Spengler's Tome

Formerly unknown, the German writer Oswald Spengler achieved considerable fame in 1918 with the publication of his book entitled, in translation, The Decline of the West. In Spengler's view, all previous writing of history mirrored a false conception of historical time. There is not one linear time, he opined, but as many "times" as there are historic civilizations. Each passed through phases analogous to those of a living organism. They were born, attained their peak and then waned and died. That was the fate of two previous civilizations, dubbed the Apollinian (classical) and Magian (Near Eastern). Like them, the Faustian (or modern western) culture will inevitably grow old and expire. Spengler called for men of iron resolve to slow the process of disintegration.
Spengler's book was well-timed, for World War I had caused many to question the idea of progress. The Decline of the West became a widely read counterpoint to that idea.
Virtually no scholar today adheres to Spengler's "mystical and speculative" view, as one writer put it. Nevertheless, I found The Decline of the West interesting. The translator did a superlative job. Even in English, the work conveys Spengler's "undeniable literary power." As I recall, the author's concluding remarks were:
"The coming of Caesarism breaks the dictature of Money and of its political weapon, democracy. After a long spell in which the (forces of money-advantage?) reign supreme over those of political-creative force, the political side of life manifests itself after all as the stronger of the two. The Sword is victorious over Money, the master-will subdues again the plunderer-will. A (new elite arises?) which finds its satisfaction not in the heaping up of riches but...Money will be overthrown and abolished by Blood....And so the drama of a high culture, that wondrous realm of arts, cities, battles, deities, closes with a restoration of the pristine facts of the blood-eternal which is at one with the ever circling cosmic flow. Before the irresistable rhythm of the generation sequence, everything built up by the Waking Consciousness in its intellectual realm vanishes at the last. Time triumphs over Space, and it is Time which best mirrors the streaming horizons piling up in the light-world of our eyes.
For us, however, at this hour in which fate has placed us, when Money is celebrating its last victories, and the Caesarism which is to follow approaches with steady, quiet step, our own course, both willed and obligatory at once, is set for us within narrow limits, and on any other terms life would not be worth the living. We have not the freedom to reach to this or to that, but the necessary or nothing. And the task which historic necessity has set will be accomplished with the individual or against him."