Abstract

Dr. Toynbee is the author of A Study of History in ten volumes, on which he spent twenty-five years, and which has received very high praise from competent critics as well as much criticism. Of the present two books the first is based on the Gifford Lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh in 1952–3, the second on the Hewett Lectures given in the United States in the Fall of 1955. As the two treat almost identical topics, the first more fully than the second, it is intended here to give a summary of the doctrine contained in the two—mostly in the author’s own words—and then to add a few criticisms.