In the American Jungle by Waldo David Frank

Oswald Spengler's "The Decline of the West," from 1918 to 1926, sold in Germany almost a hundred thousand copies. It would be inspiriting to believe that a profound historical and philosophical work could have so large a sale in any modern land. But the originality of Spengler does not reside in his erudition; it is poetic. The book's metaphysics is eclectic rather than sound; its historical research is vast rather than uniformly deep. "Der Untergang des Abendlandes" is an epos, a myth. So, if Germany has not bought a hundred thousand copies of a great philosophic work, it has at least welcomed a personal mythos of deep interest: one whose elements are philosophy, history, esthetics: one whose comprehension requires of the reader a great familiarity with comparative history and comparative religion.

I think at once of "The Outline of History" of H. G. Wells, which had an analogous popular appeal in America and England. Wells, like Spengler, under the guise of writing history, offered a thesis and a myth. Here the analogy stops. The story in Wells is a vulgar, obvious narrative of "events": his thesis is the most illiterate notion of "human progress" and his myth is a mere flatulent, optimistic dream. Spengler's work is formally beautiful. He builds, not by storytelling, but by the presentation and analysis of analogies. And he concludes on a note as darkly glamorous as it is pessimistic. The Winter is upon us, he declares in doom words that are closer to the note of the prophets than he would care to admit. Our salvation is to perform, nobly and perfectly, the work of Winter: to understand ourselves, to set down as the Seal of our glorious dying life a ruthless scrutiny of what we were.