It was nearly fifty years ago, in 1964, that I bought the ten volumes of Toynbee?s A Study of History. Every once in a while I get some time to dip into these volumes, or some commentary on them. Although reading Toynbee is a solid intellectual exercise, not unlike Edward Gibbon who served as his model, he comes closest to providing some perspective on history that seems to be written by a Baha?i or, perhaps more accurately, from a Baha'i perspective.  The very fact that he considers the Baha?i Faith one of the two religions of western civilization(See: Vol.7B, p.771) is enough to give him an honoured place in my pantheon of important historians.Toynbee is not an easy read. In fact, it took me at least two decades(1964-1984) to be able to read more than a few pages at a time. His writing, like Gibbon's and like Shoghi Effendi's, requires a good deal of exposure in order to acquire the tastes of appreciation. I?m sure that this former leader of the Baha'i Faith from 1921 to 1957, would have loved Toynbee, as he had loved Gibbon. Sadly, after 1921, Shoghi Effendi was so swamped with work he had little time to develop his literary and scholarly interests in the social sciences and the humanities. Toynbee began his A Study of History the same year that Shoghi Effendi come into office and finished his final Reconsiderations in 1961. The eleven volumes were the tour de force of his life.There is something majesterial about this work of erudition. I think it is more than a coincidence that it was written just as the first shaping of the New World Order, known as Baha'i Administration, was being designed for use in and for the expanding Baha'i community. It is impossible for the amateur to assess Toynbee?s work, just as it is impossible to truely appreciate this embryonic World Order without some experience of working in it and some appreciation of the Baha'i writings. When the Kingdom of God on Earth began, so some argue, in 1953 Arnold Toynbee was just finishing Vol.10. It was as if this Kingdom had been given a fitting history in which to cloth It and give It a context. At the centre of Tonybee?s thesis is the global imperative of humankind to federate. Our survival depends on it. History, as the relationship between God and man, found its raison d?etre in the higher religions. They played a critical role in the story of humankind: so goes the thesis of Arnold Toynbee.I have observed three reactions to Toynbee over the years. The most common one by far is: "who is he?" To most of the post-war generations Toynbee got lost in a sea of print. He is a heavy dude, not the sort of chap you take to bed for a light night cap. Others have heard of him but, like the Guardian's writings, difficult to integrate with life and its busy highways and byways. A third group finds him wonderfully stimulating. For me, he is quintessentially the Baha?i historian-if we needed one-and we do. The story of the human experience in history is immensely complex and Toynbee gives one a flavour of this complexity. This third group, also contains a sub-group which has found the time to read Toynbee, but disagrees with just about all his major assumptions. The Dutch historian Pieter Geyl is in this group.In 1955, in responding to a range of criticisms of his work in The Journal of the History of Ideas, one of the many journals in the social sciences, Toynbee said he was ?studying history?. One of the many charges that Toynbee responded to was that he was unconventional and had tried to write about too much. In closing his brief response of less than a page Toynbee said he felt like a minor poet, a minor historian. He has given us a lifetime of reading. Given his global perspective, the similarity of assumptions and the rich diversity iof his work, he may come to occupy an important position at some future time, perhaps after these troubled times become more peaceful and we develop a more literate and cultured sensibility.In the meantime I will continue to dip into the pages of his works from time to time. A second thirty years would do me fine. We still await that federation which Toynbee hoped for but was not convinced he, or we, would ever see. A certain pertinacity, persistence, determination is required in taking Toynbee along for a ride. An elan vital, an intellectual energy and interest, is crucial to overcome incipient fatigue, concentration?s lapses and one?s own sheer ignorance. If one stays with him, like the Guardian, he becomes part of one?s own backbone. He occupies several essential strands in my intellectual make-up. His paperback volumes are getting warn. Back in the early 1960s they cost three or four dollars a volume. They have become old friends.______________________ POETIC INFLUENCES IN HISTORYIn 1955, Arnold Toynbee responded to the critique of his work in the The Journal of The History of Ideas. In that response he said he would "rather be called a minor poet than minor prophet." Edward Fliess had already called Toynbee a poet in his review in that same journal. Toynbee's A Study of History was, Fliess wrote, "a huge theological poem in prose." Toynbee's work is closer to the realm of belles-lettres; it possesses the rhythms of the King James Bible. Such erudition as Toynbee possesses in Milton's time found an outlet in poetry, according to Fleiss. Now it must do so in prose. Toybee is, in Fleiss's view, a Milton in prose "dominated by the conception of St. Augustine's City of God. It is not just a work of history; nor is it just a poem. -Ron Price with thanks to The Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol.16, 1955, pp.275-280.It would be another nine yearsbefore you came into my lifeat the McMaster Universitybookstore in those dayswhen you could afford a book.1 Little did I know that buriedin your immense eruditionwas a poetry in whose watersI bathed for nearly thirty yearsbefore I found my own waters.2 Is it because of youthat my poetry is as muchhistory as it is poetry?What has brought these wordsat this fin de siecle? At thisclimacteric of history?1 I bought the 10 volumes of Toynbee's A Study of History in 1964.2 I see now, in retrospect, that 1992 was the beginning of my serious work as yet another 'minor poet,' much more minor than Toynbee, perhaps in the school of Roger White's progeny but without his brilliant wordsmithing or his humour.Ron Price5 August 2001