Of course, the cry of “pessimism” was raised at once by those who live eternally in yesterday (_Ewiggestrigen_) and greet every idea that is intended for the pathfinder of to-morrow only. But I have not written for people who imagine that delving for the springs of action is the same as action itself; those who make definitions do not know destiny. By understanding the world I mean being equal to the world. It is the hard reality of living that is the essential, not the concept of life, that the ostrich-philosophy of idealism propounds. Those who refuse to be bluffed by enunciations will not regard this as pessimism; and the rest do not matter. For the benefit of serious readers who are seeking a glimpse at life and not a definition, I have—in view of the far too great concentration of the text—mentioned in my notes a number of works which will carry that glance into more distant realms of knowledge. And now, finally, I feel urged to name once more those to whom I owe practically everything: Goethe and Nietzsche. Goethe gave me method, Nietzsche the questioning faculty—and if I were asked to find a formula for my relation to the latter I should say that I had made of his “outlook” (_Ausblick_) an “overlook” (_Überblick_). But Goethe was, without knowing it, a disciple of Leibniz in his whole mode of thought. And, therefore, that which has at last (and to my own astonishment) taken shape in my hands I am able to regard and, despite the misery and disgust of these years, proud to call _a German philosophy_. OSWALD SPENGLER. _Blankenburg am Harz, December, 1922._ PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION The complete manuscript of this book—the outcome of three years’ work— was ready when the Great War broke out. By the spring of 1917 it had been worked over again and—in certain details—supplemented and cleared up, but its appearance in print was still delayed by the conditions then prevailing. Although a philosophy of history is its scope and subject, it possesses also a certain deeper significance as a commentary on the great epochal moment of which the portents were visible when the leading ideas were being formed. The title, which had been decided upon in 1912, expresses quite literally the intention of the book, which was to describe, in the light of the decline of the Classical age, one world-historical phase of several centuries upon which we ourselves are now entering. Events have justified much and refuted nothing. It became clear that these ideas must necessarily be brought forward at just this moment and in Germany, and, more, that the war itself was an element in the premisses from which the new world-picture could be made precise.