The work of Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) took shape against the backdrop of two world wars. These tragic events did not lead Europe to decline, as O. Spengler predicted. Moreover, the 20th century announced the trends of globalism, the formation of the world community based on the principles of Eurocentrism: individualism and democracy, providing "dynamism" in contrast to the "static" East.

In his concept, using the possibilities of empirical analysis, Arnold Toynbee considers the cyclical path of the development of civilization, exploring all its stages of formation, development and result. Following N. Ya. Danilevsky and O. Spengler, instead of a picture of world history with a guideline of movement from simple to complex, from less perfect to more perfect, the English thinker sees a picture of many cultures, where each culture has its own idea, its own passions, its own customs and traditions, their life and their death.

A. Toynbee's concept of comprehending history is one of the variants of the theory of cultural cycles, based on the idea that history is made up of many independent, loosely connected civilizations, each of which goes its own way from birth to death. A. Toynbee is a religious thinker who shares the position of deism in philosophical discourse, which significantly affects his vision of history, the interpretation of its purpose and meaning. According to Toynbee, history is the work of God. He realizes history through the vital activity of man and mankind. The basis of history is the interaction of the world law - the Divine logos and humanity. The activity of the latter is nothing more than a response to a divine request, expressed in the form of a natural or other challenge. By comprehending history, humanity comprehends itself. On the surface, history is diverse, but in its depths it is one and one-way, because it is oriented towards the comprehension of God through self-realization, self-fulfillment and self-expression of a person. This single path has nothing in common with the desire of certain political forces to build a single humanity on the basis of the values ​​of Western society. This desire elevates the economic and political factors to the Absolute. It proceeds from a false assumption about the straightforwardness of development, absolutizing the concept of "Eurocentrism".

A. Toynbee believes that any society is a complex and dynamic formation of an evolutionary type. In its development it is conditioned by internal factors and external conditions. The development of society depends on a combination of factors and conditions that act as a "challenge" ordering an appropriate "response". If the answer is successful, society acquires a new quality. If the answer is inadequate, society stops developing and may perish. The scheme of the historical process in the "challenge-response" mode opposes Spengler's fatalism with the orientation that any culture, having exhausted its vitality, is transformed into civilization, which is the beginning of the end of culture, its lethality.

From the point of view of A. Toynbee, civilization is a unit of measurement of historical being, because it is ... "a society with a wider extent, both in space and in time, than national states, city-states or any other political unions" . Therefore, not cultures, but civilizations should be considered by historians. Civilizations are comparable to each other. Toynbee's scale of bases for classifying civilization is highly fluid, but two of them remain stable. This is religion and forms of its organization, as well as territoriality. “The universal church is the main feature that makes it possible to classify societies of the same type. Another criterion for classifying societies is the degree of remoteness from the place where the society originally arose.

Analyzing history, Toynbee identifies twenty-one civilizations that have ever existed on Earth (this figure changes as the book progresses). He pays special attention to Western Christian; Orthodox Christian; Islamic; Far Eastern and Hindu. There are kinship relationships between some of these civilizations, such as Western Christian and Orthodox Christian. They are with each other in "sisterly" relations, because they come from the same culture - the Hellenic civilization. Civilizations interact with each other and can influence each other. This point of view fundamentally contradicts O. Spengler's conclusion that civilizations are self-contained entities that are unable to understand each other. Toynbee also does not accept the concept of "the unity of civilization", explaining the idea of ​​unity by the hypertrophied feeling of Eurocentrism of modern historians. Western historians, according to Toynbee, believe that at present the unification of the world on the economic basis of the West is more or less completed, which means, as they believe, unification in other directions is also being completed. In addition, they confuse unification with unity, exaggerating the role of the situation that has historically developed quite recently and does not allow talking about the creation of a single Civilization, much less identifying it with Western society.

In his concept, A. Toynbee considers the stages of the life cycle of civilizations. He believes that every civilization goes through the stages of emergence, growth, breakdown and decay on its life path. The first two stages are associated with the energy of the "vital impulse", the last two - with the depletion of "vital forces". The development of civilization is determined by the law of "challenge and response". The historical situation, which includes human and natural factors, poses an unexpected problem for society, challenges it. The further development of society depends on its ability to give an adequate response to this challenge. All challenges are divided into environmental challenges and social reality challenges. The basis of the challenges are: harsh climate, new lands, unexpected expansion from the external human factor, constant external pressure, infringement of natural development.

In all these cases, the social law comes into play, which fits into the formula "the stronger the challenge, the stronger the incentive." However, if the challenge is extremely excessive, it cannot be an effective stimulus. The growth of civilizations is a matter, first of all, of creative individuals. “Creative personalities, notes A. Toynbee, under any conditions constitute a minority in society, but it is this minority that breathes new life into the social system. In every growing civilization, even during periods of brisk growth, a huge mass of people never emerge from a state of stagnation.

The first stage of civilization is the state of origin - genesis. Civilization can arise either as a result of a mutation of a primitive society, or on the ruins of a "mother" civilization. The stage of genesis is followed by the stage of growth, in which civilization develops from an embryo into a full-fledged social structure. During the growth, a civilization is constantly in danger of moving into the stage of breakdown, which, as a rule (but not necessarily!) Is replaced by the stage of disintegration. Having disintegrated, a civilization either disappears from the face of the Earth (Egyptian civilization, Inca civilization), or gives birth to new civilizations (Hellenic civilization, which gave rise to Western and Orthodox Christianity through the universal church).

It should be noted that in this life cycle there is no that fatal predetermination of development, which is present in the cycle of Spengler's civilization. If Spengler’s civilization is a living organism that necessarily grows, matures, withers and finally dies, then Toynbee departs from the interpretation of civilization as some kind of indivisible entity, a kind of “monad”, believing that “society is not and cannot be nothing but a medium through which individuals interact with each other. Individuals, not societies, create human history.

Such an interpretation of society allows us to answer the question of the predetermination of development. If all the individuals that make up a given society can overcome the fracture in their souls, then society as a whole can get out of the fracture stage. The fractures of civilizations cannot be the result of repeated or progressive actions of forces beyond human control. The process of development of civilization is ensured in the case when society as a whole responds to a challenge and, at the same time, not only responds, but simultaneously generates another challenge, which in turn requires a new response. The process of development does not stop as long as this repetitive movement of losing balance and restoring it remains in force. It follows that Toynbee rejects fate in matters of the development of civilization, believing that the last word always remains with man. The most stimulating effect on the system is the challenge of medium strength. A weak call cannot force the system to move to a qualitatively new level, while an excessively strong call can simply destroy it.

The concept of A. Toynbee is anthropocentric in the sense that in it society is given the place of a field of action, and not a carrier of creative power. Therefore, the challenges are intended, first of all, for people. Toynbee shares the position of Henri Bergson, according to whom the development of history is ensured by a double effort. First of all, on the part of individuals who are aimed at an innovative path, and along with this - all the others who are ready to accept this innovation and adapt to it. Only that society can be called civilized in which these reciprocal efforts have merged into one. In fact, the second condition is more difficult to fulfill. The presence of a creative personality in society is a necessary and sufficient factor for the emergence of the process. However, for a response movement, certain conditions are needed under which a creative person can captivate others.

Considering the mechanism of interaction between the creative minority and the passive majority, Toynbee called this mechanism social imitation. Social imitation - "mimesis" appears in a person long before society enters the development phase. It can be seen both in societies with a primitive way of life and in advanced civilizations. However, the action of mimesis in these two cases is directly opposite. In primitive societies, mimesis is expressed in customs, imitation of the elder of the family. Being directed to the past, it guarantees the stability of society. When a society enters the path of civilization, "mimesis" is a link between its active and passive members. For a successful response to a challenge, certain factors must be present in society: there must be people who are able to understand the challenge and give an answer to it, the majority must be ready to accept this answer, “ripe” to participate in the implementation of a good response.

Toynbee identifies two ways for the emergence of civilizations: through the mutation of a primitive society and through the alienation of the "proletariat" from the ruling minority of pre-existing civilizations. In both cases, A. Toynbee explains the genesis with the help of the "Challenge-and-Response" concept, while rejecting both racial theories postulating various "state-forming" forces, and favorable natural conditions, allegedly being the key to the emergence of civilizations. Natural conditions can influence the nature of a civilization, however, for a successful birth, a challenge - an incentive - must appear.

As already noted, Toynbee highlights the main incentives that can significantly affect the genesis of civilization. Incentives can be both natural and social. The appearance of a stimulating effect on the part of nature or the surrounding peoples is capable of leading a primitive society out of a stationary state and forcing it to develop. Justifying his thesis, Toynbee analyzes the life of various civilizations and in each case finds a certain stimulus of the first or second order.

Starting to analyze the stages of the growth of civilization, Toynbee raises the problem of criterion. Territorial expansion is by no means an indicator of the development of civilization. Territorial expansion is usually accompanied by bloody wars and rather indicates not the progress of civilization, but its regression. The seizure of foreign territories often indicates the inability of a society to cope with an internal challenge. A society in decline seeks to postpone the day and hour of its demise, directing all its vital energy to material projects on a gigantic scale, which is nothing but the desire to deceive the agonizing consciousness, doomed by its own incompetence to death. Toynbee refuses to accept as a sign of growth the degree of society's power over nature. Progress in engineering and technology is often caused not by the general development of society, but by the order of the military, which indicates a breakdown. In addition, technological progress can lead to its "idolization" as the only criterion for the development of civilization and neglect of the spiritual sphere of human development. What kind of progress can we talk about if the latest achievements of science are used to destroy a person. The essence of progress, according to Toynbee, lies in the law of simplification - esterification. The meaning of this law is that the progressive system must move to "energies more and more elementary, subtle and comprehended only with the help of abstract categories." The law of esterification manifests itself ambiguously. However, for Toynbee, as a believer, religious etherification is most important. It manifests itself in the gradual ascent of religion to the gods with more and more clearly defined personality and certain relationships among themselves, which means, in the final analysis, the formation of a certain single divine personality. This, in turn, causes a transition from the external to the internal concept of God, the transition of religion from static to dynamic. Etherification inevitably leads to a "transfer of the field of action". The contradiction "Man-Nature" is gradually turning into a contradiction, the form of which is the struggle between classes, religions, nations.

The growth of civilization is due to changes in the inner world of the individual. These changes can occur in the soul of not any person, but only among the creative minority. The answer to the challenge in this case is the transition of the individual to a higher level of development. However, the vast majority of society remains where it was. Thus, another very important contradiction "minority-majority" arises. The majority can approach the minority through the mimesis mechanism. However, there is no guarantee that this will happen. Hence there is a danger of separation of one social group from another. With the development of civilization, this abyss becomes wider and wider, which, in the end, can lead to a breakdown of civilization: a challenge to which the minority is no longer able to adequately respond.

As a result of growth, each civilization passes its own unique path of development. The experience gained by each civilization is unique. The more developed a particular civilization, the more unique the life path it has traveled and the more unlike it is from other civilizations. As civilizations grow, their differentiation arises, which affects the worldview of people, culture, and art. Unlike O. Spengler, who explains the difference between civilizations (in Spengler - cultures) by the difference between "primary phenomena" - the primary symbols that underlie each culture, Toynbee sees the original internal unity of all civilizations, the differences of which are caused by the uniqueness of the life path of each civilization. The diversity presented in human nature, human life and social institutions is an artificial phenomenon and it only masks the inner unity.

Unlike Spengler, who simplistically considers the birth, growth, decay and death of cultures by analogy with the animal organism, Toynbee considers society as a field of action for people. As already noted, the process of the growth of civilization is a constant struggle. On the one hand, this is the interaction between challenges and the creative minority, and on the other hand, this is a constant contradiction between the minority and the inert mass of the majority. Breakdown can happen for a variety of reasons. It is possible that the active part simply will not be able to give an adequate response to the next call. Another reason may lie in the nature of mimesis. Mimesis, directed to the future, means the rejection of customs. The system becomes weakly balanced and prone to cataclysms. Not having a sufficiently clear and unambiguous answer to the question about the causes of the fracture, Toynbee gives a large number of examples of fractures, from which several groups can be distinguished:

• rejection of mimesis. During cataclysms, the majority may lose faith in the ideals of the minority and, having no restraining traditions, find themselves in a "suspended" state, which inevitably leads to chaos;
• minority error, expressed in passivity after a series of their own victories. A society with such a minority exists until the first cataclysm, which brings the system out of "sleeping" equilibrium;
• isolation of the ruling minority from society and, as a result, its degeneration;
• idolatry - "an intellectual and morally flawed blind deification of a part instead of the whole, of a creature instead of the Creator and time instead of Eternity." A very wide range of fractures fall into this category. In particular, modern technogenic Western civilization, the Spartan civilization, which put itself on the altar of the God of War, falls here.

As can be seen, the range of dangers that lie in wait for civilization on the path of its development is very wide. However, the onset of breakdown and death is not inevitable. There is always a chance to get out of an impasse.

The stage of decay, according to Toynbee, is a series of unsuccessful responses to the same challenge that led to the breakdown of civilization. In social terms, at the stage of disintegration, society splits into three components:

The ruling minority is no longer the creative force of society, but clings to

power. In order to retain power, it creates its own state;

• the internal "proletariat" does not trust the ruling minority. His response is to create a universal church;
• the external "proletariat" manifests itself in barbarian raids on a weakened civilization.

In the spiritual sphere, the collapse of society leads to a split in the soul. The split in the souls of people manifests itself in a variety of forms. It affects behavior, feelings, life in general. In the period of the collapse of society, each challenge meets in the souls of people with a directly opposite response from absolute passivity to extreme forms of activity. As social disintegration escalates, alternative solutions become more rigid, polarized, and more significant in their consequences.

The decomposition of society is accompanied by the complete collapse of the ruling elite and the emergence of a new creative minority that emerged from the "proletariat". It is this minority that is capable of forming a new civilization. The only positive way out is "transformation", that is, the creation of a new religion based on a fundamentally different system of values ​​than a decaying civilization. The created universal church is that "chrysalis" from which a new civilization will arise in the future.

Advances in the technical and political fields have by no means made modern Western society spiritual. It fell into the trap of idolatry, where the place of the "idol" is occupied by the same Western democracy. In the secularized Western world of the 20th century, the symptoms of spiritual backwardness are obvious. The revival of the Leviathan has become a religion, and every Westerner has contributed to this process. The modern Western Renaissance opposed "idolatry" to the tribal religion of the Hellenistic world.

By subordinating the church to the state, society became essentially neo-pagan. As a religious person, Toynbee seeks salvation in the world church, in religion as a means of reconciliation of all the inhabitants of the Earth. A soul illumined by a higher religion can achieve more in the improvement of earthly life than a pagan soul. The illumination of souls with the light of higher religions determines the spiritual progress of a person. In other words, progress in history is the ever closer approach of man to God 1 .

Thus, the English thinker substantiates the conclusion that the history of mankind is a divine creative force in development, that the rhythm of the historical process of "challenge-response" releases the impulse of social growth, determines its perspective. The reaction of civilization (society) to the challenge is multivariate.

First, it is determined by the nature of the challenge, its external and internal aspects. External can be favorable and not favorable. Internal are due to the contradiction of a particular society, the source of its development.

Secondly, it is determined by the level of people's ability to provide a decent response. The source of social action is not the whole society, but only individual individuals or groups that show the ability to be creative. Creativity at the level of the microcosm causes changes in the macrocosm, acting as a factor in the development of society. Geniuses, strong personalities are "yeast in the common cauldron of humanity." The efforts of the "creative minority" inevitably clash with the conservatism of the majority. If the historical minority failed to ensure the adaptation of their ideas by the inert majority, then the creative impulse turns out to be fatal. Society "culls out" members of the creative minority, declaring them insane or sentencing them to death. If the victorious minority manages to overcome the inertia and hostility of the majority, society reaches a new level in its development with a demonstration of a new quality.

Thirdly, pulling up an inert, conservative majority to the level of a creative minority is a painful process, but possible thanks to "mimesis" - social imitation. This property of human nature is the result not so much of inspiration as of collective experience.

Despite the originality of local civilizations, according to A. Toynbee, there are general laws of genesis, growth, breakdown of civilizations and their collapse. At the stage of genesis, a civilization can arise either as a result of a mutation of a primitive society, or on the ruins of a "mother" civilization. The stage of genesis is followed by the stage of growth, when civilization develops into a full-fledged social structure. At the stage of growth, civilization is in danger of breaking, which, as a rule, is replaced by the stage of disintegration. The collapse of a civilization leads to the fact that it either disappears (Egyptian, Inca civilization), or turns into a building material for new civilizations (Hellenic civilization gave birth to Christian civilization).

Having singled out the main stages in the development of civilization, A. Toynbee reflects on the question of the "motor" of civilization, about what makes a primitive society wake up one day and begin continuous development. Territorial expansion cannot be a growth factor, because militarism breaks civilization, changes its orientation from intensive to extensive development. Aspirations to postpone the time of lethality, to deceive the agonizing consciousness are futile. Can not be a growth factor and technological progress. A necessary condition for growth can only be the challenge that “dictates the mechanism of continuous movement from “disturbance” to the restoration of equilibrium. In other words, the condition for growth is a movement towards self-determination.

As for the criterion for the growth of civilization, this is the “transfer of action”, that is, the transfer of the result of the efforts of the creative minority into the sphere of sociocultural relations, where it is adapted by the inert majority. Having passed the stage of emotional outbursts, romantic moods, ideas in the form of an ideal become accessible and attractive. Through "mimesis" the majority turns to the "new faith", peace is replaced by conflict, well-being gives way to a feeling of dissatisfaction, which results in social activity with a focus on the implementation of an ideal project. The subsequent reconciliation of the real and the ideal gives rise to a sense of stability and the illusion of happiness. If efforts do not reach the goal, then reaction triumphs.

The growth of civilization has a prolongation if the repetitive movement of the loss of balance and its restoration set a chain of challenges and responses. The longer this chain, the more complex and differentiated society becomes, the more it differs from other societies. However, the loss of balance always gives rise to the danger of breaking civilization. If the creative minority did not work properly or let down the mimesis mechanism, when the majority did not adapt the proposed ideas, then the ruling elite resorts to tight control, organizing repression against dissidents. Feelings of impotence, the inevitability of defeat are becoming widespread, which turns into a moral decline when the layman turns on the compensation mechanism (addiction to alcohol, drugs, momentary pleasures).

Under these conditions, according to A. Toynbee, there are two ways to "kick up the dust in the squares and in the historical arena." This is the path of violence and the path of goodness. Violence can be realized in two forms: archaism and futurism. "Archaism" is the transition of the system from dynamics to statics, through the organization of a protest against the law, conscience, traditions and public opinion. For example, the practice of National Socialism in Germany; a call to return to nature. "Futurism" offers to go away from the "vile" reality into dreams, into radiant distances. For example, the concept of German romanticism by F. Schiller. "Archaism" and "futurism", despite their adherents and apologists, lack perspective. More productive is the path of good as a transformation of reality, while maintaining continuity with past experience.

Arnold Toynbee opposed the historical fatalism of O. Spengler with historical optimism, which can be represented in the scheme: “growth - decline - breakdown - transformation - growth” and so on. Not all civilizations are able to overcome the “fracture”, any society has the fundamental possibility of overcoming the crisis. Everything depends on the ability of the creative minority to provide a proper response, as well as on the ability of the majority to adapt the idea of ​​a response, to become the subject of social action to implement it.

Denying the principle of "Eurocentrism", and with it the idea of ​​a single path for humanity, A. Toynbee does not reject the idea of ​​historical progress. The progress of history is not in the development of the economy, politics, technology, but in the moral renewal of man, and with him the world. The guarantor of this renewal can only be the transcendent personality of God, who sets the standard for the height of moral values ​​for each person and requires a worthy answer.

According to Toynbee, history exists there, and only where there are prerequisites due to which a change in the states of human society occurs. Through the change of these states, the content of history is manifested. For the historian, these states are not only connected, but also combined. As a result, the past and the present are actually coexisting. The ancients called the historian a "transmitter of time", for he was not only a keeper of time, but also an organizer of a conditional historical space. A. Toynbee devotes special attention to historical memory as a sphere of accumulation of human experience and as a means of ordering time. The thinker perceives the historical life of society in two dimensions. The internal dimension is the expression of the life of a particular society. The external dimension is an expression of relations between different societies. In this sense, local civilizations are nothing but milestones of historical time, and not centers of history closed in itself.

Each society goes through the stages of genesis, growth, breakdown and decomposition in time and space, realizing its internal and external potential. The viability of each society is determined not so much by the assimilation of someone else's experience, but by the level of development of the spiritual principle in all spheres of society's life, in all types of human activity. The development of the spiritual principle translates the "challenge-response" situation from the external environment into society. Since challenges and responses are always specific, each local civilization is unique and unrepeatable. A weak challenge cannot bring civilization to a new quality, and an excessively strong challenge can destroy it.

Summary:Toynbee's concept is striking in the grandeur of his plan to cover the entire human history and, if possible, explain all existing and existing civilizations. By available means, Arnold Toynbee tried to show that history is open to comprehension. Mankind is able to give a worthy response to the universal challenge, which indirectly testifies to the meaning of history. The general concept of comprehending history at the level of meta-explanation "Challenge-Response" makes it possible to explain specific historical events at a rational level. In general, we can conclude that A. Toynbee, within the framework of post-non-classical rationality, prepared an original and promising concept of comprehending history. His philosophy of history does not claim to be impeccable or prophetic, but provides an opportunity to understand and evaluate the mentality of not only the 20th, but also the 21st century, to maintain a sense of optimism and adequacy in one's actions. His philosophy of history is a guideline for both the creative minority and the routine majority.

The work of A. Toynbee is of particular interest to historians, especially the part where the philosopher considers the problem of the inspiration of the historian, answering the questions why people study history; what is the reason for the attractiveness of the facts of history; What qualities should a historian have? And, finally, the concept of A. Toynbee casts doubt on the existing stereotype of the European consumer. The essence of this stereotype is the assertion of the Absolute of European values. All other values ​​are explained by the savagery of peoples who have not reached the light of Western culture. Criticizing Europe's claim to be a trendsetter on the Olympus of the human world, A. Toynbee overcomes the delusions of N. Ya. Danilevsky, as well as O. Spengler, about the impenetrability of individual cultures for each other. He believed that world religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism), which provide the highest value orientations for a person, act as the integrator of world history. "The soul illumined by the highest religion can achieve more in the improvement of earthly life than the pagan soul." The illumination of souls with the light of higher religions, according to Toynbee, determines the spiritual progress of world history, which is an order of magnitude higher than scientific and technical. As long as there is life, there is hope that a person is the master of his own destiny, at least in part, at least in something.

• Toynbee A. Comprehension of history. - M.: Progress, 1991. - S. 40.
• Toynbee A. Decree. op. - S. 64.

Arnold Toynbee

Comprehension of history

Introduction

Relativity of historical thinking

In every era and in every society, the study and knowledge of history, like any other social activity, is subject to the prevailing trends of a given time and place. At the moment, two institutions define the life of the Western world: the industrial system of the economy and the equally complex and intricate political system, which we call "democracy", referring to the responsible parliamentary representative government of the sovereign nation-state. These two institutions - economic and political - became dominant in the Western world at the end of the last century and provided, albeit temporary, but still a solution to the main problems of that period. The last century sought and found salvation by bequeathing its findings to us. And the fact that the institutions developed in the last century are preserved to this day speaks primarily of the creative power of our predecessors. We live and reproduce our being in an industrial system and a parliamentary nation-state, and it is only natural that these two institutions have significant power over our imagination and its real fruits.

The humanitarian aspect of the industrial system is directly related to man, the division of labor: its other aspect is addressed to the physical environment of man. The task of the industrial system is to maximize its productive capacity by processing raw materials into certain products by man-made means and involving a large number of people in this mechanically organized labor. This feature of the industrial system was recognized by Western thought in the first half of the last century. Since the development of the industrial system is based on the successes of the physical sciences, it is natural to assume that there was some kind of “pre-established harmony” between industry and science.

If this is so, then one should not be surprised that scientific thinking began to be organized in an industrial way. In any case, this is quite legitimate for science at its early stages - and modern science is very young even in comparison with Western society - since for discursive thinking it is necessary first to accumulate enough empirical data. However, the same method has recently found distribution in many areas of knowledge and outside a purely scientific environment - in thinking that is turned to Life, and not to inanimate nature, and, moreover, even in thinking that studies various forms of human activity. Historical thinking has also been captured by an alien industrial system, and it is in this area where relations between people are studied that the modern Western industrial system shows that it is hardly the regime in which one would like to live and work.

The example of the life and work of Theodor Mommsen is indicative here. The young Mommsen created a voluminous work, which, of course, will forever remain a masterpiece of Western historical literature. His "History of the Roman Republic" was published in 1854-1856. But as soon as the book saw the light, the author began to be ashamed of his work and tried to direct his energy in a completely different direction. Mommsen spent the rest of his life compiling a complete collection of Latin inscriptions and publishing an encyclopedic collection of Roman constitutional law. In this, Mommsen showed himself to be a typical Western historian of his generation, a generation that was ready to transform itself into "intellectual workers" for the sake of the prestige of the industrial system. Since the days of Mommsen and Ranke, historians have spent most of their efforts collecting the raw material of inscriptions, documents, etc., and publishing them as anthologies or private notes for periodicals. When processing the collected materials, scientists often resorted to the division of labor. As a result, extensive studies appeared, which were published in a series of volumes, which is still practiced by the University of Cambridge. Such series are monuments to human industriousness, “factuality” and organizational power of our society. They will take their place along with amazing tunnels, bridges and dams, liners, cruisers and skyscrapers, and their creators will be remembered among the famous engineers of the West. Conquering the realm of historical thought, the industrial system produced outstanding strategists and, having won, obtained considerable trophies. However, a thoughtful observer has the right to doubt the scale of what has been achieved, and the victory itself may seem like a delusion born from a false analogy.

It is not uncommon in our time to encounter history teachers who define their seminars as "laboratories" and, perhaps without realizing it, decisively limit the concept of "original research" to the discovery or verification of some facts not previously established. Moreover, this concept began to spread to reviews of historical articles published in periodicals and collections. There is a clear tendency to underestimate historical works written by one person, and this underestimation is especially noticeable when it comes to works on general history. For example, H. G. Wells' Outline of History was received with undisguised hostility by a number of specialists. They mercilessly criticized all the inaccuracies made by the author, his conscious departure from factology. It is unlikely that they were able to understand that, by recreating the history of mankind in their imagination, H. Wells achieved something inaccessible to them, which they did not even dare to think about. In fact, the significance of G. Wells' book was more or less fully appreciated by the general reading public, but not by a narrow group of specialists of that time.

The industrialization of historical thinking has gone so far that in some of its manifestations it has begun to reach pathological forms of hypertrophy of the industrial spirit. It is widely known that those individuals and collectives whose efforts are entirely focused on the transformation of raw materials into light, heat, motion and various commodities tend to think that the discovery and exploitation of natural resources is an activity that is valuable in itself, no matter how valuable for mankind the results of these processes. For Europeans, this mindset characterizes a certain type of American businessman, but this type is, in fact, the extreme expression of a trend that is inherent in the entire Western world. Modern European historians try not to notice that at present this disease, which is the result of a violation of proportions, is also inherent in their consciousness.

INSPIRATION FOR HISTORIANS

VIEW OF THE HISTORIAN

Why do people study history? For the sake of what - if you address the question to a specific person, the author of this book has been writing it for thirty years? Are people born historians or become them? Everyone will give their own answer to this question, because everyone relies on their own personal experience. The author of this work, for example, came to the conclusion that the historian, like everyone who is lucky enough to find the goal of life, goes to this goal, trusting the call of the Lord to feel and find after Him (Acts 7, 27).

If this answer satisfies the discerning reader, perhaps it will shed some light on the next question we have posed. Asking ourselves why we study History, let us first try to define: what is meant by History? Still relying only on personal experience, the author will try to present his own view on the subject. Perhaps his view of History will seem inaccurate or even incorrect to someone, but the author dares to assure the reader that through comprehension of reality he is trying to comprehend God, who reveals Himself through the movements of souls sincerely seeking Him. Since "no one has ever seen God" (John 1, 18), and our clearest views are only "refracted rays" of Him, the view of the historian is nothing more than one of the many multitudes of existing opinions that different souls with different gifts and talents have. different levels of comprehension of His "high works". In addition to historians, there are astronomers, physicists, mathematicians, poets, mystics, prophets, administrators, judges, sailors, fishermen, hunters, shepherds, farmers, artisans, engineers, doctors on Earth ... The list is, in fact, endless, because human callings are numerous and varied. The presence of the Lord in each of them is implicit and incomplete. And among all these countless human destinies and views, the historian's point of view is one of the possible experiences, but, like others, it complements the understanding of what God does for man. History allows us to see the divine creative force in motion, and our human experience captures this motion in six dimensions. The historical view of the world reveals to us the physical cosmos, moving in a circle in the four-dimensional Space-Time, and Life on our planet, evolving in the five-dimensional frame of Space-Time-Life. And the human soul, ascending into the sixth dimension through the gift of the Spirit, rushes through the fatal acquisition of spiritual freedom in the direction of the Creator or away from Him.

THE ATTRACTION OF HISTORY FACTS

Susceptibility. If we are not mistaken in considering History as a view of divine creation in motion from a divine source to a divine goal, we should not be surprised that in the minds of sentient beings, History awakens as mere evidence that they are alive. But since Time is an eternally seething stream, now speeding up, now slowing down its run, we will not be at all surprised to find that a person's internal susceptibility to the impressions of History always remains approximately at the same level. Fluctuations in this susceptibility depend, as a rule, only on specific historical circumstances.

For example, we have repeatedly seen that the vividness of historical impressions is proportional to their strength and pain. Let us take a generation whose childhood coincided with the transition of the new Western society to the newest, that is, at the end of the 19th century. A man who lived through the Civil War as a child in the southern states of America undoubtedly possessed a deeper historical consciousness than his contemporary who spent his childhood in the North. For the same reason, the Frenchman, who grew up during the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, who survived all the ups and downs of 1870-1871, was endowed with a much sharper historical consciousness than any of his contemporaries in Switzerland, Belgium or England.

However, history can also influence the human imagination through the ages, evoking the memory of a bygone past. History affects receptive souls with its monuments and memorials, the names of streets and squares, architecture, changes in fashion, political events, traditional holidays, ceremonies and parades, liturgies.

The conservatism of ecclesiastical institutions, designed to clothe the higher religions in harmonious forms, undoubtedly made them the most powerful emitters of impressions, repositories of the spirit of historical events and historical characters. The main problem faced by all soteriological religions is the problem of enlightening the masses. And this problem was successfully solved through the teaching of history and the transmission of the moral law in a visual form. Even in the mosque, where the use of fine arts for enlightenment was limited by the faithfulness of the prophet Muhammad to the second commandment of Moses, architectural lines skillfully influenced the religious feeling of believers. In the Christian church - until it turned into a prayer house of one of the Western Christian sects, where the second commandment is observed with Muslim rigor - the prophets, apostles and martyrs were placed around the image of the Lord fully armed with their traditional attributes: with a cross, a sword, a wheel or a book and a pen in hand.

It is easy to see that in those days when living civilizations were preserved under the auspices of a living higher religion in their traditional form, visiting a church (mosque, synagogue, Hindu or Buddhist temple) automatically introduced the believer to history. Education was as effective as it was informal, reaching out to the widest sections of the population who did not have the opportunity to attend school. Christ and his apostles, saints and martyrs, patriarchs and prophets, the biblical perspective of history from creation through the fall and redemption to the Last Judgment - all this was perceived as a true reality, more important for Christian souls than local secular history courses.

Referring frankly to my personal experience, I confess that the longer I live, the more deeply I feel how happy I am that I was born in that era of Western civilization, when it was the norm to take children to church every Sunday, that I received a classical education, studying Latin and Greek at school and university. In my childhood days, Latin and Greek had not yet been forced out of the educational system by Western vernacular languages ​​and literatures, medieval and modern Western history and natural science.

The automatic stimulus of the social environment in which a person is born and grows up is the earliest and most powerful source of inspiration for would-be historians. However, this is not enough for two reasons.

First, even in third-generation civilizations that grew out of chrysalis-churches, the informal teaching of history through the institution of the Church never permeated society to its depths, since the vast majority of the population of any society are peasants. Thus, by 1952, the peasantry made up three-quarters of all living humanity. And to the peasantry, as you know, history always appears as a meaningless fairy tale, despite all its instructiveness and thoroughness. The peasantry, captured by the whirlwind of history, drawn into civilization in order to materially provide for a privileged minority, remains to this day the most unfortunate brother of those primitive societies that civilizations simply have not had time to absorb. In the peasant mind, the government has always been the same inevitable and ruthless scourge as, for example, war, plague or famine.

The only passage of history in which the peasantry could feel any interest is the prehistoric era, when pre-human became man - a phenomenon in its historical significance more outstanding than the rise of civilizations. However, this historical event, brought to the light of God by Western archaeologists, anthropologists and psychologists not so long ago, died out in the memory of the people many centuries ago, and the practically primitive subsoil of living civilizations still remains absolutely devoid of any historical consciousness. In fact, for three-quarters of the population of our planet even now, that is, in 1952, history does not exist. And this happened not because the majority demonstrates less susceptibility to enlightenment, but because the majority still lives not according to the laws of History, but in the rhythms of Nature.

However, even for a minority whose social environment is geared towards the study of History, this predisposition to the radiation of the historical social environment is not in itself sufficient to induce a child to become a historian. Passive receptivity, without which he would never have embarked on the true path, is also not enough to reach the intended harbor - for this, inspiration and the desire to raise his own sails are necessary.

Curiosity. The mind of a would-be historian is like a jet-powered airplane. After receiving the first impulse to study History, when it becomes aware of its existence through exposure to the historically set social environment, the mind develops its own next impulse, turning receptivity into curiosity. This transition from the passive to the active phase forces the student of History to take the initiative in his own hands and proceed further at his own risk and fear, charting a course into the unknown heavenly realms.

Without creative awakening and curiosity, even the most famous, impressive and majestic monuments of History will not produce the proper impact on the imagination, for the eyes turned to them will be blind (Isaiah 42, 20; Jer. 5, 21; Ezek. 12, 12; Matt. 13:14: Mark 4:12; Luke 13:10; John 12:40; Acts 28:26; Rom 1:1:8). This truth was confirmed by the Western travel philosopher Volney, who visited the Islamic world in 1783-1785. And in 1798, a whole group of scientists took advantage of Napoleon's invitation to accompany the expeditionary force in Africa. Unlike these fearless men of science, neither Napoleon himself nor his army were drawn to Egypt by the call of History. The driving forces of the invaders were barbaric restlessness and ambition. However, Napoleon was aware that he had touched a string, the sound of which could touch even the ignorant heart of the rudest soldier. Therefore, before the decisive battle, he considered it necessary to address the army with the following words: "Soldiers, for forty centuries look at you," referring to the pyramids that opened their eyes during their march to Cairo. You can be sure that Murat Bey, the commander of the Mamluk armed forces, did not even think to cheer up his inquisitive comrades with a similar reminder.

French scholars who visited Egypt with Napoleon's troops discovered a new dimension of history that was supposed to satisfy Western curiosity. The scientific interest of that era focused primarily on the classical languages ​​and literature of the Hellenic civilization. 1798 brought an unexpected victory. The origins of their own cultural heritage were discovered. After the secondary assimilation of the Latin and Greek classics from a new angle, Western scholars began to master the Arabic and Persian classics of the Islamic society, the Chinese classics of the Far Eastern society, the Sanskrit classics of the Hindu society, and, not satisfied with the study of the Hebrew originals of the Bible, which the Christian church shared with the Jewish diaspora, Western scientists by that time had also mastered the ancient Iranian language of the writings of Parsi Zoroastrianism. Thus, being the owners of all the riches of the past, which were preserved in the cultural heritage of living civilizations, Western scientists began to dig up hidden riches that had been underground for thousands of years, devoted to complete oblivion.

This was a powerful intellectual breakthrough, for long ago the unbroken chain of tradition was broken, and there was no one who could initiate the new convert into its secrets. Without outside help, scientists had to decipher forgotten scripts and discover the structure, vocabulary and meaning of dead languages, dead in the literal sense of the word, in contrast to Latin and Sanskrit, which are called dead, because they have gone out of speech use, but nevertheless continue to be used in the liturgy. and classical literature. The comprehension of ancient Egyptian civilization by Western scholars, which began in 1798, was thus a much more significant achievement in the development of modern Western historical interest than the Italian renaissance of Latin and Greek literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. At least eleven civilizations are known today - the ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Sumerian, Minoan, Hittite, and Indian and Shang cultures in the Old World, and the Mayan, Yucatan, Mexican, and Andean civilizations in the New World. During the lifetime of my generation, four remarkable discoveries were made: the Indian culture, the Shang culture, the Hittite and Minoan civilizations. And it must be admitted that this has significantly advanced our knowledge and understanding of history.

Of course, this is not the pinnacle and not the limit of the achievements of Western intellectual pioneers. Their success could not but infect with curiosity those non-Western peoples who, a century and a half ago, in the days of Volnay and Napoleon, lived and worked under the shadow of the monuments of the Past, paying no attention to them. In 1952, Japanese, Chinese, Egyptian, and Turkish philologists, historians, and archaeologists worked hand in hand with Western enthusiasts in fields already "ready for harvest" (John 4:35: Matt. 9:37-38; Luke 10:2 ). The amazing successes and achievements of scientists not only did not close them in their environment, but, arousing interest in science, more and more expanded the circle of non-professional amateurs.

The popularity of archeology these days has become so wide that even newspapermen do not pass by its discoveries, giving readers detailed information from the excavation sites. The discovery on November 4, 1922 of the tomb of Tutankhamen (1362-1352 BC) made almost the same sensation in England as the birth of a bear cub in the zoological garden by a polar she-bear in 1950. Nowadays, when Greek classes are relegated to the background by the official school , England remains the only country where there is an increase in the number of children who want to learn Greek and Latin, and the general interest in classical history and literature is stimulated by an ever-increasing number of translations, the quality of which is also steadily increasing.

In the mind of the author, Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) has always been a heroic example of the response of invincible curiosity to the challenge of soul-tormenting circumstances. It began from that memorable day at Winchester, when the author, as a boy, listened to a lecture by his teacher, M. J. Randall, who, speaking of the Iliad, also dwelled on the outstanding events of this romantic life. Born a year before Schliemann's death, the author of these lines could not, therefore, be acquainted with this hero of History, but he had the good fortune to personally know two of his younger contemporaries.

HW Bailey (b. 1899), world-renowned philologist, professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge in 1952, spent his childhood on a farm in Western Australia. It is hard to imagine a less suitable environment for a future scholar of Oriental languages. The severity of the virgin, recently developed lands did not favor fairy tales and legends. And the boy took the book as a heavenly gift. A seven-volume encyclopedia and four textbooks in French, Latin, German, Greek, Italian and Spanish appeared on a Western Australian farm. Later, the boy became interested in Arabic and Persian, but Persian took over and then turned into an interest in Sanskrit.

This was the first spark that ignited Bailey's curiosity. In 1943, a modest scientist told me how the family looked at him good-naturedly and at the same time with some surprise when, at noon, after field work, he crammed Eastern grammar in the hayloft. Having reached university age, the young scientist realized that he was at a certain limit and it was hardly possible to continue studying oriental languages ​​\u200b\u200bon his own, relying only on books. What was his next step? Oriental languages ​​were not taught at the University of Western Australia at that time. It remained to go to Western Europe or North America. Bailey decided to improve his Latin and Greek, for which he entered the local university, where he received a scholarship, and soon the opportunity to go to Oxford for an in-depth study of Oriental languages.

However, even in Cambridge there was no department that could assist in the study of Khotanese, a language related to Persian and Sanskrit. This language was discovered by Western scholars while Bailey was studying the Avesta in a hayloft in Western Australia. But it was precisely this language that became the field of activity in which Bailey later demonstrated his brilliant abilities as a researcher and scientist.

Bailey's experience to some extent echoes the experience of another modern researcher, a specialist in the modern history of the Far East, F. S. Jones. As a graduate student, Jones accidentally discovered in the university library a collection of books on the history of the Far East, once donated to the university by F. W. Dickens, an Englishman who served in 1866-1870. military doctor in China and Japan, and later taught Japanese studies at the university. The dust that covered the books told the young scholar that he was the first to take an interest in them; and this pile of books, abandoned by everyone, had a decisive influence on the intellectual searches of the young man. Without abandoning his full-time academic work, Jones has been systematically involved in the Far East ever since. This became the subject of his personal interest. With the help of the Rockefeller Foundation, he went to China and spent about two years there - from the autumn of 1935 to the summer of 1937, studying Chinese at the College of Chinese Studies in Beijing and even traveling around the country, despite the fact that in China at that time there were big riots. At the end of 1937 he entered the Far East Department of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, from where he returned to his alma mater in Bristol. I worked with him for fourteen years and never noticed that he lost interest in his favorite subject even for a while.

I must say that my soul was once scorched by the same fire. I shall never forget that memorable winter morning in early 1898, when four identically bound volumes appeared on the bookshelf in my parents' London apartment. It was Fisher Unwin's "History of Nations" series. I had a completely favorable environment for my consciousness to wake up at the turn of nine or ten years and call me to become a historian. My mother was a historian. I well remember how she wrote in 1898 "Unfictional Tales from Scottish History", and I remember the delight that seized me when I picked up a book with bright pictures. My mother wrote this book to pay off a debt to the nanny who looked after me when I was four or five years old. And although I was sorry to leave the nanny, I was rewarded by the fact that I began to spend more time with my mother. Every night when my mother put me to bed, she would tell me the history of England before the Battle of Waterloo. I was very receptive to my native history, but that memorable morning had a decisive influence on my further intellectual development. For the discovery of the radiance of the ancient Egyptian and Babylonian luminaries took me out of the state of Yin and brought me into the dynamics of Yang, awakening an unquenchable curiosity. And this has been going on for over fifty-four years.

The schooner went out into the open ocean (as a child, I somehow ran away to the seashore, but the nanny caught up with me and brought me back home; now there was no nanny to return me from the undertaken intellectual journey to the Ocean of History). At school my curiosity was fueled by the experience of Herodotus, who went to the Achaemenid Empire, and I began to study the varieties of Christianity in Georgia and Abyssinia. The university opened up to me a new world of the Far East and the Great Eurasian Steppe. When I passed my final exams, my curiosity drew me into the theater of colorful Hellenic history - I became a member of the British Archaeological School in Rome and Athens. There I made the discovery of the then still living Ottoman world. This gave me a place in the Turkish section of the foreign section of the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Between the first and second world wars, my curiosity led me to an intensive study of international relations. It broadened my horizons. But to add another dimension to my intellectual universe, I took a dive into the abyss of the Unconscious with C. G. Jung. After the Second World War, the same irrepressible curiosity drew me into the field of economics. I began to study production cycles, hoping that this would allow me to better understand the relationship between Law and Freedom in History. And on September 15, 1952, having crossed into the second half of the sixty-fourth year of my life, I felt how the approaching Time was pushing me even more insistently on the path in search of new worlds.

At this age, I was inspired by the example of the historian, banker and statesman Georg Groth (1794-1871), who, two years before completing the last and final volume of his twelve-volume history of Greece, was carried away by a new work. As a result of this hobby, three volumes about Plato appeared. No sooner had the last of them come out than the author set about Aristotle. However, he could not respond to the challenge of Time with a new edition - Death stopped the race.

With all my heart devoted to the example of Georg Groth, I tried to keep up with Lord Bryce (1838-1922), who, before he had finished one book, was already planning the next. His last feat - the study of "Modern Democracies" - he accomplished when he was already over eighty. He intended to write more about Justinian I and his wife Theodora, when death interrupted his plans.

Inspired by the examples of Bryce and Groth, having crossed the threshold of the twelfth part of my work out of thirteen planned in December 1950, I began to ponder the "Religion of the Historian" and "History of Hellenic Civilization", which I began in 1914, but stopped because of the first world war.

In 1952, my curiosity led me to switch from studying Arabic and Turkish to studying New Persian. I was quite able to combine the study of three languages ​​in 1924, when I had to participate in the publication of the Chronicle of International Relations. By 1927 are the first systematic notes for this Study, which I began to write regularly in 1930. Five years in my time at Winchester (1902-1907) gave me sufficient knowledge of Greek and Latin to be fluent in the ancient classics. However, the dream never left me to navigate the Islamic classics as freely. I took the first steps towards this in 1915 at the London School of Oriental Studies, but in 1924 I had to stop my studies in Turkish and Arabic. By 1952, the desire, relegated to the background in 1924, had grown into an urgent need. I literally burned with shame when I remembered that my favorite hero Heinrich Schliemann learned thirteen languages ​​on his own.

In 1952, I was also seized by a passionate desire to travel to the most remarkable historical places that I had never seen or that had once bewitched me.

Every time I think about my Herodotus ambitions, I am reminded of an anecdote told by Lord Bryce. Lord Bryce, an inveterate traveler who had already traveled half the world by that time, felt somehow slightly unwell. This led him to think that further travel might be in question. Then he and Lady Bryce decided to choose the most severe region for their next trip, in order to test their physical condition. Their choice fell on Siberia. Having successfully overcome the Siberian expanses, they decided that they were quite capable of the rest of the world. Lord Bryce's example inspired me the more the nearer I approached the end of the Insight into History. And now, in the middle of the sixty-fourth year of my life, I thank God for the curiosity that He endowed me with fifty-four years ago and which has never left me since.

A wandering light of omniscience. Without inspiration, which is spurred on by curiosity, no one can become a historian, because without it it is impossible to break the state of Yin, the state of infantile receptivity, it is impossible to make your mind rush about in search of the solution to the mystery of the universe. It is impossible to become a historian without curiosity, just as it is impossible to remain one if you have lost this quality. However, curiosity is a necessary thing, but clearly not enough. And if curiosity is Pegasus, then, once riding it, the historian must constantly remember the bridle and not allow his winged horse to gallop, as they say, wherever his eyes look.

A scientist who allows his curiosity to develop uncontrollably runs the risk of losing his creative potential. This is especially dangerous for a Western scientist, who, due to the tradition of education that has developed in the West, is often inclined to consider the goal of education not a conscious and full-blooded life, but an exam. The institution of examination, which has shaped learned minds during the last eight centuries of Western history, was introduced into Western universities by the fathers of the early Middle Ages. The educational system was formed on the basis of theology. And the myth of the Last Judgment was part of the heritage received by the Christian church from the cult of Osiris, as well as through Zoroastrianism. But if the Egyptian fathers of the cult of Osiris considered the Last Judgment as an ethical test, symbolically represented by the scales of Osiris, on the bowls of which lay the good and bad deeds of the departed soul, the Christian church, impregnated, in addition, with Hellenistic philosophy, supplemented the question of Osiris "Bad or good?" Aristotelian intellectual task: "True or false?"

When the abomination of intellectualism took over Western secular education, as well as Western Christian theology, the fear of failing the exam was based not on the fact that something illegal in the worldly life of the student would be publicly revealed, and not on the fact that he would be deprived of his degree, which was under the jurisdiction of the university. but on the fact that those who fail the exam will be doomed to eternal torment in hell, because the medieval, and even the early new Western, Christian faith provided for mandatory punishment for unorthodox views. As the flow of information at the disposal of the Western examiner for his incessant intellectual war with the student grows exponentially, examinations in the West have become a nightmare that can be compared to the nightmare of medieval interrogations of the Inquisition. However, the worst examination that awaits us is the posthumous examination; for even an excellent student who has commendably passed all the trials that his alma mater brought down on him, goes into life not in order to apply his knowledge in practical matters, but in order to continue to accumulate it and eventually take it to the grave.

The agonizing pursuit of the will-o'-the-wisp of omniscience contains a double moral flaw.

Ignoring the truth that the only legitimate goal of any knowledge is its practical use within the life allotted to a person, the sinner scientist partially renounces his sociality. By refusing to recognize that immutable law that the human soul cannot achieve perfection in this World, a person loses humility. Moreover, this sin is not only more serious, it is also more insidious, because here the intellectual hybrid of the scientist is hidden under the mask of false humility. The scientist is subconsciously cunning, claiming that he cannot publish, write, or say anything about what he is not fully convinced of until he knows everything thoroughly. This professional conscientiousness is nothing more than a camouflage for the three deadly sins - satanic pride, irresponsibility and criminal laziness.

This humble man is actually overcome with pride, as he aspires to a deliberately unattainable intellectual level. Omniscience is the lot of Almighty God, and Man should be content with relative, partial knowledge.

The intellectual error present in the pursuit of omniscience is like a moral error raised to a power; and the beginning of evils here is the wrongful identification of plurality with infinity. True, the human soul is characterized by the need to seek harmony between itself and Infinity. However, omniscience, as Faust discovered with his perspicacious mind, cannot be achieved through the consistent addition of knowledge to knowledge, art to art, science to science, forming a bad infinity.

Since the time of Dante, Western scientists have puzzled over the insoluble problem, applying to it the formula: "Know more and more about less and less"; but this path turned out to be more fruitless even than the method of Goethe's Faust, not to mention the fact that the practical significance of scientific research was lost. As the scientist reduces the sector of his vision in the hope of getting to the bottom of the essence, science as a whole is divided into countless segments, each of which does not become less complex than the whole from the procedure performed. But even if attempts to delve into these infinitesimal quantities were less chimerical than attempts to grasp and cognize the whole, the ultimate goal of all these academic exercises would still remain unattained: since, as we have repeatedly noted in our study, the human mind is not given to compete with the eternal divine understanding of the infinite.

From the point of view of the historian, the verdict on the idea of ​​encyclopedism was passed by History itself. This false ideal was the last intellectual error that the old civilization rejected, and the first to be rejected by the new, as soon as the time came to part with childish amusements (1 Cor. 13, 11).

There was an episode in the life of the author of these lines that to some extent illustrates what was said above. In December 1906, when I was eighteen years old, I found myself in the company of two eminent scientists. These were P. Toynbee, the author of the Dictionary of Proper Names and Noteworthy Places in the Works of Dante, and E. Toynbee, publisher of Horace Walpole's letters. In addition, they were my uncles and aunts. During their visit, which was extremely pleasant and interesting for me, I did not notice how I revealed all my various historical interests, from the Assyrians to the Fourth Crusade. However, I was somewhat discouraged by the parting advice that, out of kindness, my uncle gave his impressionable nephew before leaving. "Your Aunt Nellie and I," said the Dante specialist, "have come to the conclusion that you are too dispersed. We would advise you to pick one and focus on that subject." And now, in 1952, the author of these lines still keeps in his soul the memory of how everything in him opposed this advice and he firmly decided not to follow it. It so happened that later, when the aunt died prematurely, without finishing the publication of Walpole's letters, the uncle himself violated his intellectual principles, sacrificing them on the altar of love for his wife. After her death, he continued her work, and it must be said that his unprofessional literary work did not go unnoticed. After the letters were published in The Times, they were widely quoted. Meanwhile, his nephew, despite the good decision not to follow the wrong advice, almost reached an intellectual impasse, from which the Dante specialist successfully emerged thanks to a tragic event in his own family.

Eleven years of my youth, from the autumn of 1900 to the summer of 1911, I spent in an incessant race, now preparing for exams, now passing them. The overall demoralizing effect of these labors was that I slowly but surely forgot my original decision never to become a specialist. In 1911, as a graduate student in my last year of study, I suddenly discovered with surprise that the vice of narrow specialization that struck me had also embraced my older friend G. L. Cheezman, who had once inspired me with his example and aroused my interest in the late Roman Empire.

With the memory of Cheeseman's former intellectual predilections, I made my way to New College, where he worked as an assistant in Roman history. This trip was preceded by a meeting with Dr. Bussel, a very talented scholar who had the idea to stir up a wave of interest in the history of Byzantium at Oxford. When parting, we decided to expand the circle of adherents of this idea. I had no doubt that Dr. Bussel's proposal would find enthusiastic support at New College. To my surprise and disappointment, this idea provoked the sharpest protest, as if Mephistopheles appeared to them in my person, tempting them to destroy the established monastic order. Assistant Cheeseman explained to me in a popular way that it was his duty to master as thoroughly as possible the subject that the college had entrusted him to teach. Expanding the boundaries of scientific activity is completely beyond his power. In a word, Byzantium was definitely not interested in him.

In the summer of 1911 the author of these lines was appointed assistant in Greek and Roman history at Balliol. Having passed the last academic exam, he considered himself enlightened enough to never take exams again. And he adheres to this rule since then strictly.

In the same year, 1911, I decided to use the rather long leave due to me after passing the exams to study the sources of Roman history. I interrupted my studies only for trips to Paris, Rome and Athens, and in 1912 I returned to Oxford as a member of the college council. Having appreciated all the charm of distant wanderings, I began to devote a minimum of time to museums and libraries. A dormant passion for contact with nature woke up in me, which I tried to satisfy by traveling on foot whenever possible. Fortunately, I was smart enough to understand that the landscape of the Hellenic world is worth seeing with my own eyes, for it is a picture that has no equal.

However, life invaded the academic world of the scholarly wanderer and presented tasks of a completely different kind. On the evening of November 8, 1911, returning to Rome from an expedition to the Etruscan burial grounds in Cerveteri and Corneto, the young discoverer of antiquities unexpectedly noticed that his neighbors in the car, the Neapolitans, looked very unfriendly at the soldiers who filled the car. It was a kind of echo of the hostilities that unfolded in Tripolitania on November 18, 1911, I had to transfer from an Italian ship to a Greek one. I had to sail to Patras, and the Italian ship did not dare to approach the hostile Turkish coast. After spending the next eight months in the Greek villages, I heard plenty of talk in local cafes about "Sir Edward Grey's foreign policy." The question was discussed with might and main, when will the war start - this spring or next? Shepherds and tillers, merchants and artisans, it seemed that everyone, including small children, had their own view on this problem. And only the author of these lines reveled in the landscapes of continental Greece and Crete, where medieval French castles and later Venetian fortresses competed in mystery with Hellenic temples and Minoan palaces.

Twice during this reckless journey the Oxford lecturer was arrested as a Turkish spy. The first time, on the evening of November 16, 1911, he was detained by an Italian carabinieri, and the second - on July 21, 1912 - was stopped by a Greek military patrol.

At the end of my journey, I ended up in a hospital with dysentery after drinking from a stream of crystal clear water at first glance. There I again turned to the reading which I had interrupted the previous autumn. During my illness, I studied Strabo's "Geography" and proceeded to the "Description of Hellas" by Pausanias. When I was already tormenting Pausanias at Oxford, I was seized by a sudden attack of aching melancholy from the realization of the exorbitant price that one inevitably has to pay for one's desire to know the infinite.

The scientist who aspires to intellectual omniscience meets the same fate as the soul who aspires to spiritual perfection. Each new step into the unknown, instead of clearing the path and bringing it closer to the goal, further obscures and removes the ideal. Just as the one striving for holiness becomes more and more convinced of his own sinfulness as he gains spiritual insight, so the one striving for omniscience sees his own ignorance more and more clearly with the accumulation of knowledge. In both cases, the gap between the goal and the person walking towards it becomes wider. This pursuit is inevitably doomed to failure, because the finite human nature is lost before the incommensurable infinity of God, and in return only moral regression remains - from fatigue through disappointment to cynicism.

Having experienced the agony of this hopeless pursuit of a ghost, the author of these lines was freed from the horror of an imaginary posthumous examiner with the help of one remarkable event in his life, an event that had nothing to do with wars, or even with rumors of wars (Matt. 24, 6; Mark 13:7; Luke 21:9).

In the summer of 1911, during an intense study of original sources on the history of the Hellenic world of the 4th century. BC. the author more than once resorted to the method of comparing the same facts given in different presentations. Information about the organization and size of the Lacedaemonian army, cited by Xenophon, came into conflict with what settled in the author's head during his preparation for the exams, when he studied this period according to Thucydides. In addition, the dates given by Xenophon also disagreed with the evidence of Thucydides. In short, reading the sources gave rise to a number of questions that could only be resolved as a result of careful empirical analysis.

Subsequently, when a few months later the author was in Greece, theoretical research, fertilized by the beauties of the landscapes of Lacedaemon, gave a new idea of ​​​​the city-states of the 4th century. BC. and their dominions. Field and book work activated my mind to such an extent that in 1913 there was an urgent need to generalize the collected material. In the same year I wrote down and published the article "The Development of Sparta". I couldn't waste any more time reading aimlessly. The First World War interrupted my studies of the history of the Hellenic world, and the inflation that had begun required more and more funds to maintain the family budget. And I got into journalism.

In 1952, thirty-seven years after such a sharp turn in his intellectual activity, the author can state that the chosen path was not erroneous. Since then, I have trained myself to write, not to read, and this has become a system. I still consider reading and travel essential preparatory steps for creativity. However, over time, I learned to work in such a way that writing, traveling and reading became, as it were, independent processes from each other. In order to write, I no longer needed special training.

Since 1916, I began to collect a bibliographic card index of historical research, and I put the broadest meaning into the term "history". However, I have always been careful to limit this area of ​​intellectual activity to certain limits, trying to avoid the claims of completeness that many professionals have, for the failures of potentially creative minds have taught me that too pedantic collection of cards, names, titles, and books themselves, leads to sterilization. Thus, trying not to lose my curiosity, at the same time I kept it within certain limits. Curiosity is given to a person like a string to a bow: the bow can shoot only when the string is stretched. In the same way, curiosity keeps the human mind in working order. For the price of creativity is constant tension.

The author made his intellectual turn by completing a course of classical Western education based on an examination system. A truth was revealed to him, which, perhaps, mistaking it for a truism, was overlooked by many prominent thinkers. The truth, quite obvious and at the same time stubbornly neglected by scientists, is that Life is Action. Life, when it does not turn into action, is doomed to failure. This is true both for the prophet, poet, scientist, and for the "mere mortal" in the common use of this expression.

Why is the understanding of the depth of Action, of its absolute necessity, less widespread among scientists than among "practical people"? Why is fear of action aa?a considered a distinctive professional trait of a scientist?

Plato considered the only possible way for the philosopher "intense intellectual communication." And Elijah, having heard a quiet voice that reached him after lightning, earthquake and storm, was absolutely sure that this is the direct presence of spiritual power, which is the source of all action in the Universe (1 Kings 19, 11-13). The "great and mighty wind" that "moved mountains and shattered stones before the Lord" came and went before their Maker and Creator to make Elijah's prophetic intuition manifest. Elijah, who was waiting for the Lord, had to show that physical strength is only one of the manifestations of God, and not Almighty God Himself. Or I knew, as Laozi knew, that the stillness of the Source of Life (wuwei) is, in fact, the fullness of activity, which seems to be non-action only to the uninitiated.

Prophets, poets, and scientists are the chosen vessels called by the Creator to perform human action of an ethereal kind, which is perhaps more like God's own action than any of the actions performed by Human Nature. In this, as in any other, form of encounter between the divine and the created, there is a price of privilege; for the truth that Life is Action is just as difficult for one to whom a higher spiritual calling has been opened, as it is obvious for a person of action who is on a spiritually lower level. Elijah himself was called by the Word of the Lord so that the criminal act of inviting death at the moment of despair that comes when faith is lost (1 Kings 19:1-18) would not be accomplished. But this sin, which is the bitter experience of poets, prophets and scientists, is not typical of businessmen or military men. An example of this is the fight between Hector and Ajax.

It is clear to Hector and Ajax without words that their lives depend entirely on each other's actions. In contrast, a prophet, poet, or scholar is like an archer shooting an arrow at a target so far away that it is impossible to see it.

"Release your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again" (Eccl. II, 1). Hector or Ajax does not think about the goal, because it is nearby. However, the archer who does not see his goal, or the thinker who does not know the consequences of his abstract thoughts, is doomed to painful hesitation.

Thus, beyond the "practical" action within the framework of Space and Time, there is a spiritual action, which seems to be much more god-like in two aspects. Agamemnon, who lived a short and dull life, owes his literary immortality to the poet, who died in complete obscurity. Homer's poems continue to touch the hearts of people and excite their imagination, many centuries after the ephemeral Mycenaean Empire collapsed, without having a tangible impact on all subsequent political life; and how many strong and courageous people who lived before Agamemnon turned out to be completely forgotten only because a poet who would immortalize them in his creations did not fall to their time.

However, precisely because the spiritual activity of Human Nature has the divine ability to produce actions over thousands of miles and years, the souls called by God to such spiritual actions tend to procrastinate and hesitate, wasting time of life aimlessly and not seeing the cardinal differences between action and inactivity. . Precisely because the archer's target is out of sight, the archer can put his bow aside without firing an arrow, while a warrior cannot throw his sword away in the course of a duel.

Man does not know Eternity - the Divine Eternal Now - in the final earthly life. Eternity is hardly accessible even to the Collective Humanity, persistently collecting and accumulating from century to century the fruits of the labors and achievements of Science and Technology; for even this human coral-reef would never have existed if each of the innumerable organisms that compose it did not perform its separate individual action within its own short terrestrial path and narrow field of action. In this respect, the collective fruits of Science and Technology do not differ significantly from the gifts of Poetry and Prophecy. Like the latter, they owe their existence to the individual creative acts of individual souls, illumined with meaning and grace, which the Creator sent down to them.

A scientist, just like a manual worker, is given only one life, and this life, for various reasons, can be very short. At any moment, a person must be ready for death, because no one knows whether it will come in a year, in a month, next week, or maybe even today. When making plans for the future, a person must constantly remember the transience of life. One cannot count on a miracle that will help to accomplish the impossible by pushing the boundaries of Life or Intelligence. It should always be remembered that one of the fundamental laws of Human Nature is the law according to which any undertaking that goes beyond the capabilities of a mortal turns out to be ephemeral. Indeed, the intellectual who is able to draw lessons from his own experience will find that even the most grandiose work of art ever created by the human soul has not completely swallowed up the entire life of the creator.

The limitations that are imposed on the creative possibilities of a person by changes in his destiny, and the short duration of life itself, are only external and negative. The rhythm of the artist's work corresponds to his mental chronometer, the two hands of which are the Intellect and the Subconscious Spring of Spiritual Creativity. Listening to the rhythm of merciless Time, the man of action challenges Death itself.

IMPULSE TO RESEARCH THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN FACTS

critical reactions. In examining the inspirations of historians, we found that the one who is destined to become a historian passes from a passive perception of the reality around him to an active desire to know the facts of history. Moreover, we have found that it is impossible to become a historian, just as impossible to remain one, unless the mental mill is set in motion by a powerful stream of curiosity. We also noticed that if the future historian does not restrain his indefatigable curiosity, he sets off in pursuit of the will-o'-the-wisp of omniscience, and this is a false path that leads nowhere.

What is the correct approach? A person who is called to be a historian must learn to curb his curiosity. His interest in facts is manifested and satisfied not for the sake of this interest itself, but ultimately for the sake of creativity. The historian must be inspired by the desire not only to know the facts, but to comprehend their meaning. The highest meaning of the creative search is the search for God acting in history, and the first blind step on this pilgrimage path is the desire to understand how the facts of History are interconnected. The first mental movement of the historian who investigates the relationship between facts is a critical reaction to apparent contradictions, and the second is a creative response to challenging phenomena.

In studying the awakening of the critical faculty in the historian's mind, the author is forced to turn to his own experience, for he does not have any other first-hand evidence.

So, in March 1897, not quite eight years old, he, being a guest, loudly expressed his distrust when he heard one of the adults praise the delights of the transatlantic voyage that had just been completed. This statement clearly contradicted what the boy heard from his great-uncle Harry, who was, undoubtedly, a more significant authority, given that he was not just a passenger, but the captain of the ship. The child had heard plenty of the old man's stories about moldy ship biscuits eaten away by the weevil, about open warfare with ship rats, and how corned beef steaks and pudding were only good for rat bait. Therefore, the story of very good food seemed to the boy an obvious exaggeration on the part of the passenger. True, Captain Toynbee retired in 1866, and he sailed on ships of a completely different class. Therefore, after explanations given not without humor to a critically minded child, the distrust that flashed in the child’s mind dissipated and for the first time the child felt that human relations do not stand still and this movement can be so fast that dramatic changes can occur during one human life. .

The next contradiction, which arose in the childish mind of the author, occurred when he took his first steps in the knowledge of history. It happened at the end of the ninth year of his life. Having read by that time four volumes of the "History of Nations" by Z. A. Ragozina, which described the history of how the Iranian-speaking peoples came to the forefront of world history in the period between the fall of the Assyrian Empire and the clash of the Achaemenid Empire with the Hellenes, he delved with interest into the previous and subsequent chapters of Iranian history. Aunt Elsie Marshall had just given her nephew a copy of Benjamin called Persia for his birthday. Reading eagerly into this new book, he found that he was moving along paths completely unknown to him. Even now, fifty-three years later, the author of these lines clearly remembers how shocked he was that the facts of Iranian history as presented by Ragozina and Benjamin turned out to be completely incompatible. This first intellectual shock somewhat debunked in the eyes of the young historian the previously indisputable authorities who so easily discredited themselves by contradicting each other. This sad discovery became for him the painful beginning of historical wisdom, for he realized that one should never blindly trust "authority" as if he were the infallible oracle of the gospel truth.

A year or so later, I suffered another shock when I came across a map that hung in the largest classroom at Waton Court Preparatory School, near Canterbury, where I was sent at the age of eleven. From the tenth chapter of the Book of Genesis, I had by then well learned that mankind is a single family, and history is a single sequence of events. However, quite unexpectedly, the map displayed in the classroom presented me with a problem that I had not thought about before.

Looking at the map, I was first of all struck by the accuracy of the date: 4004 BC, which was listed as the year of Creation (this date of Creation was, of course, the product of Archbishop Usher). Peering into this huge map, which ended at some event of the 19th century, I noted for myself among the many different colors representing the histories of various peoples and states, one fairly wide area, which was called "China". From whom did the Chinese originate - from Shem, Ham or Japhet? For some reason, it never occurred to me to ask this question before. However, now that there was a map in front of my eyes, I suddenly wanted to trace how China is connected with the three sons of Noah, and try to link the Chinese with Adam and Eve. This process seemed pretty simple at first. However, the hairs on the young explorer's head stood on end when his gaze, which had begun its journey across the map from a three thousand year old Chinese dragon, suddenly stopped, not finding any connection with Japhet, Ham or Shem. It turned out that four hundred million Chinese people were born spontaneously, literally from nowhere.

And then it became clear to the young researcher that either the cartographers had committed criminal negligence, or the fact was that it was simply impossible to trace the result of the fertility of Noah and his sons (Gen. 9, 1 and 7) in all the diversity of mankind that populated the Earth. This astonishing discovery led the future historian to question for the first time whether the family tree is the true diagram that accurately reflects the history of the progressive division of the human family.

As this doubt grew stronger, the author began to try alternative classification systems that could embrace all living and extinct branches of humanity and at the same time establish the degree of difference and common ground between them. Did the key to this historical riddle lie in physical nature? Or was it to be found in the language? Ever since the author of these lines was shocked by the absurdities of the school map, his mind has worked tirelessly on these questions, discarding one argument after another. And it must be said that it took ten or twelve years to come to the conclusion that the linguistic and racial approaches to the problem are as unsatisfactory as the genealogical approach, rejected in youth. Returning again and again to the problem that puzzled him in his youth, the author drew various schemes three times, trying to find the right path. The result of these works was the present study, in which the author, as it seems to him, comes to a positive solution to the problem. His final conclusion is that what is most essential in human relations is not Race or Language, but secular and religious Culture.

I recall another vivid contradiction that struck my mind in my youth. This was during the First World War. I once wandered around the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington. My gaze fell on the bust of a girl, made of majolica in a modern Western style. I was not surprised that the sculpture was from Italy, but it was a complete surprise that this work, so modern, turned out to be made in the 14th century. Before me was material evidence that Italy of the XIV century. in some ways has already reached the level of the modern era, while Western Christianity as a whole, with the exception, perhaps. Flanders, did not show such success until the end of the 15th century, and perhaps even until the beginning of the 16th century. Thus, Italy, as it were, overtook the rest of Western Christianity by about two centuries. This example shows that within the same society different "sectors" are quite possible, historically having different rates of development. Chronologically being contemporaries, in fact, people can belong to different cultural eras.

These thoughts, inspired by Italian sculpture of the 14th century, did not leave the author for a long time and visited him again, confirming their truth when, thirty years later, at the end of the Second World War, he again visited this museum to see the exposition of works of art from the English Chapel King Henry VII at Westminster Abbey. This time I was even more struck by the cultural gulf that separated medieval western England from the rebellious heirs of Hellas. This chain of observations, which confirmed the existence of a cultural discrepancy between Northern and Central Italy in the late Middle Ages, prompted the author to comprehend the special historical role of the creative minority.

A correct comprehension of History can also be facilitated by a critical look at contradictions that are not proven, but are suspected. And now, in September 1952, the author of these lines has not forgotten that March day, 1899, when his mother read aloud to him the book "Chaldeans" by Z. A. Ragozina. Assyriologists and Egyptologists of the last century were strongly impressed by the real duration of human history compared to the relative brevity of the biblical chronological version, so the antiquity of the "Chaldean" (that is, Sumerian) civilization was the main theme of Ragozin's work. The talented writer justified her thesis with two chronological statements of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (669-626 BC) and the Neo-Babylonian emperor Nabonidus (556-539 BC), which were open by that time, without asking questions whether the advisers of these sovereigns had reliable information and whether you can rely on their data. Ashurbanipal's document stated that the statue of the goddess Nana (that is, Inanna - the original Sumerian name of the goddess, whose Akkadian name was Ishtar), which Ashurbanipal returned to Uruk (Erek) from Susa in 635 BC, 1635 years stayed in Elamite captivity. Ragozina comes to a simple conclusion: "If we add 645 to 1635, we get 2280 - an indisputable date": and although she also insists on the date of 3750 BC. as in the time of the prosperity of the king of Akkad, Naramsin, confirming it with the assertion of Nabonidus that Naramsin ruled 3200 years before him, she insures here the "possibility of a mistake by the engraver" who compiled the inscription, but does not take into account the possibility that the emperor-archaeologist himself could name this date at random .

Ragozina's categorical statement that Nabonidus and Ashurbaiipal knew what they were talking about, of course, could not be taken critically by a diligently attentive child, but he was immediately interested in how these Assyrian and Babylonian "years" correlate with the years by which we now measure our lives. Perhaps this question arose in his mind due to some echo of the fundamentalist disputes that took place in Western Christianity in the 19th century. . In these disputes, an attempt was made to save biblical chronology by the assumption that the years of life, generously given in the hundreds to the forefathers in the Bible, should be read not as "years", but as "months". Perhaps, if I had grown up in the countryside, the thought would never have occurred to me that a certain arbitrariness in various variants of counting the year is permissible, since for the farmer the length of the year is not set by human will, but by the seasonal cycle. However, the child grew up in the city and was deaf to the rhythms of Nature, impassively performing her cycle in the endless alternation of spring flowering and autumn withering. In its urbanized world, "years" were perceived simply as segments of Time, just as artificially and arbitrarily allocated by people, as well as everything that people could invent, create or agree on, based on their will and at will.

However, before laughing at my childish ignorance, I discovered that the question was much smarter than it might have seemed. The calendar of Babylonian origin, accessible to the mind of an English boy of the early 20th century, was built on the solar cycle. Over the centuries, this calendar has been corrected several times in order to more accurately combine with the solar cycle. At the same time, the lunar cycle remained unchanged, only the length of the months was arbitrarily changed in order to fit the months into the framework of a single year. An English boy discovered that the method of calendaring used by Christians was not accepted throughout the world. Muslims, for example, used a calendar that was based not on the solar but on the lunar cycle, so the nominal "year" of the lunar months, ignoring the seasonal alternation and starting the Muslim era from the Hijra, allows itself to seem to slide on the dial of the Christian-Babylonian sundial.

However, until 1950, when the author of these lines began to take notes on chronology, he could not fully understand for himself the significance that the Islamic lunar calendar has for the correct solution of the question of the length of the Sumerian year, a question that first agitated him more than fifty solar years ago. And then one day in the autumn of 1950 of the solar year, I came across Poebel's articles about the recent finds of Assyrian king lists in Khorsabad. I must say that I was amazed at the inventiveness of contemporary Assyrologists. Then I read a work by Sidney Smith in which he criticized Pöbel's reconstruction of Assyrian chronology, and was quite surprised to find that a well-known modern archaeologist was essentially repeating the question that a child once puzzled his mother: how can one be sure that " years," with which the Assyrian chronologists measured time, marking a series of events, were really solar years, and not some other?

The highly hypothetical correspondence that Pöbel used as a matter of course in his reconstruction of the Assyrian chronology by studying the newly discovered king list in combination with other documents has been convincingly challenged by an eminent opponent. In Assyria, according to Sidney Smith, the Babylonian solar calendar, which approximated the true solar year, was not adopted for official use until the reign of Tiglath-pileser I (1114-1076 BC). "For a long time," writes Smith, "this calendar was considered equivalent to the Julian... But the Assyrian calendar originally used has significant deviations from the Babylonian, and an accurate translation of the Assyrian years into Julian is simply impossible." Sidney Smith believes that the calendar, which was abolished in Assyria in 1114 B.C. in favor of the Babylonian solar calendar of that time, was lunar, that is, it had the same basis as the calendar that 1736 years later was still in use in a remote and backward Arabian oasis and which then, by chance, preserved in its desert citadel, became the official calendar a new universal church founded by a prophet from Mecca.

Creative answers. If the observation or even the unconfirmed conjecture that historical facts contradict each other can inspire the human mind to intellectual efforts in an attempt to solve the question that has arisen and establish the truth, then all the more can we expect that the mind, prompted to action by intuition that has grasped the connection between historical facts, will come to a certain positive decision.

A traditional historical riddle capable of awakening the imagination and thought of a historian is the presence of identical cultural elements at widely spaced points in Space and Time. It can be the same clothes, and the same words, and even the same hairstyles. Similarity, often approaching identity, can hardly be a coincidence. Rather, it depends on an unbroken chain of historical tradition and geographical diffusion, which is quite amenable to reconstruction and decipherment.

How, for example, did it happen that on a bronze medal made in 1439 by the Italian master Vittoro Pisano (Pisanello) for the Eastern Roman emperor John VII Palaiologos (1425-1448), and on a fresco painted on the western wall of the church of San Francesco in Arezzo where somewhere between 1452 and 1466. Piero della Francesco, on which the same John VII is represented in the image of Constantine the Great, this last representative of the Byzantine imperial throne is depicted in a hairstyle that, like two drops of water, reproduces the double ancient Egyptian crown, which has become one of the symbols the power of the pharaoh after the unification in 3100 BC. Upper and Lower Egypt? How this complex headdress, which is very strange for anyone who is not familiar with this episode of Egyptian history, appeared four and a half millennia later, and not on the banks of the Nile, where it was invented, but on the banks of the Bosphorus, and even a thousand years after How did the last remnants of the living Egyptian tradition disappear? The historian in search of an answer to this question will no doubt recall that the pre-Christian Roman emperors claimed the right to be considered the legitimate successors of the Egyptian pharaohs. However, it would be too fanciful to suggest that the Roman incarnations of the Egyptian pharaohs were indeed decorated with ancient Egyptian paraphernalia, including the symbolic double crown, and that, despite the subsequent disappearance of Egyptian culture and the conquest of Egypt itself and the Roman Empire by Muslim hordes, these ancient Egyptian regalia were transferred from the Old Rome to the New, where they were preserved as signs of the Eastern Roman ghost until the arrival of the last of the Palaiologos, who revived them in their hair, perhaps without realizing either their origin or their meaning.

It is also interesting to see how the historical clothes of the Scythians and Dacians reappear in the mythical clothes of the gnomes, the heroes of Western folklore. The gnomes themselves, of course, appeared as a subconscious reaction of the psyche to the challenge of a new experience in mining metal ores from the bowels of the Earth, an experience that required reflection and internal acceptance, because this occupation was not quite natural for a person. The costume in which human fantasy dressed the gnomes, settling them in a magical land, certainly had to correspond to some real costume of a living people, whom the pioneers of medieval Western Christianity met in their advance to the east. If you speculate about the possible habitat of this forgotten tribe, whose clothes turned out to be immortalized in the outfits of immortal gnomes, the imagination draws a horde of nomadic shepherds who, having violated the boundaries of their traditional pastures, entered the Dniester valley and the forests of Galicia. Further, it is easy to imagine how these pastoralists, finding themselves in an unaccustomed physical environment, were forced to change both their lifestyle and occupation, turning to the extraction of ore. The historical prototypes of fictional dwarfs thus lived somewhere in the Carpathian region and represented a mining community whose nomadic origin was betrayed by the traditional clothes of their distant ancestors. Aggressive Germanic tribes came here in search of minerals and it was in this form that they found the former nomads who became miners.

The desire to find the roots of connections between historical facts, of course, is also caused by facts of a different kind. In the field of language, for example, the question arises why in the lexicon of the English middle class of the late 19th century. the name of the Sumerian goddess appears - Inanna. The story of the transfer of Inanna from the Sumerian pantheon to English usage is remarkable in that this name has survived, despite the vast Space and Time, although it has lost the first sound. In Victorian life, when a nurse meant more to a child than even his own mother, it was quite natural that the child named the most powerful female figure of his miniature home world after the unforgettable mother goddess.

The motive prompting to connect with each other far apart, but equivalent concepts or ideas, sometimes goes back not to the desire to restore the broken link in the chain, but to the desire to reach its origins. For example, who were the ancestors of the Etruscans? Who is the descendant of the lost ten tribes of Israel? There are almost no peoples that would not be suspected by the Hellenic or modern Western antiquities seeker of being the ancestors of the Etruscans; and even fewer peoples from the Islamic and Christian regions in which modern scholars would not look for a relationship with the Lost Ten Tribes.

The fancifulness of such statements should serve as a warning that potentially creative intellectual impulses can give rise to serious errors and misunderstandings; and the prudent mature historian, of course, values ​​his time and energy too much to deal with problems that are obviously insoluble, even if they once captured his imagination, perhaps as a child. However, there are at least two reasons why, in trying to solve these eternal mysteries of History, we see something more than an empty pastime. First of all, they can shed light on general historical questions. Plutarch's questions about the history of clothing reveal the startlingly interesting truth that the conductivity of the social fabric of human life is exceptionally high in two social settings of a special kind: the "universal state" and the nomadic shepherd society. Our reflections on some words of the everyday English vocabulary reveal the truth that the energy radiated by the elements of culture is exceptionally high if these elements go back to the names of deities. Such guiding lights on the landscape of world history justify the intellectual effort expended in investigating connections between facts that at first sight may seem trivial; but the main justification for this childlike intellectual quest lies within itself, for the task set by Virgil to "know the causes of things" never leaves the heart of the true historian.

TOYNBEE Arnold Joseph(1889-1975) - British historian, culturologist, one of the most authoritative developers of a civilizational approach to understanding history.

He dedicated his life to teaching and research. He worked at the University of London, the London School of Economics, the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Author of many works on historical, philosophical and political issues. The most fundamental work of A. Toynbee is the twelve-volume "Comprehension of History" (published in 1934-1961). In this work, based on the broadest factual material, the concept of history as a process of birth and death of relatively independent civilizations passing through similar stages of development is developed. The main criterion for distinguishing civilizations is religious. The mechanism of their dynamics is described by A. Toynbee in terms of "call-response". The "challenge" sent to civilization by nature, climate, social contradictions, etc., is accepted by the "creative minority". If it finds a worthy "answer", its authority grows and civilization grows stronger and develops. As the creative minority loses the ability to find such "answers", it turns into an "elite" that relies not so much on its authority as on power. This means that civilization has entered the stage of breakdown and decay. At the same time, while dividing history into local episodes of the birth and death of civilizations, A. Toynbee still tries to preserve the idea of ​​its integrity - "a single tree of history".

Main works in Russian: "Comprehension of history"; "Civilization before the court of history"; "The role of personality in history"; "History Research".

The falsehood of the concept of "unity of civilization"

Having answered the objection that civilizations are too heterogeneous for comparison, we will answer the directly opposite to it, but also a valid objection that civilizations, being homogeneous, are essentially identical, and we are actually dealing not with twenty-one civilizations, but with only one single civilization. . This civilization is unique, and there is nothing to compare it with. This thesis of "the unity of civilization" is a false concept, very popular among modern Western historians, whose thinking is heavily influenced by the social environment.

One reason for this misconception is that modern Western civilization has spread its economic system all over the world. The economic unification, which rests on a Western basis, has been followed by a political unification, which has the same basis and has gone almost as far. Despite the fact that the political expansion of the Western world today is not as obvious and offensive as the economic expansion, nevertheless, about 60–70 states of the modern world, including also existing non-Western states, have now become members (in varying degrees of inclusion) a single world system of states with a single international law.

Western historians exaggerate the significance of these phenomena. First, they believe that at present the unification of the world on the economic basis of the West is more or less completed, which means, as they believe, unification in other directions is also being completed. Secondly, they confuse unification with unity, thus exaggerating the role of a situation that has historically developed quite recently and does not yet allow talking about the creation of a single Civilization, much less identifying it with Western society.

Western society is proclaimed, however, as a unique civilization, united and indivisible, a civilization that, after a long period of struggle, has finally reached its goal of world domination. And the fact that its economic system keeps all of humanity in its nets is presented as "the heavenly freedom of the children of God."

The thesis about the unification of the world on the basis of the Western economic system as a natural result of a single and continuous process of development of human history leads to gross distortions of facts and to a striking narrowing of the historical outlook.

Firstly, such a view of the modern world should be limited only to the economic and political aspects of social life, and in no way be extended to a culture that is not only deeper than the first two layers, but also more fundamental. While the economic and political maps of the world are indeed almost completely "Westernized", the cultural map still remains the same as it was before the start of Western economic and political expansion. How did our historians manage, looking, not to see? How dense their blinkers are, we will understand by analyzing the English word "natives"(natives) and the corresponding words in other European languages.

In the description of the natives by Europeans, local flavor and exoticism prevail. Westerners perceive the natives as part of the local flora and fauna, and not as people like themselves, endowed with passions and having equal rights with them. They are denied even the right to the sovereignty of the land they occupy,

Secondly, the dogma of the "unity of civilization" forces the historian to ignore that the continuity of the history of two kindred civilizations differs from the continuity of two successive chapters of the histories of one civilization. Ignoring this difference, historians begin to consider Hellenic history as one of the chapters in the history of Western civilization (which they have already unequivocally identified with Civilization). The history of the Minoan society is considered from the same angle of view. Thus, three civilizations are united into one, and the history of a single Civilization turns out to be straightened in a line descending from the comprehensive modern Western civilization to the primitive society of the Neolithic, and from the Neolithic through the upper and lower layers of the Paleolithic material culture to the prehistoric ancestors of Man.

Thirdly, they simply ignore stages or chapters in the history of other civilizations, if they do not fit into their general concept, omitting them as "semi-barbarian" or "decaying" or referring them to the East, which was actually excluded from the history of civilization. Finally, they do not take into account the presence of other civilizations at all. Orthodox Christianity, for example, is either considered part of Western Christianity, as the name implies, or is depicted as a temporary growth on the body of Western society. Orthodox Christianity, according to this version, having originated, served as a stronghold of Western society in the struggle against the East. Having exhausted its functions, this growth atrophied and disappeared, just as the gills and tail of a tadpole fall off at the stage of its transformation into a frog. As for the other three non-Western civilizations - Islamic, Hindu and Far Eastern - they are generally rejected as "native" in relation to the chariot of Western society.

With the help of such a Procrustean framework, the thesis of the "unity of civilization" is preserved to this day. Compared with the life span of an individual, the life span of a civilization is so vast that one cannot even hope to measure its curve until one is far enough away. And you can get this perspective only by examining a dead society. The historian can never completely free himself from the society in which he himself lives. In other words, to take the liberty of asserting that the current society is the result of human history means to insist on the correctness of the conclusion, excluding the possibility of verifying it. But since such egocentric illusions have always been characteristic of people, one should not look for scientific evidence in them. [...]

The false concept of "the unity of history" on the basis of Western society has one more wrong premise - ideas about the straightforwardness of development.

This is nothing more than the simplest image of a magical beanstalk from a fairy tale that has broken through the ground and grows upwards, without sprouting and without breaking under the weight of its own weight, until it hits its head on the sky. At the beginning of our work, an attempt was made to apply the concept of evolution to human history. It was shown how representatives of the same type of society, finding themselves in the same conditions, react completely differently to trials - the so-called challenge of history. Some die immediately; others survive, but at such a cost that they are no longer capable of anything after that; others are so successful in resisting the challenge that they come out not only not weakened, but even having created more favorable conditions for overcoming the coming trials; there are those who follow the pioneers as sheep follow their leader. This concept of development seems to us more acceptable than the old-fashioned image of a bean sprout, and we will proceed from it in our study.

The division of history into "ancient" and "modern" records the transition from Hellenic history to Western history, while the division into "medieval" and "modern" refers to the transition from one chapter of Western history to another. Without pursuing distant goals, let us note for now that the conventional formula "ancient + medieval + modern" history is not only inadequate, but also incorrect.

Call-and-response area. "Full sails", or "Too good land"

Challenge encourages growth. By responding to the challenge, society solves the problem that has arisen before it, which translates itself into a higher and more perfect state in terms of complication of the structure.

Lack of challenges means lack of incentives for growth and development. The traditional opinion, according to which favorable climatic and geographical conditions certainly contribute to social development, turns out to be wrong. On the contrary, historical examples show that too good conditions tend to encourage a return to nature, the cessation of all growth.

Egypt is traditionally considered as a region with favorable natural and climatic conditions. However, in reality it turns out that initially it was a difficult area for agriculture, which flourished thanks to a special irrigation system. In Central America, in Ceylon, in the north of the Arabian Desert, on Easter Island, in New England [...] and the Roman Campaign [...] one can notice traces of life, once settled and civilized, and then died out, abandoned, forgotten. This suggests that civilization exists thanks to the sown efforts of man. It is enough to deprive the city of energy supply, as civilized life in it will immediately be called into question. It was enough for the Polynesian merchants to stop their dangerous voyages to Easter Island, as the great achievements of its ancient culture turned into a mystery after just a few generations [...]. The Italian Capua turned out to be "treacherous", because the soldiers, addicted to "earthly joys", became completely demoralized and forgot about their military duty [...]. Moses led his fellow tribesmen out of Egypt, where they "sat by the cauldrons of meat" and "ate their fill of bread," and it was not by chance that they complained that they were going to be "starved to death" (Ex. 16:3). And vice versa, the peoples left to their own devices, who lived in the hot Central African jungles, were deprived of a natural stimulus and for thousands of years remained in a frozen state at a primitive level [...].

Growth incentives can be divided into two main types: environmental incentives and human environmental incentives. Among the stimuli of the natural environment, one can single out the stimulus of the "barren land" and the stimulus of the "new earth".

There are many incentives for the "barren land" in history. Harsh natural conditions often serve as a powerful stimulus for the emergence and growth of civilization. For example, if we compare the Yangtze and Huang He valleys, then the former is much more suitable for cyclical seasonal agriculture than the latter. It would seem that the ancient Chinese civilization should have arisen precisely in the Yangtze Valley. But it originated in the Huang He valley. If we compare two areas in South America, we can meet a similar situation. The Andean civilization arose not in Valparaiso, an area that the Spanish conquistadors called an earthly paradise because of the abundance of rains, but in the northern Peruvian region, where there is a constant shortage of water and agriculture is impossible without a complex irrigation system.

Growth analysis. The relationship between growing civilizations and individuals ((Toynbee A. Comprehension of history. S. 259–261.)

People united by a certain system of social relations are, as a rule, heirs of the same culture, and therefore it would be strange if similar answers did not follow the common challenge. What is really surprising in the real dynamics of social life is precisely that "the idea of ​​what is in the air" does not take possession of the minds of all representatives of a given society at once. But it is nevertheless a fact. And if it is true that a new creative idea or project cannot conquer the entire society at the same time, then it is also true that they never appear outside the boundaries of a social minority.

The significance of the creative minority in human history struck the imagination of H. J. Wells. "All my hopes for the future are connected with faith in that serious minority, which is so fundamentally different from the indifferent and faceless mass of our society. I cannot understand the meaning of any great religion, I cannot explain the constructive course of history until I turn to this thoughtful minority. They are the Salt of the Earth [...], these people are able to dedicate their lives to distant and majestic goals" [...].

The internal uniqueness and individuality of any creative act only slightly contradicts its tendency towards homogeneity, which is based on the fact that each member of society is a potential creator, and members of one society live in the same social atmosphere. However, the creator, having declared himself, always turns out to be thrown out of the inert, uncreative mass. Sometimes he has a good opportunity to enjoy communication with a narrow circle of kindred souls. Acts of social creativity are the prerogatives of either single creators or a creative minority.

Western science and Western technology, which exists to turn knowledge into power and wealth, which we have every reason to be proud of, is nonetheless dangerously esoteric. The great social forces of modernity - Democracy and Industrialism - brought to life by Western civilization, arose from the depths of a creative minority, and this minority is now in question whether it is capable of directing and controlling the gigantic energy of the released forces. The main reason why the Salt of the Earth cannot feel safe is that the majority, alas, is still "bad".

At the present time, huge masses of people still remain at the same intellectual and moral level that they were on one hundred and fifty years ago, when new gigantic social forces were just beginning to appear. The measure of the moral squalor and degradation of modern humanity is fully visible on the pages of the "yellow press". In the perversity of the Western press, one can also sense the power of modern Western industrialism and democracy, seeking to keep the bulk of the people, already culturally deficient, at the lowest possible level of spirituality. The same force breathed life into the vicious institutions of War, Tribalism, Slavery and Property. The creative minority in the modern Western world is in danger of regression, and the earth, transformed by the creative act, has found itself in the hands of new forces and a new apparatus of power. A crime is being committed, and it cannot be said that even greater misfortunes do not await us ahead. The use of the inventions of a minority would not lead to such catastrophic consequences if, at the time when the minority makes a gigantic moral and intellectual step forward, the majority did not remain inert. The stagnation of the masses is the fundamental cause of the crisis facing Western civilization today. This phenomenon is found in the life of all living civilizations and is a feature that characterizes the process of growth.

The very fact that the rise of civilizations is the work of creative individuals or creative minorities suggests that the uncreative majority will be left behind until the pioneers bring the rearguards up to their own level. The last consideration requires a clarification of the definition of civilization and primitive society. Earlier in this study, we established that primitive societies are in a static state, while civilizations, or at least growing civilizations, are in a dynamic state. Let us now note that growing civilizations differ from primitive societies in their forward movement at the expense of the creative minority. It should be added that creative individuals under any conditions constitute a minority in society, but it is this minority that breathes new life into the social system. In every growing civilization, even in periods of its most lively growth, huge masses of people never emerge from a state of stagnation, like a primitive society that is in constant stagnation, since the overwhelming majority of the representatives of any civilization are no different from the man of a primitive society.

The characteristic type of individual, whose actions transform a primitive society into a civilization and determine the cause of the growth of a growing civilization, is the "strong personality", "medium", "genius", "superman": but in a growing society at any given moment, representatives of this type are always in minority. They are just yeast in the common cauldron of humanity.

Thus, the spiritual demarcation between the Personality and the Crowd does not coincide with the demarcation line that runs between civilizations and primitive societies. In the most developed and civilized societies, the vast majority is an inert mass. [...]

Pulling up the uncreative majority of a growing society to the level of creative pioneers, without which forward movement is impossible, is in practice solved thanks to free mimesis - a sublime property of human nature, which is more the result of collective experience than inspiration.

To turn on the mechanism of mimesis, it is necessary to activate the internal potential of a person, because mimesis is a feature inherent in man from time immemorial. "The initial lessons taught to Man by Nature boiled down to accepting the customs of the group. Mimesis as an imitation was developed quite naturally and freely, for Man became Man in the collective" [...].

Creative evolution thus uses a previously developed property to perform a new function. The historical reorientation of the intrinsically unchanging phenomenon of mimesis has already attracted our attention when analyzing the specific differences between primitive society and civilization. We have noted that mimesis is a common feature of social life and that its operation can be observed in societies of both kinds. However, if in a primitive society mimesis is focused on the older generation of the living and on the images of ancestors who have gone to another world, as the embodiment of a "crystal of custom", then in growing societies, a creative person, a leader who paves a new path, becomes a role model, a standard.

In order to induce the inert majority to follow the active minority, it is not enough only the fortitude of a creative person. Mastering high spiritual and moral values ​​presupposes the ability to perceive "cultural radiation", free mimesis as an imitation of the spiritual and moral impulse of the chosen bearers of the new.

• Toynbee A. Comprehension of history. M.: Airis-Press, 2002. S. 86–88. URL: hrono.info/libris/lib_t/toinby_hyst004.html
• Toynbee A. Comprehension of history. pp. 126–127.

Toynbee A.J.

COMPREHENSION OF HISTORY (Collection)

Per. from English/Comp. Ogurtsov A.P.; Intro. Art. Ukolova V.I.;

Conclusion Art. Rashkovsky E.B.

Missing pages 320 and 321 !

Arnold Toynbee and the comprehension of history. . . . . . . . . . . 5

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . fourteen

Relativity of historical thinking. . . . . . . . fourteen

The field of historical research. . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Comparative study of civilizations. . . . . . . 42

Part one. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

The problem of the genesis of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

The nature of the genesis of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Cause of the genesis of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Call-and-Response. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Six outposts in the history of Western Europe. . . . . . 142

Part two. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

The rise of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

The process of the growth of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

Growth analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

Care-and-Return. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

Breakdowns of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

Part three. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

The collapse of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

The Secession-and-Palingenesis Movement. . . . . . . . . . 338

split in the social system. . . . . . . . . . . . . 343

Split in the soul. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358

Archaism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415

Futurism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427

Renunciation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438

Transformation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443

Decay analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

Rhythms of decay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473

Part four. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484

universal states. . . . . . . . . . . . . 484

Universal states as goals. . . . . . . . . 486

Universal states as means. . . . . . . 499

Provinces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505

Capital Cities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509

Part five. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515

universal churches. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515

Civilization as a regression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529

Part six. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541

Heroic Ages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541

Contacts between civilizations in space. . . . . 555

Social consequences of contacts between modern 577

each other civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Psychological consequences of contacts between 587

civilizations contemporary to each other. . . . . . . . . .

Contacts of civilizations in time. . . . . . . . . . . 599

Part seven. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617

Historian inspiration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617

Reading Toynbee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643

Scientific commentary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 655

The end of the century, and even more so the end of the millennium, invites reflection on the meaning of history. Humanity peers into the past to find signs of the future in it. The voices predicting the end of history are heard quite loudly, whether it is about the fulfillment of apocalyptic prophecies or about the achievement of a certain stable state generated by the successes of Western liberalism and democracy and capable of substantiating the present, discarding the eternal flow of history from the past into the future (recall, for example, the sensational concept American scientist Francis Fukuyama, behind which, as it were, the shadow of the great Hegel appears). However, in the end, a close, one might say convulsive, looking into the past is a necessary element in the self-assertion of mankind in its new acquisition of hope, which was almost lost in the twentieth century, which brought unprecedented revolutionary upheavals and bloody wars, genocide and an ecological crisis, which put peoples and every person on the brink of survival, but at its end, it nevertheless extracted from the flame of destruction the warmth of humanism, the light of insight, the foreknowledge of the possibility of continuing life and the movement of history, but not as the chariot of Vishnu, ruthlessly destroying everything in its path, but as a field for the realization of the phenomenon of man in the spiritual and a socially convergent world that becomes a factor in truly cosmic evolution.

What place can the reflections of the English thinker Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975), who has long been recognized as one of the "pillars" of the philosophy of history, exalted and ridiculed, and today seeming almost old-fashioned in his academic respectability, occupy in this peering into history? Unfortunately, the Russian translation of Toynbee's main work "A Study of History" (more precisely, extracts from it) comes out very late, although the name of the English thinker for many decades has occupied a strong place in the history of philosophy courses taught in our universities, in which it was considered good scold him in a tone as (a representative of bourgeois history and sociology), following Spengler, who sought to "rethink the entire socio-historical development of mankind in the spirit of the theory of the circulation of local civilizations", while emphasizing that

5 he "sought to give an idealistic answer to positivist evolutionism" and also had a great influence on the philosophical and historical thought of the West. In a word, we treated Toynbee almost well, if we take into account the context of the growing and sharpening criticism of "bourgeois consciousness" and "bourgeois science."

By the way, Toynbee's concept, which struck with the grandeur of the idea and the inconsistency of execution, was by no means unambiguously perceived in the West. For example, the prominent French historian Lucien Fevre, one of the founders of the most influential trend in historical science, sometimes called the "Annals school", wrote not without mockery about the "seductive historian-essayist", whose work generates "a feeling of sensation caused in the gullible reader by an impressive overview of all those carefully numbered civilizations which, like the scenes of a melodrama, succeed each other before his admiring gaze; genuine delight inspired by this magician, who with such dexterity juggles peoples, societies and civilizations of the past and present, shuffling and shuffling Europe and Africa, Asia and America. But if we do not succumb to tempting spells, if we reject the sentimental position of the believer present at the service, if we look impartially at Toynbee’s ideas and at the conclusions from them, what new things will we, historians, see in all this? .. Toynbee simply adds the voice of England to the French votes. And we have the right to judge the extent to which this voice stands out in the British world from other voices. In our world, its owner can only count on a place among the choristers. "This statement serves as another indication of how biased scientists can be in assessing each other and their national historical schools. However, if some saw in Arnold Toynbee only an ordinary interpreter of well-known truths, then others proclaimed him a prophet of a new vision of history, but in essence, in both cases, the main thing slipped away - a real understanding of history in the interpretation of the English historian. However, in fairness it should be noted that Toynbee did not try to mold his understanding into It rather sees through the interweaving of concepts and approaches that run into each other and "obscure" the foundation of the channel along which the scientist's thought rushes.