Technical Knockout

MAN AND TECHNICS -- Oswald Spengler -- Knopf ($2).

After the heavy barrage laid down by The Decline of the West, Philosopher Spengler, cannonader of despair, now uses a single big gun to finish off what scattered hopes remain. His Big Bertha may scare swivel-chair warriors at H. Q., but it goes way over the heads of the boys doing the fighting up in front.

Powder to launch his projectile Spengler derives from the dogma "Man is a beast of prey." But he is essentially not only a carnivore, he is also an inventive carnivore. With every fresh invention Man advances further outside the bounds of Nature. To maintain his unnatural position he soon finds it necessary to band together into societies; within these societies men divide into the leaders and the led. Invention, technics become more and more complex: "The pace of discovery grows fantastic, and withal . . . human labor is not saved thereby." Knowledge to design and manage the machines becomes the leaders' technical monopoly. But as the led must always work still harder, they begin to strike, revolt. Mutiny even among the leaders spreads against the machine. In this mutiny technics will decay, Western civilization be destroyed. .

To ward off suicidal despair Spengler recommends the psychological attitude of the Roman soldier who died at his post in Pompeii. When the volcano under civilization explodes, and the burning dust begins to descend, the more honorable Spenglerian carnivores will take it standing, polish up their buttons as the lava rises. With its men all dead but its honorable buttons bright, Western civilization can then rest forever on its yews.

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