THE FUTURE FORMULA - OR, ARE THERE LESSONS IN HISTORY

With this article I. F. Clarke looks into the mega-historians who have roamed through world history in search of final explanations for the rise and fall of civilizations. He argues that each civilization creates the future in its own image-a perpetual cycle of renewal for the Greeks; a straight road to eternity for the mediaeval world; and the promise of constant improvement-moral and material-for the Victorians. The unexpected scale of change in World War I transformed the old certainties of steady-state progress, and the most extreme response came in the shape of Oswald Spengler's notorious Decline of the West. I. F. Clarke says that looking backwards is a hazardous business. He thinks that all would-be seekers after the spirit of past times should start every day by reciting the passage in Goethe's Faust: 'What you call the spirit of past ages is but the spirit of this or that worthy gentleman in whose mind those ages are reflected'.