Article IV. Spengler's Spirit-Deserted History

Only one who can see this moving force will be able to see in the present time the beginning of a period which will fetch history out of the innermost parts of man and will thus be an advance over the epochs which inserted history into man. One who cannot see this will, like Spengler, see only an end, which is the expression of all that this distinguished representative of the modern method of thought has found in the preceding cultures. “With the formed state, high history also lays itself down weary to sleep. Man becomes a plant again, adhering to the soil, dumb and enduring ... The mighty ones of the future may possess the earth as their private property—for the great political form of the Culture is irremediably in ruin—but it matters not, for formless and limitless as their power may be, it has a task. And this task is the unwearying care for the world as it is, which is the very opposite of the interestedness of the money-power age, and demands high honor and conscientiousness. But for this very reason there now sets in the final battle between Democracy and Caesarism, between the leading forces of dictatorial money-economics and the purely political will-to-order of the Caesars. ... The coming of Caesarism breaks the dictature of money and its political weapon democracy. ... For us, however, whom a Destiny has placed in this Culture and at this moment of its development—the moment when money is celebrating its last victories and Caesarism, its heir, is approaching with quiet, firm step—our direction, willed and obligatory at once, is set for us within narrow limits.”