its way into human consciousness recurrently, availing itself of whichever individuals in any place are ready to receive it at that time. The spirit flows along the line of least resistance, like water, electricity, sound, currents in the air, or any other form of energy.
A very careful reading of Professor Flinders Petrie’s book discloses no evidence that he has read The Secret Doctrine, which is the source from which Professor Morris drew not only inspiration but his argument. Professor Flinders Petrie beyond question followed his own line of study, dared to let imagination raise him far above the level of the judgments of his day, and with the courage of conviction published what imagination glimpsed. The fact that The Secret Doctrine had been long in print detracts in no way from the merit of his book; he is entitled to full credit as an independent thinker; and is fortunate that the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom confirm him while repudiating the more commonly accepted notions of what history means.
Naturally, Flinders Petrie’s statement of his case is not as clear or comprehensive as that of Kenneth Morris; he did not consult The Secret Doctrine — it is possible he never heard of it and consequently had to grope his way amid the facts of history at the guidance of his own intuition, tracing the periodic rise and fall of nations mainly through observations of the renaissance and decadence of art, of which he gives profuse illustrations. His only reference to “the great and important elements of moral ideas and religion” is the remark that he has chosen to omit them altogether — probably a wise omission in the circumstances; had he ventured to include them in his outline he would surely have needed a thousand pages instead of one hundred and thirty-one, and would inevitably have aroused the indignation of those hierarchies of conservatism who belligerently loathe the dignified ideals which the plan of spiritual evolution indicates.
There is enough in Professor Flinders Petrie’s book to stir imagination and to compel thought, which is the principal requirement in this age of standardized ideas. It actually matters very little whether the historians and scientists, who day by day confirm through ‘new’ discoveries those statements of fact for which H.P. Blavatsky was mocked, do or do not credit her with having definitely and in no uncertain words forestalled them all some half a century ago. The point is that she did her work. She broke, as it were, the crust of human consciousness; since when, that inner wisdom that is the heritage of all humanity has been gradually working its way through.
Professor Petrie’s book is so condensed that it is no simple matter to make extracts from it that will fairly indicate the point of view from which he has approached his subject; he has knitted his whole theme together admirably and included nothing foreign to the issue; to remove one statement from its context and to quote it in support of him might have the opposite effect to that intended. Here and there, however, there are phrases indicative of a vastly wider vision than his book includes; hints though they are, they suggest that he has seen through more than one veil while he pondered his solution of the rise and decay of nations.
One illuminating statement that he makes is that “the power of vox populi is
a regular feature of a decaying civilization.” It needs courage to adopt that viewpoint in an age when nearly all material accomplishment is made contingent on acknowledging the voice of demos as the arbiter of destiny. He also mentions parthenogenesis (as he calls it) affirming that in the birth of nations there is no such element — wherein he is stoutly supported by The Secret Doctrine and by Professor Kenneth Morris. He assures us “there is no new generation without a mixture of blood”; and his statement that, if generations average thirty years, each one of us must have had one hundred million ancestors in the course of the past eight centuries, should go far toward exploding the abominable theories of racial superiority that have made our vaunted civilization not much nobler than a cockpit.
Mathematically it is evident that so-called ‘purity of race’ is a delusion. If it could exist, it would inevitably lead to racial extinction. And, as Flinders Petrie says: “When the full maximum number of different ancestors are blended, and every strain of one race has crossed with every strain of the other, this is the period of greatest ability.”
But it would not be fair to Professor Flinders Petrie to suggest by implication that he has confined his argument to racial admixture. Admirably, in the compass of his short book, he has indicated many other processes of Nature on the plane of objectivity; that these may be effects, not causes, hardly weakens the book’s value. If he cites a famine, or a series of famines, as the cause of Arab restlessness or of Egyptian decay, he indicates by inference a subtiler cause again, behind the famine, and compels imagination to bestir itself, since he has raised already that suggestive theory of cycles.
Professor Flinders Petrie’s disadvantage is that he ignores the law of Karma and the hope-inspiring theme of the rebirth of individuals. There Kenneth Morris so far has the weather-gage of him that there is no conceivable comparison between their books. Morris explains convincingly and makes the heart sing with the knowledge of the cyclic progress, that always has been and forever shall be ours — where Flinders Petrie only gropes for a solution of the problem. He has observed, and he has reasoned shrewdly; he has given his imagination rein, and he has dared to set down what he sees — which is no mean performance and undoubtedly required the utmost courage. Imagination grows with exercise and there are more unlikely things than that Professor Flinders Petrie may discern such truths as shall illuminate the whole of his patiently acquired familiarity with ancient history and make him the outstanding historian of his age.
And now Spengler, who has taken literary Germany by storm. He is the man who introduced philosophy to railway bookstalls. He philosophizes with a club, and his principal weakness seems to be his incandescent rage. He has no pity for the old school; he prefers to smash it and, like Flinders Petrie, he is not yet ready to replace the “incredibly meager and senseless scheme” with one that really solves the mystery of ages.
In his book Der Untergang des Abendlandes, he boasts: “In this book for the first time an attempt is hazarded at determining history in advance. Its purpose is to pursue, through its still unrun stages, the destiny of a culture, and precisely the one culture on the earth at this time which is nearing completion: that of Western Europe.”
That expression, ‘for the first time,’ is amusing. Indubitably Spengler thinks he is the first to break into print in that field, and it may be that he needs the thunder of the boastful drums to call attention to the wares he has to offer. They are good wares; but they will be better when the quiet forward movement of Theosophy in Germany shall reach him and reveal to him that H.P. Blavatsky introduced immensely better ones some half a century ago. In his manner Spengler brings Nietzsche to mind. He is so vehement against the fallacies of education that he sees around him as to have no patience, and apparently not much hope. Like Flinders Petrie, though with less tact, he has drawn attention to the cyclic course of history and has ignored the laws of Karma and of Rebirth, without which there would be no logic in the law of cycles. He conceives of a logic of time as an organic necessity of fate, to complement his otherwise obviously incomplete conception of cause and effect as ‘the logic of space’; and he seeks for a ‘logic of history’ but fails to find it — as any man must whose eyes are blind to the higher law of spiritual evolution, which includes the key to all the others.
In common with Flinders Petrie, Spengler turns to the arts to illustrate his theory; but to Spengler ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’ have widely different meanings, which he stresses vehemently. A ‘culture’ according to Spengler precedes a ‘civilization,’ of which latter phase imperialism is the “typical symbol of conclusion.” Our present phase is one of civilization, not of culture. “One may regret this, but one cannot alter it.” It does not appear to have dawned on him that we are now creating our own future and that cycles, whether of decay or progress, do no more than to provide and to control the circumstances and conditions in which, and against which, we may struggle, if we will, toward a higher spiritual destiny.
Spengler conceives of cultures as (‘living organisms of the highest type, growing up in exalted aimlessness, like flowers of the field. They belong, like plants and animals, to the living nature of Goethe, not to the dead nature of Newton.... I see in universal history the vision of an eternal formation and transformation, a marvelous rising and passing of organic forms. The standard historian sees it as a tapeworm which is the ‘preliminary’ to inexhaustible epochs.” They are views magnificent that Spengler sees; he is a sure sign of the awakening of growth in human thought; but there is little he can do, except to break up into fragments the already damaged dogmas of the schools of thought he rails against, until the Ancient Wisdom shall include him in its orbit and reveal to him not only cultures that are living organisms, but cycles within cycles that know nothing of ‘exalted aimlessness.’
It is a mystery, much more insoluble than any riddle that the Sphinx propounded, how Spengler reconciles exalted aimlessness with his equally stressed assertion that it is man’s business to discover the particular stage at which history finds him and to govern his actions accordingly. Self-government implies a purpose, a conviction, and a goal. Cui bono, if exalted aimlessness is all that actuates the higher types of living organisms?
Spengler is at his best in his destructiveness. He withers with his scorn the hobby-riding of the “highly intelligent connoisseur” concerned with “the mastery of absurd instrumental tone-masses and harmonic obstacles or with the ‘doing’ of a problem in color.” Everything, he says, is centralized, the metropolis dictating to the provinces what they shall think, and money is the standard of all measurement of value. This, he points out, parallels exactly the decay of Rome, where panem et circenses symbolized precisely the same causes that are undermining our latter-day civilization. He points out many other parallels — the many-storied tenements, for instance, of Byzantium and Rome and of our own great cities; Rome’s financial magnates, whose burial monuments obscured the view along the Via Appia, and our own great capitalists, who, with similar immodesty, erect advertisements of their opulence. But Spengler misses the significance of all this. Though he can coin a flaming epigram in scorn of Guyau, Bergson, Düring, Euchen, and a host of other thinkers, asserting that “they have dropped from the bird’s-eye view to the frog’s-eye view” and have become “mere theorists,” he himself submits to us a theory that is only different from theirs and newer. He accepts quite cheerfully conditions that he holds up to our ridicule, asserting they are “part of an organic sequence, a type of historic act (biographically predetermined hundreds of years before.)”
He recommends us to accept conditions also, his theory being that the only possible course left to the occidental intellect corresponds to Hellenic skepticism. “Everything,” he says, “depends upon one’s clarifying and grasping the situation; this destiny; one can deceive himself about it, but cannot disregard it. Whoever does not admit it to himself, does not count among the men of his generation. He remains a fool, a charlatan, or a pedant.”
Spen
gler possibly forgets that there were prophets of despair before his day, and that human hope perennially lives in spite of them. He has accomplished wonders of invective. But he seems so pleased with having pricked a few thin bladders and exposed the emptiness within, that he has neither capacity nor inclination left to discern what forces move the mere phenomena that he would sweep away as worthless. He prefers “the splendidly clear, highly intellectual lines of a fast steamer” to any of what he terms our present-day “stylistic trash”; and he prefers a Roman aqueduct to all Roman temples and statues. He seems to overlook the fact that even aqueducts and steamers are phenomena.
But he is doing good. He is exploding bombs into the ranks of those who would like to pass laws to compel us to think as they dictate. He has none of Kenneth Morris’s vision, none of Flinders Petrie’s tact. It might improve his usefulness to learn that vehemence is very often merely waste of energy, and that scorn robs truth of its attractiveness. In ignorance of Spengler’s age one hesitates to guess that he has yet reached forty. Time with its logic may suggest to him economy of invective, to the end that he may reach, through sympathy, a more distinct and hopeful view of that history which, he believes, he is the first lo seek to outline in advance.