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“ ”Compared with the life-span of a human being the time-span of a civilization is so vast that a human observer cannot hope to take the measure of its curve unless he is in a position to view it in a distant perspective; and he can only obtain this perspective vis-a-vis some society that is extinct. He can never stand back sufficiently far from the history of the society in which he himself lives and moves and has his being. In other words, to assert of any living society, at any moment in its life, that it is the consummation of human history is to hazard a guess which is intrinsically unsusceptible of immediate verification. When we find that a majority of the members of all societies at all times make this assertion about their own civilizations, it becomes evident that their guesses have really nothing to do with any objective calculation of probabilities but are pure expressions of the egocentric illusion.
About Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold Joseph Toynbee (April 14, 1889 – October 22, 1975) was a British historian and the nephew of Arnold Toynbee.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Additional quotes by Arnold J. Toynbee
So far all is plain, but further search brings us up against complications. The first is that the predecessor of the Islamic society (not yet identified) proves to be the parent not of a single offspring but of twins, in this respect resembling the parental achievement of the Hellenic society. The conduct of the pairs of twins has been, however, strikingly dissimilar; for, whereas the Western and the Orthodox Society have survived for over a thousand years side by side, one of the offspring of the parent society which we are seeking to identify swallowed up and incorporated the other. We shall call these twin societies the Iranic and the Arabic.
We might pursue the subject farther, but we have, perhaps, said enough to convince the reader that neither race nor environment, taken by itself, can be the positive factor which, within the last six thousand years, has shaken humanity out of its static repose on the level of primitive society and started it on the hazardous quest of civilization. In any case, neither race nor environment, as hitherto envisaged, has offered, or apparently can offer, any clue as to why this great transition in human history occurred not only in particular places but at particular dates.
Militarism has been by far the commonest cause of the breakdown of civilizations. The single art of war makes progress at the expense of all the arts of peace.