To review Professor Toynbee's three volumes eighteen months after their publication is to run all the risks of delay without reaping any of its benefits. A belated review is always in danger of becoming a mere review of reviews, either a reflection of the earlier opinions or a revulsion from them; and in dealing with Professor Toynbee's book the danger is only heightened by the certainty and unanimity of the world's first opinions. At the same time the interval has done nothing to facilitate the formation of a final judgment. A late commentator is at as great a disadvantage now as the prompt reviewers were a year ago, in that he still has to survey a mere beginning of the great enterprise. Now, as a year ago, little can be said, either in praise or in criticism, that is likely to survive the subsequent unfolding of Professor Toynbee's design. The present essay has therefore nothing to offer except a few reflections, some of which relate to things said about the book rather than in the book itself, and all of which are destined to be provisional.

The main themes of the three volumes are too well known by now to require a detailed retelling. Professor Toynbee sets out to find in history an explanation of the rise and growth of civilizations. Having distinguished civilization from society, and having defined the former as the phase of creative activity in the latter, he then proceeds to explain the appearance of the creative phases.