EXPERIENCES

Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) was one of the great minds of the 20th century. I first came across his work when reading Colin Wilson’s Religion and the Rebel, which also introduced me to Spengler and Whitehead. He is most famous for his 12-volume Magnum Opus, A Study of History, published between 1935 and 1960, in which he analyses the rise and fall of multiple civilisations. I was lucky enough to inherit this set from my mentor Norman Cockburn, and while on my Wanderjahr in 1976-77, I read the 1,000-page abridgement. Then, in 1980, I was appointed to teach at Winchester College, where Toynbee had been a scholar, and I inaugurated the Toynbee Society to discuss the range of issues in which he was interested. The year before he died in 1975, Toynbee was received Ad Portas – a signal honour for Old Wykehamists – in which the whole school gathers in Flint Court and the senior scholar, the Prefect of Hall, addressed Toynbee in Latin to which he replied, to the great delight of the classics department, in Greek! I also began reading some of his other books and dialogues, notably Choose Life – with Daiseku Ikeda, which ranges over an extraordinary variety of important issues. This autobiographical book (my copy is dated September 1981) has two main sections, one on personal affairs, and the other Toynbee’s balance sheet of human affairs in his lifetime.

Toynbee was deeply affected by the death of many of his contemporaries in World War I, he himself being unfit for military service due to having contracted dysentery in 1912. He recounts having attended two Paris peace conferences, in 1919 and 1946, noting that there was no representation of the defeated enemy powers in either case. Here he witnessed the display of international power politics, which he observes will continue so long as there are local sovereign states, adding that ‘wars are power politics heated up to about boiling point.’ (p. 57) After the War, both Chatham House (housing The Royal Institute for International Affairs) and the Council for Foreign Relations were founded, the former consolidating the influential Milner Group. Both forums provided international networks and the opportunity for confidential exchanges at a high level – hence the Chatham House rules. Toynbee joined in 1922, remaining on the staff until he retired in 1955, during which time he was responsible for editing the annual Survey of International Affairs. His core motivation was the abolition of war, ‘a social evil with which there can be no compromise.’ (p. 83) He confesses that there are occasions on which he would be obliged to choose war, given that ‘non-resistance to military aggression gives the world over into the militarists’ hands.’ The fact remains, however, that war means using evil as an antidote to the evil. He sees the institution of war as a parasite on the institution of local sovereignty, which is why he was a strong advocate of worldwide federal union. As I have written in previous reviews of Nicholas Hagger’s work on a world constitution, democratic principles within such a worldwide federal union are critical if world government is not to become a centralised and tyrannical technocracy.

The main interest of this book for Paradigm Explorer readers will be the section on religion. Toynbee is ruthlessly honest in facing himself and his shortcomings; also the limits of a human life where the depth dimension progressively assumes greater focus. He feels the ‘vanity of putting one’s treasure in something so inadequate as a human being’s self-hood,’ coming to the realisation that he needs to ‘detach my treasure for myself in order to place it somewhere that will be nearer the true centre of spiritual reality.’ (p. 125) He understands religion as ‘a human being’s relation to an ultimate reality behind and beyond the phenomena of the universe in which each of us awakes to consciousness.’ He explains that he is unable to pass the test of religious orthodoxy, but he assents to what he regards as Christianity’s fundamental tenet, ‘I believe that self-sacrificing love is both the best and most powerful of all the spiritual impulses that are known to us.’ (p. 135) He regards the spiritual aspect of the human being as an integral part of the universe, and his overall aim is to have the maximum of religion with the minimum of dogma. (p. 143) If religion is the search for the ultimate spiritual principle in the universe, we need to go beyond an intellectual search since ‘the spiritual purpose of learning the truth is in order to try to put oneself into harmony with it.’ (p. 146) He continues: ‘For a human being, God is the act of helping another human being. I believe that the true end of Man is self-sacrificing love; that love is divine; that it is the only God that we know from experience; and that Man should devote himself to this God without any reservations, whatever the consequences may be.’

However, Toynbee does not regard love as omnipotent, indeed arguing for the inconceivability of omnipotence. For him, the fault in the universe is that every living creature tries to maintain itself as a counter-universe, separate from, and indeed in opposition to, the Universe of which it is in truth an inseparable part. (p. 150) This intrinsic self-centredness is a negation of morality that he characterises broadly as sin, of which we are aware through conscience. And, ‘since self-centredness is of the essence of life, the overcoming of self-centredness is the most difficult spiritual task that any living creature can set for itself.’ (p. 154) In this respect, conscience commands, while love inspires: ‘Love is freedom; conscience is constraint.’ He adds that self-centredness and sin are, in fact, inseparable from love and conscience, but our freedom to respond to love and [righteously] to obey conscience’s commands entails an equal freedom to choose evil. He concludes by asserting that self-sacrifice for the sake of love is an end in itself: ‘Absolute love is absolute goodness, and this is self-sufficing… Love cannot save life from death; but it can fulfil life’s purpose.’ (p. 167) I find this a deeply inspiring vision.

Human affairs are necessarily connected with human nature, which changes little and slowly over the course of history. However, we are all morally involved in contemporary human affairs, and we cannot assume a neutral stance. Here we witness what Toynbee calls the struggle between human feeling and inhumanity. Our tribal instincts incline us to identify ourselves and our group as good and the enemy or other as evil, projecting our own collective shadow in the process. We attribute noble motives to ourselves and dastardly motives to our opponents, a process only too apparent in our world today. Toynbee thoroughly analyses many such situations from past and present. Although he sees science and technology as morally neutral forces, he does identify a ‘morality gap’ between wisdom and the application of new technologies. His uncle was of the generation that believed that science could and would cure all social evils and settle all political and religious questions, and this view still provides the driving force for technocracy. However, ultimately, ‘morality is infinitely more important for mankind than science and technology are. No morality, no society.’ (p. 300) For Toynbee, our direct contact with the ultimate spiritual reality gives human beings ‘the spiritual power to break out of their servitude to human technology and to human society into a true spiritual freedom.’ (p. 328)

The last two sections deal with our self-enslavement to our man-made artificial environment, and with prospects for the future. As it happens, I have been listening over lunch to an excellent lecture on just this topic by Paul Kingsnorth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy_iTsCleGA&t=1s) at a conference on Aldous Huxley – we are now progressively enmeshed in his Brave New World. Toynbee notes the ironic paradox that the price of Man’s self-liberation from servitude to Nature has been ‘self-subjection to the artificial environment which he has created by the development of the technology through which his conquest of Nature has been achieved.’ (p. 357) A further consequence is the depersonalisation of human relations along with the multiplication of regulations (Huxley’s ‘over-organisation); and the overall effect of the amount and degree of adaptation required ‘is straining human nature almost to breaking point’ – and that in 1969! Over 50 years later, we can still practise his injunction: ‘If I am committed to humanity, I am thereby committed to love’ – and to the integrity of human personality, a change of heart, and the attainment of ‘the inward spiritual grace of serenity….that embraces suffering for the sake of following the lead of love’ (p. 380) – even when exposed to the crushing pressures of the Brave New World. Whatever our outer circumstances, we are capable of upholding our inner spiritual freedom, as Viktor Frankl experienced in Auschwitz – the freedom to choose our attitude.