A Study of History

Extract

Twenty years after the first three volumes of Arnold J. Toynbee's A Study of History, the final four volumes have appeared: ten volumes in all, not counting two books still to come, a volume of Maps and Charts, and a book of Reconsiderations. Perhaps no work so comprehensive as this has appeared since the publication of Herbert Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy. The fact that the latter books dealt with the transformations of nature, while Toynbee's work becomes, through its own inner evolution, a study of the transfigurations of the human soul, tells much about the century that has passed and the present crisis.