Arnold Toynbee writes: The first three volumes of this work deal with the birth and growth of civilizations; the present three deal with their breakdown and disintegration. Why have some civilizations broken down in the past? I do not believe that civilizations are fated to break down, or that they have a fixed maximum life-span, as organisms have. On this point—and it is one of capital importance—I differ from that great man of genius, Oswald Spengler. I do not believe, either, that civilizations break down through being worsted by their environment. I believe that, when they do break down, the cause is, not some blow from outside, but some inward spiritual failure—some kind of demoralization to which we human beings are not bound to succumb and for which we ourselves therefore bear the responsibility. We can become demoralized by success. This may make us lazy or self-satisfied or conceited. We may be intoxicated with the pride that goes before a fall. Breakdowns are not inevitable and not irretrievable; but, if the process of disintegration is allowed to continue, it seems to follow patterns that make their appearance in a number of different cases. In a disintegrating society, the masses become estranged from the leaders, and these then try to cling to their position by using force as a substitute for their lost power of attraction. The society splits up into a dominant minority, an internal proletariat, and an external proletariat consisting of the barbarians on its fringes. There is a corresponding psychological schism in the souls of people who happen to have been born into a disintegrating society. Discordant psychic tendencies which are perhaps always latent in human nature now find free play. People try to escape from an intolerable present into an idealized past or into an imaginary future. Greater souls try to detach themselves from life; still greater souls try to transfigure life into something spiritually higher than mere life as we know it on Earth.