Word: spengler
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...Spengler believes that today we are in history's grandest age but sees no reason for individuals to be happy about it. "Greatness and happiness are incompatible and we are given no choice. No one living in any part of the world today will be happy. . . ." Conscious of his prophet's mantle, he says: "I see further than others ... I write not for a few months ahead or for next year, but for the future. . . . Among the few genuine historians of standing, none was ever popular. . . ." The old idealistic order is nearly over; the new day will...
...Pacifists will find scant comfort in Spengler's pages : "We have entered upon the age of world wars. It began in the 19th Century and will outlast the present and probably the next." Economists will not agree with his derogatory attitude towards economics, which he makes subservient to politics: "This whole crushing depression is purely and simply the result of the decline of State power." Marxists will be enraged at Spengler's flat statement that the World Revolution "has reached its goal," is an accomplished fact. They may regard as an undeserved compliment his charge that "the world...
...readers who enjoy vigorous writing will be glad to be rubbed the wrong way by Spengler's harsh aphorisms: "If few can stand long war without deterioration of soul, none can stand a long peace. . . . The individual's life is of importance to none besides himself: the point is whether he wishes to escape from history or give his life for it. ... Let it for once be said outright, though it is a slap in the face for the vulgarity of the age: property is not a vice, but a gift, and a gift such as few possess...
...Spengler describes himself as a "strong" pessimist. Though he considers the World War "a defeat of the white races, and the Peace of 1918 . . . the first great triumph of the coloured world," he holds out a small hope, no bigger than Hitler's hand, for the salvation of Western civilization. "There remains as a formative power only the warlike, 'Prussian' spirit-everywhere and not in Germany alone. . . . He whose sword compels victory here will be lord of the world. The dice are there ready for this stupendous game. Who dares to throw them...
...Author. Oswald Spengler chose Germany (Blankenburg im Harz) as his birthplace, history as his province. He studied mathematics, philosophy, art and history in Munich and Berlin, wrote his doctor's thesis on Heraclitus, then subsided into the anonymity of a pedagog. When the first version of Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West) was finished, he could find no German publisher, brought it out in Vienna. By 1923 it had become a world affair, reached the U. S. in 1926. No longer hidden under a bushel of schoolboys' papers, Spengler's threatening light shines...