A while ago I made a sequence of story posts on the Instagram side of this project giving a sort of Dummies Guide to Spengler for new readers. Since then, the Substack side especially has become a lot more popular. I’ve invited people I know personally to check out the page and I worry that the goal of this page, that being to take 1000 pages of Spenglerian historiography and make it more accessible to normal people, is going to be lost now we are in the final stages of Volume 2, covering the last chapter on Religion and about to enter the fun parts where we explore Spengler’s attitudes to Politics; terms like ‘Race’, ‘Waking-consciousness’, ‘Pulse’ and ‘Tension’, and the many polarities of Spengler’s works, will still conjure intuitive impressions of their meaning to new readers rather than the definitions allocated to them in the Decline of the West, so this post will be permanently on the front page of my Substack, and pinned on Instagram, so new readers can understand some of the terms being used and be able to follow along.

Plant and animal

‘Regard the flowers at eventide as, one after the other, they close in the setting sun. Strange is the feeling that then presses in upon you — a feeling of enigmatic fear in the presence of this blind dreamlike earth-bound existence. The dumb forest, the silent meadows, this bush, that twig, do not stir themselves, it is the wind that plays with them. Only the little gnat is free — he dances still in the evening light, he moves whither he will.’ (Decline 2.1.1)

Spengler opens Volume 2 on this quote, drawing the distinction between flora and fauna. Plants are rooted in the ground, they are unconscious and subject to the rhythmic cycles of the seasons, of sunlight and their own life-cycle. They grow and ripen and then seed the earth before perishing – they share this development with animals too. Animals however are free to roam, they are aware of the world and attempt to resist the rhythms they are conscious of because to not do so is to return to an unconscious, ‘plantlike’ state, be it succumbing to their instincts, to sleep, or to death. Traditionally if one is impulsive, we might label them as ‘animalistic’, not able to control their tendencies, but impulse, for Spengler, belongs more fundamentally to the plant-side of life, and animals symbolize liberating oneself from the soil, gaining orientation and sense for the world and resisting against it; Impulsivity, for example, the sex-drive, is there to ensure the organism does what is required of it during its life-cycle, a plant submits to this fact without question, an animal chooses it.

Cosmic and microcosmic

‘There are noble names for them, found and bequeathed by the Classical world. The plant is something cosmic, and the animal is additionally a microcosm in relation to a macrocosm. When, and not until, the unit has thus separated itself from the All and can define its position with respect to the All, it becomes thereby a microcosm.’ (Decline 2.1.1)

The plant is wholly a plant, but the animal is both plant and animal, if that makes sense. Lacking consciousness, the plant is undifferentiated from the rest of existence. It is only when the animal gains a sense for the world around it that it becomes both part of that ‘all’ and separate from it, being able to observe it. This is not a particularly important distinction and I’ve tried to avoid it for simplicity’s sake, but it does illustrate Spengler’s attitude to time and space. Time exists for the plant as it goes through its life, but space is only discerned by the animal when it becomes aware of the cosmos. This leads us to the plant-organs and animal-organs.

Plant-organs and animal organs

‘The blood is for us the symbol of the living. Its course proceeds without pause, from generation to death, from the mother body in and out of the body of the child, in the waking state and in sleep, never-ending. The blood of the ancestors flows through the chain of the generations and binds them in a great linkage of destiny, beat, and time. Originally this was accomplished only by a process of division, redivision, and ever new division of the cycles, until finally a specific organ of sexual generation appeared and made one moment into a symbol of duration.’ (Decline 2.1.1)

‘Like the cosmic cycle of the blood, the differentiating activity of sense is originally a unity. The active sense is always an understanding sense also. In these simple relations seeking and finding are one — that which we most appositely call “touch.” It is only later, in a stage wherein considerable demands are made upon developed senses, that sensation and understanding of sensation cease to be identical and the latter begins to detach itself more and more clearly from the former.’ (Decline 2.1.1)

‘Finally, however, a supreme sense develops among the rest. A something in the All, which for ever remains inaccessible to our will-to-understand, evokes for itself a bodily organ. The eye comes into existence — and in and with the eye, as its opposite pole, light.’ (Decline 2.1.1)

Here we have three quotes detailing four organs, two are plant-like, the blood and the sex organ, and two are animal-like, sense and eyesight. The pattern of plants embodying a cyclical element should make you aware of why the sex organ would be important here, but the blood throughout history has always more thoroughly embodied the continued lineages of families and peoples and is therefore a far more important one to remember. Blood in its symbolic form is even described by Spengler as a sort of spiritual energy for civilizations to draw upon until it is fully spent in the cities. The sense organs give the animal orientation in a world it otherwise wouldn’t be aware of. Eyesight does this as well, allowing us to generate a ‘sense’ for depth and distance, thus creating in this moment the concept of ‘space’. Of course, we lose control of these organs when we return to a plant-like existence.

Being and waking-consciousness

‘And with this there emerges in all clarity yet another distinction, which is normally obscured by the use of the ambiguous word “consciousness (Bewusstseiri)” I distinguish being or “being there” (Dasein) from waking-being or waking-consciousness (Wachsein). Being possesses beat and direction, while waking-consciousness is tension and extension. In being a destiny rules, while waking-consciousness distinguishes causes and effects. The prime question is for the one “when and wherefore?” for the other “where and how?”’ (Decline 2.1.1)

Ignore the terms ‘destiny’ and ‘causes and effects’ for now. Being and waking-being (interchangeable with waking-consciousness) illustrate the difference between the animal that is not aware and the animal that is aware. In waking-being, there is a tension between the plant-side and the animal-side, it is awake, perceiving the world and in orientation, but when it is asleep, the tensions of being awake release and the animal slips back into a plant-like state, subject to the pulsation and rhythm of the universe. This is how an animal is both ‘animal’ and ‘plant’. But being is something that we experience consistently, it is every action or process or lack of understanding we carry with us on a day-to-day basis. As such, some classes of people might be more ‘awake’ than others, for example a priest, who spends all day learning, might be more conscious than a peasant, who spends all year contently farming and living by the cycles of existence.

Light

‘The eye comes into existence — and in and with the eye, as its opposite pole, light. Abstract thinking about light may lead (and has led) to an ideal light representable by an ensemble picture of waves and rays, but the significance of this development in actuality was that thenceforward life was embraced and taken in through the light-world of the eye. This is the supreme marvel that makes everything human what it is.’ (Decline 2.1.1)

Humans have pretty dull senses compared to say, the dogs’ smell or the moles’ touch or the bats’ ear, but our eyes, though not the eagle’s, have become quite important in our perception of the world. I don’t use this term much either, but light is still very important in relation to our fundamental fear of the unknown. What is unknown is what can’t be seen, the demons lurking in the dark outside a medieval village, whilst light has become, in all religions, a purifying idea that brings the unknown into the known, hence perhaps the word ‘enlighten’ being so tied to knowledge. Middle Eastern religions are heavily premised on the battle of light and dark because the followers of everyone between Christ and Mohammad understood the inherent goodness of this purifying element. Especially reading about religion, or man’s general pursuit of knowledge and thus ‘enlightenment’, such as in mathematics, science or philosophy, the idea of light, and the ‘light-world’ bringing knowledge is an important theme to remember. But what is actually known?

Facts and Truths

‘For, although man is a thinking being, it is very far from the fact that his being consists in thinking. This is a difference that the born subtilizer fails to grasp. The aim of thought is called “truth,” and truths are “established” — i.e., brought out of the living impalpability of the light-world into the form of concepts and assigned permanently to places in a system, which means a kind of intellectual space. Truths are absolute and eternal — i.e., they have nothing more to do with life.

But for an animal, not truths, but only facts exist. Here is the difference between practical and theoretical understanding. Facts and truths differ as time and space, destiny and causality. A fact addresses itself to the whole waking-consciousness, for the service of being, and not to that side of the waking-consciousness which imagines it can detach itself from being. Actual life, history, knows only facts; life experience and knowledge of men deal only in facts. The active man who does and wills and fights, daily measuring himself against the power of facts, looks down upon mere truths as unimportant. The real statesman knows only political facts, not political truths.’ (Decline 2.1.3)

This is a crowning distinction not generally addressed for all its simplicity. Facts are lowercase ‘true’, but only for a moment. For example, “the sky is blue” is not uppercase True for half of the day, and a better, more political example would be “the men are stranded at Dunkirk”. This was once true, and felt with deep emotional pressure to act on that moment by the leaders of Britain, but it was temporary, relevant to a specific context, never to be repeated in that exact manner again. Facts are once-actual and therefore belong to the politician and general, but Truths are eternally valid. 1 + 1 is 2 regardless of time or place and are consequently the property of the priest, philosopher and scientist, who establish laws and logical theses and universal principles to take a world filled with unknowns and bind it to something stable and guaranteed. They correspond to Destiny and Causality as well.

Destiny and Causality

‘Causality is the reasonable, the law-bound, the describable, the badge of our whole waking and reasoning existence. But destiny is the word for an inner certainty that is not describable. We bring out that which is in the causal by means of a physical or an epistemological system, through numbers, by reasoned classification; but the idea of destiny can be imparted only by the artist working through media like portraiture, tragedy and music. The one requires us to distinguish and in distinguishing to dissect and destroy, whereas the other is creative through and through, and thus destiny is related to life and causality to death.’ (Decline 1.4.1)

You can see the similarities already and what corresponds to what. A cause wouldn’t be a cause without an effect, and vice versa for effects and their relations to a preceding cause. But when a domino falls onto another, when does that binding connection get made? Was it upon connection, when the first one in the chain was pushed though the rest weren’t moved yet, or when it all comes to rest and the energy has been dispersed? Causality, like Truths, are spatial, eternal, and solely products of our mind trying to take a world filled by default with facts and parse order in the chaos. Destiny corresponds to a general direction towards a state of become-ness, it follows the flow of time and history. A plant isn’t causally bound to become a flower or a great tree, but under the correct circumstances can become either, and under the incorrect circumstances can be cut before it resembles anything.

Race and language

‘In the first instance, their Destiny is determined by the fact that the bodily succession of parents and children, the bond of the blood, forms natural groups, which dis close a definite tendency to take root in a landscape. Even nomadic tribes confine their movements within a limited field. Thereby the cosmic-plantlike side of life, of Being, is invested with a character of duration. This I call race.’ (Decline 2.5.1)

‘But these human beings possess also the microcosmic-animal side of life, in waking-consciousness and receptivity and reason. And the form in which the waking-consciousness of one man gets into relation with that of another I call language, which begins by being a mere unconscious living expression that is received as a sensation, but gradually develops into a conscious technique of communication that depends upon a common sense of the meanings attaching to signs.’ (Decline 2.5.1)

Any interpretation of the word ‘Race’ will leave a range of tastes in one’s mouth. So above all we need to address this. For Spengler, we’ve seen that the cosmic is divided up and interpreted by relative microcosmic animals, and the same premiss extends to mankind itself. There is only mankind, and he is divided up and distinguished into groups according to the arbitrary tastes of its relative subjects. ‘Race’ is felt as a consequence of a plantlike rootedness in a given landscape. It is felt as a fact rather than as an eternal truth, but is affirmed by shared blood ties nevertheless. Race is significant to the peasant, to the nobleman whose ancestry he can trace over hundreds of years, but it is not important to the religious man, who as a good animal sees race as the component of an irrelevant, impulsive way of feeling.

Language conversely, is not rooted in a landscape but floats over it, carried by groups and wafted here and there between subjects. Language isn’t merely speech and writing, but it is all forms of interaction on a subtle level. For this Spengler divides ‘expression-language’ from ‘communication-language’, the former is a microcosm interacting with the cosmos with meanings it arbitrates to be significant to itself, and the latter is a microcosm interacting with another microcosm, where meaning must be felt as mutually significant in order to send ideas from one to another. Art is expression-language for this reason, but may by technique entangle itself with communication-language to tell something to its beholder, allowing a deeply felt impression to synthesize with obtuse communication to express that idea to another. All forms of speech, writing, letters, grammar, mathematical and scientific notation, are held as communication-language because they increasingly expect peers to learn what they mean and accept the idea being displayed by it. This ties back to Truth as Truths cannot be universal and eternal unless everyone is able to understand them.

This post should hopefully address some of the intimidation in jumping into Spengler on this page. If I can’t properly communicate the Decline of the West in a simplified manner, then ultimately, I’ve failed in what I have set out to achieve. This new introductory post will aim to rectify that.

If at any point there is an idea or a term you, the reader, are not familiar with, you are free to comment on this post and I will find time to either reply to you or add it above.

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