The History of World Civilisation: from Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages

Abstract

THIS important and well-known book has been translated from the German, quite competently, though with a good many slips in proof correcting. It naturally suggests the still more famous book of Spengler, which it resembles in the wide sweep of its survey, the facility of its comparisons and the insistence on the rise and fall of civilisations. It is, however, a much weightier book for several reasons. In the first place, it is based on a thorough and scholarly study of the materials; Dr. Schneider's knowledge of the early history of all the civilisations he treats—Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Indian and Chinese—is amazing. In the second place, he is not obsessed by the fallacy which commended Spengler's work as a sensation but undermined its real value, namely, that we are in presence of the decadence of our own civilisation. In the third place, Dr. Schneider is a professor of philosophy and hence by his profession and habitual ways of thinking is always trying to see his subject as a whole.

The History of World Civilisation: from Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages.

By Prof. H. Schneider. Vol. 1. Pp. xiv + 360. Vol. 2. Pp. vi + 361-908. (London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1931.) 42s. net.