A Study of History, Vol 12

Title: A Study of History, Vol 12 – Reconsiderations

Author: Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1985 (First published 1954)

ISBN: 9780192152251

Pages: 740

This volume completes a mission that began almost an year ago, when the first volume of ‘A Study of History’ was reviewed. The experience may be compared to one of the adventures of Sindbad, the Sailor. Even though on each occasion the protagonist had to face life threatening situations, every time he successfully tames them and comes out immensely rich. ‘A Study of History’ is like an ocean. Spread into twelve volumes – each one nearly twice the size of a regular paperback – the sheer volume was simply frightening at first. Typeset in small font and replete with Greek and French quotes, the book was no easy matter to sail through. There were occasions when tempests blocked the way in the form of long essays on one of Toynbee’s philosophical escapades. In moments like these, the reader must borrow some strength of will from the author himself as it took him a quarter of a century to research and complete the full series. There were times when the urge prompted me to stop midway as I had actually did in 2002, when the same project was abandoned midway, after completing volume 7A!  But thirteen years is almost half a generation which steels the will. Also, it was a foregone conclusion that if I couldn’t complete the unabridged series now, it is going to be never! It turned out to be a most fulfilling moment to turn the last page and close the book for the last time.

The key concepts and arguments demonstrated in the earlier volumes are subjected to an intense and open instrospection and reconsideration in this volume, in view of the criticism offered to them. The work was gargantuan in nature, in its attempt to envelope all the world’s civilizations – present as well as past – in its folds. The tone of critics vary through the entire spectrum of mild censure to outspoken indictment. Critics quickly homed in on the author’s reluctance to define the terms he used throughout the previous volumes. His urge to base discussions on the shaky foundation of religion is also flayed threadbare. But the most voluminous accusation is definitely his sole reliance on the Hellenic Civilization as a reference model to compare others of the same species. Here, the author pleads himself guilty as charged and confesses it all on his classical education received during the earlier part of the last century at Oxford, at a time when the knowledge of Greek and Latin far outweighed all other subjects. The work itself was praised wholeheartedly by public intellectuals, but criticized by professionals as a ‘weakness of achievement’. But this line of argument is a punch below the belt. Toynbee himself dons the mantle of precaution when he asserts that the generalizations he made about the past may not be applicable in the future! He justifies this shortcoming citing the special nature of historical study, but which is unfortunate for its scientific credentials. Sharp delineations of epochs like the disintegration of the Hellenic society with the Atheno–Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE), and the beginning of the modern era with the development of three-masted, square-rigged sailing ship (1475) are taken to task by critics, which is accepted by the author in good humour.

Toynbee finds a point to retract in his philosophical reconsiderations. As we remember from previous volumes, when a civilization breaks down and starts its downward movement to dissolution, the creative minority that solved all the puzzles in its growth phase loses creativity. It can no longer impel the proletariat to flock to their cultural ideas. It then transforms into a dominant minority where its will is implemented forcefully. The internal proletariat secedes from its masters and accepts inspiration from the religious precepts of the external proletariat in another civilization. Thus a new higher religion is born in the disintegrating civilization. The religion then acts as a chrysalis when the older civilization metamorphoses into a civilization that is apparented and affiliated to the first. This concept was hammered home with numerous examples in previous volumes. Curiously, Toynbee is having second thoughts on this and retracts the idea as false. But the reasoning is far from convincing. Now, the author assumes that a higher religion can’t be expected to serve a secular function as to act as the cradle of a mundane civilization. Religion has a higher role to serve, as asserted by Toynbee, though he doesn’t consider himself to be a believer. Critics accuse him to be a rationalist, but he begs to differ. He still believes that “answers to questions that matter most to us can be found only beyond the reason’s limits”! As regarding the visual apparatus used to learn about nature, he assigns reason to be “mind’s cracked lens”. As the saying goes, something is better than nothing, so a cracked lens is the next best thing to having none at all. The author asserts himself to be an out and out fan of religions as the only way in which human beings can establish communion with the creator. But his mind’s vista is never narrow – he assigns prominence to all higher religions alike, that is, to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism and Buddhism.

The structure of the book itself is also subjected to reconsideration in a laudable spirit of intellectual rectitude, seen rarely in literary circles. The author proposes better models for a possible further study. Toynbee attempts the analysis of civilizations with the stages seen in the Hellenic model, as that is the civilization in which his society is affiliated and apparented. It consists of the by now well known sequence – parochial states, time of troubles, universal states, disintegration, higher religions, dissolution and emergence of an affiliated civilization. The previous volumes had been constructed on this structural edifice. Now he is prepared to re-evaluate the plan by incorporating structural particulars seen in other societies. The Chinese culture presents the concept of Yin and Yang, which offers a rhythm of alternating bouts of activity and quiescent states. There is feverish activity during the Yang stage and then a temporary state of calm known as Yin. Toynbee applies this new concept as well to the study of civilizations and christens it, the ‘Hellenico – Sinic’ model. However, this plan suffers severe reverses in the case of the Egyptiac. In earlier versions, Osirism, the worship of Osiris developed during the Middle Kingdom, was taken as a popular religion borrowed by the internal proletariat to match with the tyranny of barbarian Hyksos. This idea was taken from the works of Breasted, which has since been revised in the light of recent discoveries in the archeological field. Now it seems that Osirism also was a handmaiden of the ruling elite, just like the worship of the solar god, Re. A third mode, with inspiration from Judaism is also proposed to account for the various diaspora originating in the modern world. The Jews were forcibly evicted from their homeland many times and taken as prisoners to the land of their captors. These minorities had no land to till and so they resorted to trading and financial sectors, in which they flourished. In fact, too flourished to engender envy and hatred in their adopted homelands in which people of other faiths constituted the majority. Toynbee suggests this Judaic model to compensate where the earlier two models fail to impress.

Attempts to reconsider the definitions of some of the crucial terms are seen in this volume. Surprisingly, even the term ‘civilization’ is also subjected to scrutiny and if I remember right, this term was not defined in any of the earlier volumes. Almost three decades separate the chronological shorelines of the first and the last volumes in the series, which is abundant time for new discoveries and intuitions to take hold. A startling revelation is the downgrading of the Egyptian Civilization to a secondary category, which owes its birth to cultural diffusion from the Sumeric world. There was a resurgent bout of archeological study in what is now Iraq and Syria, immediately after the Second World War. Toynbee even reconsiders his earlier argument that similar geographical environments need not evoke the birth of civilization containing a similar spirit. At that time, he had pointed to the emergence of civilizations along the Tigris – Euphrates rivers and Nile, whereas no such culture took its root along the Jordan river valley in Palestine. The Jordanian terrain was imposing at first sight and many historians could not deduce that culture originated there too, but later archeologists found unmistakeable evidence in the form of artefacts from the area. In this case, Toynbee’s argument still holds, but one of his examples had been proved wrong.

West Asia had been a fertile ground for the origin of higher religions. All continents other than Asia are today under the sole tutelage of religions originated here, notably Christianity and Islam. An in-depth analysis of this extraordinary fertility is attempted. Christianity and Islam are said to be born out of the compost of several previous civilizations that contributed to the sociocultural richness of the area, the most noteworthy being the Hellenic and the Syriac. These also include the Egyptiac, Sumero-Akkadian and the Minoan too. As a sequel to this, Toynbee refutes the argument that Islam constituted a discontinuity in the cultural progress and ideas suggesting a lesser place for the religion is rubbished. This chapter finds added relevance today when the stability of the entire Fertile Crescent is threatened by an orgy of religious violence fuelled by radical Islam that respects no liberal human value. If the author is to be believed, Islam is no different from Christianity. He even goes on to note that proselytism was not in the agenda of early Muslim conquerors, who were content with annexation of territory and accepting a poll tax from followers of other religions. But, as the Muslim power established itself in the form of the Caliphate, infidels joined the religion en masse and channeled its philosophy to new outlets in which the missionary zeal predominated.

A startling revelation of the interaction between the Old and New Worlds in the pre-Columbian era is immensely interesting. The existence of South American sweet potato in Polynesia rises profound questions on the nature of the interchange. The author’s summary of the spiritual virtues like imagination, wisdom, self-control and good intent as the keys to mankind’s destiny is a guide to individual as well as societal actions. But the saddening aspect of this otherwise illuminating series of books is the excessive reliance on religion as the master activity of the human race. This is subjected to intense comment by reviewers, but Toynbee keeps his habit in this volume too, as we see that “Their (religions’) visions may be partly delusions; their counsels may be partly misguided; their very concern with the soul’s ultimate problem and task may be almost smothered under a heap of irrelevant accretions: ritual observances, social regulations, astronomical theories, and what not. Yet in spite of all their manifest weaknesses the higher religions are the only ways of life, known to Man so far, that do recognize what is the soul’s true problem and true quest, and do offer Man some guidance for reaching his spiritual goal” (p. 534).

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star