Toynbee and His Fossils

If one were to sum up critical opinion of Toynbee's Study of History since its initial publication it might boil down to the hesitant evaluation of each specialist scholar who says "In my own particular field Mr. Toynbee is rather superficial both in his facts and in his conclusions. But as for the many other areas I am not competent to say. And he work does have grand scope."

Granted that work such as The Study of History has to be superficial. Mr. Toynbee admits it. He even declares it a virtue. At the outset he claimed that he wanted to move the horizon of historical writing beyond the monograph once again. But there is an important difference between incompleteness and incorrectness. And some may add, if only the faults stopped there.

While Mr. Toynbee has accomplished a good deal in the way of shoring us up against the outflowing tide of time: with many bold insights, with a wealth of classical learning, with an imaginative scheme for the process of history and not least of all with a kind of international and worldly view that is so appropriate to our times, he has also given us a work filled with the most narrow-minded prejudices.

The author of the Professor and the Fossil is one of those scholars mentioned earlier who found that Mr. Toynbee rode rough shod through his field, cultivating it with error and prejudice.

From Maurice Samuels acquaintance with Jewish culture it is not so obvious, as it is to Toynbee, that a term like fossil can be/applied to the Jewish people. This was the starting point for a thorough investigation of Toynbee's use of the term. Mr. Samuels documents a case against Toynbee showing the author's unintelligibility in key areas, his innaccuracies as to historical fact, and his seemingly willful distortions in trying to change the facts rather than his theories.

To make up for Toynbee's distortions, Mr. Samuels has tried to correct the picture. In the success he presents an account of his own spiritual money through his special field, making interesting and important critical evaluations of Jewish work and thought. In a pleasant style, he gives an understanding of the contribution and continuity of Jewish life.