464 PROSPECTS OF THE WESTERN CIVILIZATION
that the linguistically selfconscious nineteenth-century Norwegians and
Irish were descended neither from the original members of the Western
Civilization nor from its barbarian proselytes, but from frustrated repre-
sentatives of two abortive civilizations that had been blighted by pre-
mature encounters with a rising Roman Western Christian Civilization
for which they had been no match.1
A glance at the contemporary exhibitions of Futurism in a latter-day
Western Society's life told the same tale. On the plane of political in-
stitutions, the deliberate effacement of traditional boundaries through
an artificial redrawing of the administrative map, more Clezstheneo,2 had
been exemplified in the remapping of an eighteenth-century France into
departments and of a twentieth-century Germany into Gaue,3 while, on
the plane of the arts, there bad-been patent symptoms of Futurism in all
provinces of a post-Modern Western World in music, dancing, painting,
and sculpture.4 Yet, though such manifestations of Futurism were dis-
cernible, it was also manifest that their effect, so far, had been slight.
In addition to these latter-day Western evidences—at whatever value
their importance was to be appraised—of schism in the Soul and schism
in the Body Social, we have found,5 in a synoptic analysis of the rhythm
of the disintegration-process, that the Western Civilization's latter-day
history conformed to a pattern—a series of two paroxysms punctuated
by one rally—that had been the regular rhythm of a Time of Troubles in
the histories of civilizations that had run through the whole disintegra-
tion-process from breakdown to dissolution. The appearance of this
sinister pattern in Western history was, in a.d. 1952, perhaps the most
alarming of all current Western experiences with non-Western prece-
dents. Yet, as we have already observed in another context,6 the nebu-
lous possibility that the Western Civilization might, at this date, be in
the grip of the second paroxysm of a Time of Troubles was less signifi-
cant than the plain fact that it had at least not yet entered into a universal
state.
The inquiry that we have now completed thus suggests that the non-
Western precedents for Western experiences were inconclusive. While
we have found enough evidence to make it clear that authentic symp-
toms of breakdown and disintegration were discernible in the life of
the Western Civilization mid-way through the twentieth century of the
Christian Era, an assessment of this evidence has proved not to be so
easy; and we might be in danger of exaggerating the significance of the
facts if we were to allow ourselves to forget that, in the life of every living
society, as in the life of every living organism, a tendency towards break-
down and disintegration is constantly asserting itself, and as constantly
requiring to be resisted, even when the society is in the healthiest and
most vigorous burst of its growth. The pertinent question was not
whether the symptoms of breakdown and disintegration were present,
but whether they were serious. Was the malady grave ? Was it incurable ?
Was it lethal? And in a.d. 1952 these were questions to which no con-
clusive answer could be given when they were asked with reference to
* See II. iL 322-60.      * See V. vL 107-8.       3 See V. vi. 108-9.
•* See IV. hr. 51-52.     s See V, vL 3i2-zi.    6 On pp. 411-12, above.