Education: Vision of God's Creation

As the Orient Express sped westward from Istanbul one September day in 1921, a tall, slender young classicist gazed thoughtfully out the window. "I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the Bela Palanka Gorge in the light of the full moon, as our train bore down upon Nish," wrote Arnold Toynbee, who had been covering the Greco-Turkish war for the Manchester Guardian. Before he went to sleep that night, he took out a fountain pen and jotted down "a list of topics" on half a sheet of paper.

For almost 40 years, Toynbee developed...