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100
Cases

Brainstorming
Questions
in Toxicology
100
Cases

Brainstorming
Questions
in Toxicology

P. K. Gupta
First edition published 2020
by CRC Press
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742

and by CRC Press

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

© 2020 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources. While all reasonable efforts have been
made to publish reliable data and information, neither the author[s] nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility or
liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publishers wish to make clear that any views or opinions expressed
in this book by individual editors, authors or contributors are personal to them and do not necessarily reflect the views/
opinions of the publishers. The information or guidance contained in this book is intended for use by medical, scientific
or health-care professionals and is provided strictly as a supplement to the medical or other professional’s own judgement,
their knowledge of the patient’s medical history, relevant manufacturer’s instructions and the appropriate best practice
guidelines. Because of the rapid advances in medical science, any information or advice on dosages, procedures or diagnoses
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ISBN: 978-0-367-42952-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-00035-8 (ebk)

Typeset in Minion
by Lumina Datamatics Limited
DISCLAIMER
The information on questions and answers in this book is based on standard textbooks in the area
of specialization. However, it is well-known that with the advancement of science the standard of
care in the practice of toxicology changes rapidly. Though all the efforts have been made to ensure
the accuracy of the information, the possibility of human error still remains. Therefore, neither the
author nor the publisher guarantees that the information contained in the book is absolute. Anyone
using the information contained in this book has to be, therefore, duly cautious. Neither the author
nor the publisher should be responsible for any damage that results from the use of the information
contained in any part of this book.

v
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Author xi

Section 1: General toxicology

Chapter 1 Principles of Toxicology 3
Chapter 2 Disposition and Toxicokinetics 21
Chapter 3 Mechanistic Toxicology 45

Section 2: Organ toxicity

Chapter 4 Target Organ Toxicity 65

Section 3: Non-organ-directed toxicity

Chapter 5 Carcinogenicity and Mutagenicity 101

Section 4: Toxic agents

Chapter 6 Toxic Effects of Pesticides and Agrochemicals 119
Chapter 7 Toxic Effects of Metals and Micronutrients 135
Chapter 8 Toxic Effects of Non-metals and Micronutrients 151
Chapter 9 Toxicological Hazards of Solvents, Gases, Vapours,
and Other Chemicals 155
Chapter 10 Hazards of Radiation and Radioactive Materials 159
Chapter 11 Toxicities from Human Drugs 165

Section 5: Plants
Chapter 12 Toxic Effects of Plants 173

Section 6: Poisonous organisms, food and feed toxicity

Chapter 13 Biotoxins and Venomous Organisms 195
Chapter 14 Food Hazards and Feed-Contaminant Toxicity 203
Chapter 15 Mycotoxicoses 215

Section 7: Environmental toxicology

Chapter 16 Pollution and Ecotoxicology 225

Section 8: Applications in toxicology

Chapter 17 Forensic and Clinical Toxicology 249

vii
 Contents

Section 9: Special topics

Chapter 18 Adverse Effects of Calories 287
Chapter 19 Toxic Effects of Nanoparticles 291
Chapter 20 Occupational Toxicology 295
Chapter 21 Veterinary Drug Residue Hazards 299

Further Reading 303

Index 305

viii
PREFACE
This book entitled Brainstorming Questions in Toxicology serves as a comprehensive and quick ref-
erence for various examinations. This book contains multiple-choice questions, true or false/correct
or incorrect statements, and match the correct statement, which are widely used in entrance tests,
competitive examinations, and at some places in certifying examinations. It is therefore of utmost
importance to induct items that not only tests the knowledge, understanding, and application abil-
ity of the student but also helps in learning objectives, methods of self-study, and self-assessment.
Solving such brainstorming questions could encourage the crystallization and assimilation of the
fundamental principles and applications in drug toxicology, clinical pharmacology, clinical toxi-
cology, and medical toxicology. Thus, this book will be a useful tool and essential guide for foren-
sic toxicologists, environmentalists, and veterinarians as well as those who want to prepare for
licensure and certification exams, persons seeking continuing education, etc. It will also serve as a
refresher for academicians and professionals in the field.
With these objectives, the book has been divided into several chapters that cover the general prin-
ciples of toxicology, disposition and kinetics, mechanistic toxicology, target and non-target-directed
toxicity, and the toxic effects of various xenobiotics, such as pesticides, metals and micronutrients,
non-metals, solvents, gases and vapours, poisonous and venomous organisms, toxicity from human-
use drugs, plant toxins, food and feed contaminants, radiation and radioactive materials, adverse
effects of pollution and ecotoxicology, forensic and clinical toxicology, adverse effects of calories,
toxic effects of nanomaterials, occupational exposure, and residual drug toxicity. Each chapter pres-
ents objective questions and answers; thus, it is a unique book in toxicology that reflects the breadth
and multidisciplinary nature of toxicology with an objective approach to the subject.
In brief, this book is an essential guide and has been specifically targeted for a very specific audi-
ence of students, teachers, and established toxicologists.
Therefore, the author believes that this book will serve the students, academic institutions, and
industry as follows:
• It is an excellent contribution for the students who need a study aid for toxicology but
wants more than a textbook because they need a self-testing regime.
• It will be a useful tool for the teachers of toxicology who need inspiration when composing
questions for their students.
• It will also help established toxicologists test their own knowledge of understanding the
subject matter.
• It will be useful at universities and colleges and in industry for in-house training courses
in toxicology, which I know exist in some pharmaceutical and chemical companies.
• It is required for all those who want to study for the toxicology boards and other
examinations.
Thus, the main strength of this book is to improve the engagement and understanding of the
subject.
Toxicology is a rapidly evolving field. Suggestions and comments are welcome to help the author
improve the contents of the book. Please also suggest the deficiencies that need to be covered at
drpkg_brly@yahoo.co.in or drpkg1943@gmail.com if you have any topics you feel should be better
covered in any future editions.

P. K. Gupta

ix
AUTHOR
P. K. Gupta is an internationally known toxicologist with more than 54 years of experience in
teaching, research, and research management in the field of toxicology. To his credit, Dr. Gupta
has several books and book chapters (John Wiley & Sons; Elsevier, Academic Press; Merck & Co.,
Mariel Limited; Springer Nature, to name a few) as well as scientific research publications (715)
published in national and international peer-reviewed journals of repute. He has been a book review
editor at Marcel Dekker, New York; an expert member consultant and advisor to WHO, Geneva;
a consultant at the United Nations FAO, Rome, and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),
Vienna. He has been the founder and past president of the Society of Toxicology of India; founder,
director, and member of the nominating committee of the International Union of Toxicology; and
founder and editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed PUBMED-indexed scientific journal Toxicology
International. In addition, Dr. Gupta has also been the biographer for several editions of WHO’s
WHO from all over the world, including Marquis WHO’s WHO (USA), IBC (UK), and other lead-
ing publications. His name appears in the UP Book of Records and Limca Book of Records for his
unique scientific contribution in toxicology. At present, Dr. Gupta is the director of the Toxicology
Consulting Group and president of the Academy of Sciences for Animal Welfare.

xi
 Section 1
GENERAL TOXICOLOGY
Chapter 1
PRINCIPLES OF TOXICOLOGY

1.1 MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS

(Choose the most appropriate response.)

Exercise 1
Q.1. ‘It is the dose that differentiates a toxicant from a poison.’ This statement was made
by scientist ________.
a) Paracelsus
b) Hippocrates
c) Socrates
d) Homer
Q.2. The branch of science that deals with assessing the toxicity of substances of plant and animal
origin and those produced by pathogenic bacteria is ________.
a) toxicology
b) toxinology
c) toxicokinetics
d) toxicodynamics
Q.3. Minimum dose of a toxicant producing the desired response is called ________.
a) ceiling dose
b) threshold dose
c) both a and b
d) none
Q.4. The Arthus reaction is seen in the hypersensitivity of ________.
a) type I
b) type II
c) type III
d) type IV
Q.5. The Coolie breeds of dogs are hypersensitive to ________.
a) Albendazole
b) Ivermectin
c) both
d) none
Q.6. The measure of the margin of safety of a toxicant is obtained by ________.
a) LD50/ED 99
b) LD 1/ED 99
c) ED50/LD 50
d) LD50/ED 50
Q.7. A substance is called as moderately toxic if its median lethal dose is ________.
a) 1–5 mg
b) 5–500 mg
c) 0.5–1 g
d) >1 g
Q.8. A toxic substance produced by a biological system is specially referred to as a ________.
a) toxicant
b) toxin

3
 Brainstorming Questions in Toxicology

c) xenobiotic
d) poison
Q.9. Allergic contact dermatitis is ________.
a) a non-immune response caused by a direct action of an agent on the skin
b) an immediate type-I hypersensitivity reaction
c) a delayed type-IV hypersensitivity reaction
d) characterized by the intensity of reaction being proportional to the elicitation dose
e) not involved in photoallergic reactions
Q.10. The reference dose (RfD) is generally determined by applying which of the following
default procedures?
a) An uncertainty factor of 100 is applied to the NOAEL in chronic animal studies
b) A risk factor of 1000 is applied to the NOAEL in chronic animal studies
c) A risk factor of 10,000 is applied to the NOAEL in subchronic animal studies
d) An uncertainty factor between 10,000 and 1 million is applied to the NOAEL from
chronic animal studies
e) Multiplying the NOAEL from chronic animal studies by 100
Q.11. Which of the following concerning the use of the ‘benchmark dose’ in risk assessment is
not correct?
a) Can use the full range of doses and responses studied
b) Allows use of data obtained from experiments where a clear ‘no observed adverse
effect level’ (NOAEL) has been attained
c) May be defined as the lower confidence limit on the 10% effective dose
d) Is primarily used for analyses of carcinogenicity data and has limited utility for analy-
ses of developmental and reproduction studies that generate quantal data
e) Is not limited to the values of the administered doses
Q.12. Administration by oral gavage of a test compound that is highly metabolized by the liver
versus subcutaneous injection will most likely result in ________.
a) less parent compound present in the systemic circulation
b) more local irritation at the site of administration caused by the compound
c) lower levels of metabolites in the systemic circulation
d) more systemic toxicity
e) less systemic toxicity
Q.13. The phrase that best defines ‘toxicodynamics’ is the ________.
a) linkage between exposure and dose
b) linkage between dose and response
c) dynamic nature of toxic effects among various species
d) dose range between desired biological effects and adverse health effects
e) loss of dynamic hearing range due to a toxic exposure
Q.14. Which of the following was banned under the Delaney Clause of the Food Additive
Amendment of 1958?
a) Butylated hydroxytoluene
b) Sulfamethazine
c) Cyclamate
d) Phytoestrogens
e) Aflatoxin
Q.15. Which of the following toxicity can occur from a single exposure?
a) Acute toxicity
b) Subacute toxicity
c) Subchronic toxicity
d) Chronic toxicity

4
 1.1 Multiple-Choice Questions

Q.16. Which of the following assumptions is not correct regarding risk assessment for male
reproductive effects in the absence of mechanistic data?
a) An agent that produces an adverse reproductive effect in experimental animals is
assumed to pose a potential reproductive hazard to humans.
b) In general, a non-threshold is assumed for the dose-response curve for male reproduc-
tive toxicity.
c) Effects of xenobiotics on male reproduction are assumed to be similar across species
unless demonstrated otherwise.
d) THe most sensitive species should be used to estimate human risk.
e) Reproductive processes are similar across mammalian species.
Q.17. A newly formed hapten protein complex usually stimulates the formation of a significant
amount of antibodies in ________.
a) 1–2 min
b) 1–2 hours
c) 1–2 days
d) 1–2 weeks
Q.18. Prolonged muscle relaxation after succinylcholine is an example of a/an ________.
a) IGE-mediated allergic reaction
b) idiosyncratic reaction
c) immune complex reaction
d) reaction related to a genetic increase in the activity of a liver enzyme
Q.19. Increased production of methemoglobin is due to decreased activity of ________.
a) cytochrome P450 2B6
b) NADH cytochrome b5 reductase
c) cytochrome oxidase
d) cytochrome a3
Q.20. The most common target organ of toxicity is the ________.
a) heart
b) lung
c) CNS (brain and spinal cord)
d) skin
Q.21. The organs least involved in systemic toxicity are ________.
a) brain and peripheral nerves
b) muscle and bone
c) liver and kidney
d) hematopoietic system and lungs
Q.22. If two organophosphate insecticides are absorbed into an organism, the result will be
________.
a) additive effect
b) synergy effect
c) potentiation
d) subtraction effect
Q.23. If ethanol and carbon-tetrachloride are chronically absorbed into an organism, the effect
on the liver would be ________.
a) additive effect
b) synergy
c) potentiation
d) subtraction effect
Q.24. If propyl alcohol and carbon tetrachloride are chronically absorbed into an organism, the
effect on the liver would be ________.
a) additive effect
b) synergy

5
 Brainstorming Questions in Toxicology

c) potentiation
d) subtraction effect
Q.25. The treatment of strychnine-induced convulsions by diazepam is an example of ________.
a) chemical antagonism
b) dispositional antagonism
c) receptor antagonism
d) functional antagonism
Q.26. The use of an antitoxin in the treatment of a snakebite is an example of ________.
a) dispositional antagonism
b) chemical antagonism
c) receptor antagonism
d) functional antagonism
Q.27. The use of charcoal to prevent the absorption of diazepam is an example of ________.
a) dispositional antagonism
b) chemical antagonism
c) receptor antagonism
d) functional antagonism
Q.28. The use tamoxifen in certain breast cancers is an example of ________.
a) dispositional antagonism
b) chemical antagonism
c) receptor antagonism
d) functional antagonism
Q.29. Chemicals known to produce dispositional tolerances are ________.
a) benzene and xylene
b) trichloroethylene and methylene chloride
c) paraquat and diquat
d) carbon tetrachloride and cadmium
Q.30. The most rapid exposure to a chemical would occur through which of the following routes:
a) oral
b) subcutaneous
c) inhalation
d) intramuscular
Q.31. A chemical that is toxic to the brain but which is detoxified in the liver would be expected
to be ________.
a) more toxic orally than intramuscularly
b) more toxic rectally than intravenously
c) more toxic via inhalation than orally
d) more toxic on the skin than intravenously
Q.32. The LD50 is calculated from ________.
a) a quantal dose-response curve
b) a hormesis dose-response curve
c) a graded dose-response curve
d) a log-log dose-response curve
Q.33. A U-shaped graded toxicity dose-response curve is seen in humans with ________.
a) pesticides
b) sedatives
c) opiates
d) vitamins
Q.34. The TD1/ED99 is called the ________.
a) margin of safety
b) therapeutic index

6
 1.1 Multiple-Choice Questions

c) potency ratio
d) efficacy ratio
Q.35. All of the following are reasons for selective toxicity except ________.
a) transport differences between cell
b) biochemical differences between cell
c) cytology of male neurons versus female neurons
d) cytology of plant cells versus animal cells
Q.36. Regulatory toxicology aims at guarding the public from dangerous chemical exposures
and depends primarily on which form of study:
a) observational human studies
b) controlled laboratory animal studies
c) controlled human studies
d) environmental studies
Q.37. Risk from a public health perspective is best described as
a) an undesirable end point is reached
b) a possibility of a bad outcome
c) the likelihood of an unwanted outcome combined with uncertainty of when it
will occur
d) a bad outcome is assured and its mechanism is well understood
Q.38. Which of the following statements is regarding risk analysis?
a) It is a field of study that has been around for the last century.
b) It was developed by the pharmaceutical companies in response to concerns over new
medications.
c) It is a relatively new field of study, spurred by new technologically based risks.
d) It was largely a private-sector venture.
Q.39. Which of the following are tools used in risk analysis?
a) Toxicology
b) Epidemiology
c) Clinical trials
d) All of the above
Q.40. Which of the following are common end points?
a) Death
b) No observable effect level
c) No observable adverse effect level
d) Lowest observable adverse effect level
e) All of the above
Q.41. The LD50 is best described as which of the following:
a) the dose at which 50% of all test animals die
b) the dose at which 50% of the animals demonstrate a response to the chemical
c) the dose at which all of the test animals die
d) the dose at which at least one of the test animal dies
Q.42. The effective dose is best described as which of the following:
a) the dose at which 50% of all test animals die
b) the dose at which some of the animals demonstrate a response to the chemical
c) the dose at which all of the animals demonstrate a response to the chemical
d) the dose at which 50% of all test animals demonstrate a response to the chemical
Q.43. Extrapolation is best described as which of the following:
a) using known information to reach a conclusion
b) using known information to infer something about the unknown
c) using speculative information to infer something about the known
d) a ‘best guess’ approach

7
 Brainstorming Questions in Toxicology

Q.44. Which of the following assumptions is not correct regarding risk assessment for male
reproductive effects in the absence of mechanistic data?
a) An agent that produces an adverse reproductive effect in experimental animals is
assumed to pose a potential reproductive hazard to humans.
b) In general, a non-threshold is assumed for the dose-response curve for male reproduc-
tive toxicity.
c) Effects of xenobiotics on male reproduction are assumed to be similar across species
unless demonstrated otherwise.
d) The most sensitive species should be used to estimate human risk.
e) Reproductive processes are similar across mammalian species.
Q.45. The therapeutic index is usually defined as ________.
a) TD50/LD50
b) ED50/LD50
c) LD50/ED50
d) ED50/TD50
Q.46. The acetylator phenotype is ________.
a) not found in dogs
b) found exclusively in Asians
c) responsible for the toxicity of amines
d) an inherited trait affecting a particular metabolic reaction
e) associated with the HLA type
Q.47. The phenomenon of enzyme induction involves
a) an increase in the synthesis of the enzyme
b) an increase in the activity of the enzyme
c) an increase in liver weight
d) a change in the substrate specificity of the enzyme
e) an increase in bile flow
Q.48. Piperonyl butoxide and phenobarbitone
a) are used in experimental studies to induce and inhibit the microsomal enzymes
b) have no effect on drug metabolism
c) uncouple electron transport in the mitochondria
d) inhibit and induce the monooxygenase enzymes
Q.49. The differences between species in susceptibility to the toxicity of chemicals are usually
the result of differences in metabolism.
a) true
b) false
Q.50. The toxic effects of a chemical may be influenced by which of the following:
1) kidney function
2) body weight
3) rate of metabolism of the compound
4) time of day the chemical is administered
Select the correct statement.
a) 1, 2, and 3
b) 1 and 3
c) 2 and 4
d) 3 only 4
e) all four

8
 1.1 Multiple-Choice Questions

Answers (Exercise 1)

1. a 6. d 11. d 16. b 21. b 26. b 31. c 36. b 41. c 46. d

2. b 7. b 12. a 17. d 22. a 27. a 32. a 37. c 42. d 47. a
3. b 8. b 13. b 18. b 23. b 28. c 33. d 38. c 43. b 48. d
4. c 9. c 14. c 19. b 24. c 29. d 34. a 39. d 44. b 49. a
5. b 10. a 15. a 20. c 25. d 30. c 35. c 40. a 45. b 50. e

Exercise 2
Q.1. Examples of significant concentrations of a toxicant in a tissue that is not a target organ
include all of the following except ________.
a) lead in bone
b) DDT in adipose tissue
c) paraquat in lung
d) TCDD in adipose tissue
Q.2. The ability of a chemical to cause acute skin and eye irritation is usually evaluated
in a ________.
a) rabbit
b) rat
c) mouse
d) dog
Q.3. Before a potential pharmaceutical compound can be given to humans ________.
a) an NDA must be filed with the FDA
b) an IND must be filed with the FDA
c) acute toxicity studies on four species must be conducted
d) a two-year dog carcinogenicity study must be completed
Q.4. Phase 1 clinical trials are conducted to determine all of the following except________.
a) pharmacokinetics
b) safety
c) rare adverse effects
d) preliminary efficacy
Q.5. MTD stands for ________.
a) minimum tolerated dose
b) maximum total dose
c) maximum tolerated dose
d) maximum threshold dose
Q.6. The acute toxicity study in animals provides ________.
a) an appropriate lethal dose
b) information on target organs
c) information on dose selection for long-term studies
d) all of the above
Q.7. A subacute toxicity study in rats usually lasts ________.
a) 3 days
b) 14 days
c) 3 months
d) 6 months
Q.8. The period of organogenesis in rats is ________.
a) day 3–10
b) day 7–17
c) day 12–25
d) day 17–56

9
 Brainstorming Questions in Toxicology

Q.9. A dose of investigational toxicant that suppresses body weight gain slightly in a 90-day
animal study is defined by some regulatory agencies to be ________.
a) LOAEL
b) NOAEL
c) MTD
d) reference dose
Q.10. A subchronic animal study required by the FDA will usually include ________.
a) two species (usually one rodent and one non-rodent)
b) both genders
c) at least three doses (low, intermediate, and high)
d) all of the above
Q.11. A dose of a Compound A is toxic to animals in vivo. Another Chemical B is not toxic when
given at doses several orders of magnitude higher. But when the two are given together, the
toxic response is greater than that of the given dose of A alone. That is ________.
a) antagonism
b) synergism
c) additivity
d) potentiation
e) none of the above
Q.12. Which information may be gained from an acute toxicity study?
a) No effect level
b) LD50
c) THerapeutic index
d) Target organ
e) All of the above
Q.13. 1000 ppm is equivalent to 1%.
a) True
b) False
Q.14. Which one of the following statements is regarding toxicology?
a) Modern toxicology is concerned with the study of the adverse effects of chemicals on
ancient forms of life.
b) Modern toxicology studies embrace principles from such disciplines as biochemistry,
botany, chemistry, physiology, and physics.
c) Modern toxicology has its roots in the knowledge of plant and animal poisons, which
predates recorded history and has been used to promote peace.
d) Modern toxicology studies the mechanisms by which inorganic chemicals produce
advantageous as well as deleterious effects.
e) Modern toxicology is concerned with the study of chemicals in mammalian species.
Q.15. Knowledge of the toxicology of poisonous agents was published earliest in the ________.
a) Ebers Papyrus
b) De Historia Plantarum
c) De Materia Medica
d) Lex Cornelia
e) Treatise on Poisons and THeir Antidotes
Q.16. Paracelsus, physician-alchemist, formulated many revolutionary reviews that remain
integral to the structure of toxicology, pharmacology, and therapeutics today. He focused
on the primary toxic agent as the chemical entity and articulated the dose-response rela-
tion. Which one of the following statements is not attributable to Paracelsus?
a) Natural poisons are quick in their onset of actions.
b) Experimentation is essential in the examination of responses to chemicals.
c) One should make the distinction between the therapeutic and toxic properties of
chemicals.

10
 1.1 Multiple-Choice Questions

d) These properties are sometimes but not always indistinguishable except by dose.
e) One can ascertain a degree of specificity of chemicals and their therapeutic or toxic effects.
Q.17. The art of toxicology requires years of experience to acquire, even though the knowledge
base facts may be learned more quickly. Which modern toxicologist is credited with say-
ing that ‘you can be toxicologist in two easy lessons, each of 10 years’?
a) Claude Bernard
b) Rachel Carson
c) Upton Sinclair
d) Arnold Lehman
e) Oswald Schmiedeberg
Q.18. Which of the following statements is correct?
a) Claude Bernard was a prolific scientist who trained over 120 students and published
numerous contributions to the scientific literature.
b) Louis Lewin trained under Oswald Schmiedeberg and published much of the early
work on the toxicity of narcotics, methanol, and chloroform.
c) An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine was written by the Spanish
physician Orfila.
d) Magendie used autopsy material and chemical analysis systematically as legal proof of
poisoning.
e) Percival Potts was instrumental in demonstrating the chemical complexity of snake
venoms.
Q.19. A concentration of 0.01% is equivalent to how many parts per million (ppm)?
a) 1 ppm
b) 10 ppm
c) 100 ppm
d) 1000 ppm
e) 10,000 ppm
Q.20. A blood lead concentration reported as 80 g/dL is the same as
a) 0.08 ppm
b) 0.8 ppm
c) 8 ppm
d) 80 ppm
e) 800 ppm
Q.21. If the toxic level of a toxicant in feed is 100 ppm for a 20-kg pig, what is the estimated toxicity
of the toxicant on a milligram per kilogram of body weight basis? Assume the feed is air dried
and the pig eats feed at the rate of 6% of its body weight daily.
a) 2 mg/kg
b) 4 mg/kg
c) 6 mg/kg
d) 8 mg/kg
e) 10 mg/kg
Q.22. Five identical experimental animals are treated with 1 mg of one of the following toxins.
The animal treated with which toxin is most likely to die?
a) Ethyl alcohol (LD50 = 10,000 mg/kg)
b) Botulinum toxin (LD50 = 0.00001 mg/kg)
c) Nicotine (LD50 = 1 mg/kg
d) Ferrous sulfate (LD50 = 1500 mg/kg)
e) Picrotoxin (LD50 = 5 mg/kg)
Q.23. Place the following mechanisms of toxin delivery in order from most effective to least
effective—1: intravenous; 2: subcutaneous; 3: oral; 4: inhalation; 5: dermal.
a) 1, 5, 2, 4, 3.
b) 4, 1, 2, 3, 5.

11
 Brainstorming Questions in Toxicology

c) 1, 4, 2, 3, 5.
d) 4, 2, 1, 5, 3.
e) 1, 4, 3, 2, 5.
Q.24. A toxin with a half-life of 12 hours is administered every 12 hours. Which of the following
is correct?
a) The chemical is eliminated from the body before the next dose is administered.
b) The concentration of the chemical in the body will slowly increase until the toxic con-
centration is attained.
c) A toxic level will not be reached, regardless of how many doses are administered.
d) Acute exposure to the chemical will produce immediate toxic effects.
e) The elimination rate of the toxin is much shorter than the dosing interval.
Q.25. Urushiol is the toxin found in poison ivy. It must first react and combine with proteins
in the skin in order for the immune system to recognize and mount a response against it.
Urushiol is an example of which of the following?
a) Antigen
b) Auto antibody
c) Superantigen
d) Hapten
e) Cytokine
Q.26. Toxic chemicals are most likely to be biotransformed in which of the following organs?
a) Central nervous system
b) Heart
c) Lung
d) Pancreas
e) Liver
Q.27. When Chemicals A and B are administered simultaneously, their combined effects are far
greater than the sum of their effects when given alone. The chemical interaction between
Chemicals A and B can be described as which of the following?
a) Potentiative
b) Additive
c) Antagonistic
d) Unconditionally antagonistic
e) Synergistic
Q.28. With respect to dose-response relationships, which of the following is correct?
a) Graded dose-response relationships are often referred to as ‘all or nothing’ responses.
b) Quantal dose-response relationships allow for the analysis of a population’s response
to varying dosages.
c) Quantal relationships characterize the response of an individual to varying dosages.
d) A quantal dose-response describes the response of an individual organism to varying
doses of a chemical.
e) The dose-response always increases as the dosage is increased.
Q.29. When considering the dose-response relationship or an essential substance ________.
a) there are rarely negative effects of ingesting too much
b) the curve is the same for all people
c) adverse responses increase in severity with increasing or decreasing dosages outside of
the homeostatic range
d) the relationship is linear
e) deficiency will never cause more harm than overingestion
Q.30. The therapeutic index of a toxicant ________.
a) is the amount of a toxicant needed to cure an illness
b) is lower in toxicants that are relatively safer
c) describes the potency of a chemical in eliciting a desired response

12
 1.1 Multiple-Choice Questions

d) describes the ratio of the toxic dose to the therapeutic dose of a toxicant
e) explains the change in response to a toxicant as the dose is increased
Q.31. Penicillin interferes with the formation of peptidoglycan cross-links in bacterial cell walls,
thus weakening the cell wall and eventually causing osmotic death of the bacterium.
Which of the following is correct?
a) Treatment with penicillin is a good example of selective toxicity.
b) Penicillin interferes with human plasma membrane structure.
c) Penicillin is a good example of a toxicant with a low therapeutic index.
d) Penicillin is also effective in treating viral infections.
e) Penicillin is completely harmless to humans
Q.32. Which of the following is not important in hazard identification?
a) Structure–activity analysis
b) In-vitro tests
c) Animal bioassays
d) Susceptibility
e) Epidemiology
Q.33. The systematic scientific characterization of adverse health effects resulting from human
exposure to hazardous agents is the definition of ________.
a) risk
b) hazard control
c) risk assessment
d) risk communication
e) risk estimate
Q.34. Which of the following is not an objective of risk management?
a) Setting target levels or risk
b) Balancing risks and benefits
c) Calculating lethal dosages
d) Setting priorities or manufacturers
e) Estimating residual risks
Q.35. Which of the following is not a feature in the design of standard cancer bioassays?
a) More than one species
b) Both sexes
c) Near lifetime exposure
d) Approximately 50 animals per dose group
e) Same dose level for all groups
Q.36. Which of the following types of epidemiologic study is always retrospective?
a) Cohort
b) Cross-sectional
c) Case-control
d) Longitudinal
e) Exploratory
Q.37. Which of the following is defined as the highest non-statistically significant dose tested?
a) ED50
b) ED100
c) NOAEL
d) ADI
e) COAEL
Q.38. Which of the following represents the dose below which no additional increase in response
is observed?
a) ED10
b) LD50
c) RfC

13
 Brainstorming Questions in Toxicology

d) THreshold
e) Significance level
Q.39. Which of the following is not needed to calculate the reference dose using the BMD
method?
a) MF
b) Percent benchmark response
c) NOAEL
d) UF
e) Benchmark dose
Q.40. Virtually safe doses are described at which confidence level?
a) 90%
b) 95%
c) 99%
d) 99.9%
e) 99.99%
Q.41. Which of the following is not a modifying actor that can influence the likelihood of disease?
a) Age
b) Dose
c) Nutritional status
d) Gender
e) Genetic susceptibility
Q.42. The probability of an adverse outcome is defined as ________.
a) hazard
b) exposure ratio
c) risk
d) susceptibility
e) epidemiology
Q.43. Which of following is not a modifying factor that can influence the likelihood of disease?
a) Age
b) Dose
c) Nutritional status
d) Gender
e) Genetic susceptibility
Q.44. What is the default assumption in human-health risk assessment when male reproductive
effects are observed in animal studies and no mechanistic data are available?
a) An agent that produces an adverse reproductive effect in experimental animals is
assumed to pose a potential reproductive hazard to humans.
b) A non-threshold is assumed for the dose-response curve for male reproductive
toxicity.
c) The effects of xenobiotics on male reproduction are assumed to diverge radically
across mammalian species.
d) Rodent reproductive processes are too dissimilar to those of humans to be used for
human-health risk assessment.
Q.45. What is defined as ‘a measurable biochemical, physiological, or other alteration within an
organism that indicates health impairment or disease’?
a) Biomarker of exposure
b) Biomarker of susceptibility
c) Biomarker of effect
d) Biomarker of disease

14
 1.1 Multiple-Choice Questions

Q.46. In what way is a point of departure (POD) from an animal study usually modified in order
to determine a reference dose (RfD)?
a) An uncertainty factor of 100 is applied to the NOAEL in chronic animal studies.
b) A risk factor of 1000 is applied to the NOAEL in chronic animal studies.
c) A risk factor of 10,000 is applied to the NOAEL in subchronic animal studies.
d) Multiplying the NOAEL from chronic animal studies by 100.
Q.47. What is a limitation of the benchmark dose approach in risk assessment?
a) Does not use the full range of doses and responses studied
b) Cannot be used when a clear ‘no observed adverse effect level’ (NOAEL) has already
been attained
c) Is based on a predefined benchmark response that is arbitrary
d) Cannot be used to extrapolate beyond the range of administered doses
Q.48. What characteristic of perceived risk renders it difficult to quantify?
a) Rarely incorporated into risk communication decisions
b) Based on the precautionary principle
c) Highly influenced by factors such as familiarity and controllability
d) Too subjective

Answers (Exercise 2)

1. c 2. a 3. b 4. c 5. c 6. d 7. b 8. b 9. c 10. d 11. d 12. e

13. b 14. b 15. a 16. a 17. d 18. b 19. c 20. b 21. c 22. b 23. c 24. b
25. d 26. e 27. e 28. b 29. c 30. d 31. a 32. d 33. c 34. c 35. e 36. c
37. c 38. d 39. c 40. b 41. b 42. c 43. b 44. a 45. c 46. a 47. c 48. c

15
 Brainstorming Questions in Toxicology

1.2 TRUE OR FALSE STATEMENTS

(Write T for True or F for False.)

Exercise 3
Q.1. Environmental risk is a well-understood entity.
Q.2. Cross-sectional studies look at the exposure and disease at the same time.
Q.3. Bias is a problem primarily of clinical trials.
Q.4. Subchronic studies are shorter than acute studies.
Q.5. The lethal dose refers to the dose at which 50% of test animals die.
Q.6. The maximum tolerated dose (MTD) is the level of chemical exposure where 10% of the
animals die.
Q.7. Case control studies start with the exposure and follow for the disease.
Q.8. Case control studies are good for rare diseases.
Q.9. Clinical trials look at dose-response in animals.
Q.10. Dose refers to the amount of a substance in the environment.

Answers (Exercise 3)

1. F 2. T 3. F 4. F 5. T 6. F 7. F 8. T 9. F 10. F

16
Another random document with
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Chapter VII. Music and Plastic. (1) The Arts of Form 217
Music one of the arts of form, p. 219. Classification of the arts impossible
except from the historical standpoint, p. 221. The choice of particular arts
itself an expression-means of the higher order, p. 222. Apollinian and
Faustian art-groups, p. 224. The stages of Western Music, p. 226. The
Renaissance an anti-Gothic and anti-musical movement, p. 232. Character
of the Baroque, p. 236. The Park, p. 240. Symbolism of colours, p. 245.
Colours of the Near and of the Distance, p. 246. Gold background and
Rembrandt brown, p. 247. Patina, p. 253.

Chapter VIII. Music and Plastic. (2) Act and Portrait 257
Kinds of human representation, p. 259. Portraiture, Contrition, Syntax, p. 261.
The heads of Classical statuary, p. 264. Portrayal of children and women,
p. 266. Hellenistic portraiture, p. 269. The Baroque portrait, p. 272.
Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo overcome the Renaissance, p. 273.
Victory of Instrumental Music over Oil-Painting, corresponding to the victory
of Statuary over Fresco in the Classical, p. 282. Impressionism, p. 285.
Pergamum and Bayreuth, p. 291. The finale of Art, p. 293.

Chapter IX. Soul-image and Life-feeling. (1) On the

Form of the Soul 297
Soul-image as function of World-image, p. 299. Psychology of a counter-
physics, p. 302. Apollinian, Magian and Faustian soul-image, p. 305. The
“Will” in Gothic space, p. 308. The “inner” mythology, p. 312. Will and
Character, p. 314. Classical posture tragedy and Faustian character
tragedy, p. 317. Symbolism of the drama-image, p. 320. Day and Night Art,
p. 324. Popular and esoteric, p. 326. The astronomical image, p. 329. The
geographical horizon, p. 332.

Chapter X. Soul-image and Life-feeling. (2) Buddhism,

Stoicism, and Socialism 339
The Faustian morale purely dynamic, p. 341. Every Culture has a form of
morale proper to itself, p. 345. Posture-morale and will-morale, p. 347.
Buddha, Socrates, Rousseau as protagonists of the dawning Civilizations,
p. 351. Tragic and plebeian morale, p. 354. Return to Nature, Irreligion,
 Nihilism, p. 356. Ethical Socialism, p. 361. Similarity of structure in the
philosophical history of every Culture, p. 364. The Civilized philosophy of
the West, p. 365.

Chapter XI. Faustian and Apollinian Nature-

knowledge 375
Theory as Myth, p. 377. Every Natural Science depends upon a preceding
Religion, p. 391. Statics, Alchemy, Dynamics as the theories of three
Cultures, p. 382. The Atomic theory, p. 384. The problem of motion
insoluble, p. 388. The style of causal process and experience, p. 391. The
feeling of God and the knowing of Nature, p. 392. The great Myth, p. 394.
Classical, Magian and Faustian numina, p. 397. Atheism, p. 408. Faustian
physics as a dogma of force, p. 411. Limits of its theoretical (as distinct
from its technical) development, p. 417. Self-destruction of Dynamics, and
invasion of historical ideas; theory dissolves into a system of morphological
relationships, p. 420.

Index Following page 428

Tables Illustrating the Comparative At end of volume

Morphology of History
 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION
 I
In this book is attempted for the first time the venture of
predetermining history, of following the still untravelled stages in the
destiny of a Culture, and specifically of the only Culture of our time
and on our planet which is actually in the phase of fulfilment—the
West-European-American.
Hitherto the possibility of solving a problem so far-reaching has
evidently never been envisaged, and even if it had been so, the
means of dealing with it were either altogether unsuspected or, at
best, inadequately used.
Is there a logic of history? Is there, beyond all the casual and
incalculable elements of the separate events, something that we
may call a metaphysical structure of historic humanity, something
that is essentially independent of the outward forms—social, spiritual
and political—which we see so clearly? Are not these actualities
indeed secondary or derived from that something? Does world-
history present to the seeing eye certain grand traits, again and
again, with sufficient constancy to justify certain conclusions? And if
so, what are the limits to which reasoning from such premisses may
be pushed?
Is it possible to find in life itself—for human history is the sum of
mighty life-courses which already have had to be endowed with ego
and personality, in customary thought and expression, by predicating
entities of a higher order like “the Classical” or “the Chinese Culture,”
“Modern Civilization”—a series of stages which must be traversed,
and traversed moreover in an ordered and obligatory sequence? For
everything organic the notions of birth, death, youth, age, lifetime are
fundamentals—may not these notions, in this sphere also, possess a
rigorous meaning which no one has as yet extracted? In short, is all
history founded upon general biographic archetypes?
The decline of the West, which at first sight may appear, like the
corresponding decline of the Classical Culture, a phenomenon
limited in time and space, we now perceive to be a philosophical
problem that, when comprehended in all its gravity, includes within
itself every great question of Being.
If therefore we are to discover in what form the destiny of the
Western Culture will be accomplished, we must first be clear as to
what culture is, what its relations are to visible history, to life, to soul,
to nature, to intellect, what the forms of its manifestation are and how
far these forms—peoples, tongues and epochs, battles and ideas,
states and gods, arts and craft-works, sciences, laws, economic
types and world-ideas, great men and great events—may be
accepted and pointed to as symbols.
 II
The means whereby to identify dead forms is Mathematical Law.
The means whereby to understand living forms is Analogy. By these
means we are enabled to distinguish polarity and periodicity in the
world.
It is, and has always been, a matter of knowledge that the
expression-forms of world-history are limited in number, and that
eras, epochs, situations, persons are ever repeating themselves true
to type. Napoleon has hardly ever been discussed without a side-
glance at Cæsar and Alexander—analogies of which, as we shall
see, the first is morphologically quite inacceptable and the second is
correct—while Napoleon himself conceived of his situation as akin to
Charlemagne’s. The French Revolutionary Convention spoke of
Carthage when it meant England, and the Jacobins styled
themselves Romans. Other such comparisons, of all degrees of
soundness and unsoundness, are those of Florence with Athens,
Buddha with Christ, primitive Christianity with modern Socialism, the
Roman financial magnate of Cæsar’s time with the Yankee.
Petrarch, the first passionate archæologist (and is not archæology
itself an expression of the sense that history is repetition?) related
himself mentally to Cicero, and but lately Cecil Rhodes, the
organizer of British South Africa, who had in his library specially
prepared translations of the classical lives of the Cæsars, felt himself
akin to the Emperor Hadrian. The fated Charles XII of Sweden used
to carry Quintus Curtius’s life of Alexander in his pocket, and to copy
that conqueror was his deliberate purpose.
Frederick the Great, in his political writings—such as his
Considérations, 1738—moves among analogies with perfect
assurance. Thus he compares the French to the Macedonians under
Philip and the Germans to the Greeks. “Even now,” he says, “the
Thermopylæ of Germany, Alsace and Lorraine, are in the hands of
Philip,” therein exactly characterizing the policy of Cardinal Fleury.
We find him drawing parallels also between the policies of the
Houses of Habsburg and Bourbon and the proscriptions of Antony
and of Octavius.
Still, all this was only fragmentary and arbitrary, and usually
implied rather a momentary inclination to poetical or ingenious
expressions than a really deep sense of historical forms.
Thus in the case of Ranke, a master of artistic analogy, we find
that his parallels of Cyaxares and Henry the Fowler, of the inroads of
the Cimmerians and those of the Hungarians, possess
morphologically no significance, and his oft-quoted analogy between
the Hellenic city-states and the Renaissance republics very little,
while the deeper truth in his comparison of Alcibiades and Napoleon
is accidental. Unlike the strict mathematician, who finds inner
relationships between two groups of differential equations where the
layman sees nothing but dissimilarities of outward form, Ranke and
others draw their historical analogies with a Plutarchian, popular-
romantic, touch, and aim merely at presenting comparable scenes
on the world-stage.
It is easy to see that, at bottom, it is neither a principle nor a sense
of historic necessity, but simple inclination, that governs the choice of
the tableaux. From any technique of analogies we are far distant.
They throng up (to-day more than ever) without scheme or unities,
and if they do hit upon something which is true—in the essential
sense of the word that remains to be determined—it is thanks to
luck, more rarely to instinct, never to a principle. In this region no one
hitherto has set himself to work out a method, nor has had the
slightest inkling that there is here a root, in fact the only root, from
which can come a broad solution of the problems of History.
Analogies, in so far as they laid bare the organic structure of
history, might be a blessing to historical thought. Their technique,
developing under the influence of a comprehensive idea, would
surely eventuate in inevitable conclusions and logical mastery. But
as hitherto understood and practised they have been a curse, for
they have enabled the historians to follow their own tastes, instead of
soberly realizing that their first and hardest task was concerned with
the symbolism of history and its analogies, and, in consequence, the
problem has till now not even been comprehended, let alone solved.
Superficial in many cases (as for instance in designating Cæsar as
the creator of the official newspaper), these analogies are worse
than superficial in others (as when phenomena of the Classical Age
that are not only extremely complex but utterly alien to us are
labelled with modern catchwords like Socialism, Impressionism,
Capitalism, Clericalism), while occasionally they are bizarre to the
point of perversity—witness the Jacobin clubs with their cult of
Brutus, that millionaire-extortioner Brutus who, in the name of
oligarchical doctrine and with the approval of the patrician senate,
murdered the Man of the Democracy.
 III
Thus our theme, which originally comprised only the limited
problem of present-day civilization, broadens itself into a new
philosophy—the philosophy of the future, so far as the
metaphysically-exhausted soil of the West can bear such, and in any
case the only philosophy which is within the possibilities of the West-
European mind in its next stages. It expands into the conception of a
morphology of world history, of the world-as-history in contrast to the
morphology of the world-as-nature that hitherto has been almost the
only theme of philosophy. And it reviews once again the forms and
movements of the world in their depths and final significance, but this
time according to an entirely different ordering which groups them,
not in an ensemble picture inclusive of everything known, but in a
picture of life, and presents them not as things-become, but as
things-becoming.
The world-as-history, conceived, viewed and given form from out
of its opposite the world-as-nature—here is a new aspect of human
existence on this earth. As yet, in spite of its immense significance,
both practical and theoretical, this aspect has not been realized, still
less presented. Some obscure inkling of it there may have been, a
distant momentary glimpse there has often been, but no one has
deliberately faced it and taken it in with all its implications. We have
before us two possible ways in which man may inwardly possess
and experience the world around him. With all rigour I distinguish (as
to form, not substance) the organic from the mechanical world-
impression, the content of images from that of laws, the picture and
symbol from the formula and the system, the instantly actual from
the constantly possible, the intents and purposes of imagination
ordering according to plan from the intents and purposes of
experience dissecting according to scheme; and—to mention even
thus early an opposition that has never yet been noted, in spite of its
significance—the domain of chronological from that of mathematical
number.[1]
 Consequently, in a research such as that lying before us, there
can be no question of taking spiritual-political events, as they
become visible day by day on the surface, at their face value, and
arranging them on a scheme of “causes” or “effects” and following
them up in the obvious and intellectually easy directions. Such a
“pragmatic” handling of history would be nothing but a piece of
“natural science” in disguise, and for their part, the supporters of the
materialistic idea of history make no secret about it—it is their
adversaries who largely fail to see the similarity of the two methods.
What concerns us is not what the historical facts which appear at this
or that time are, per se, but what they signify, what they point to, by
appearing. Present-day historians think they are doing a work of
supererogation in bringing in religious and social, or still more art-
history, details to “illustrate” the political sense of an epoch. But the
decisive factor—decisive, that is, in so far as visible history is the
expression, sign and embodiment of soul—they forget. I have not
hitherto found one who has carefully considered the morphological
relationship that inwardly binds together the expression-forms of all
branches of a Culture, who has gone beyond politics to grasp the
ultimate and fundamental ideas of Greeks, Arabians, Indians and
Westerners in mathematics, the meaning of their early
ornamentation, the basic forms of their architecture, philosophies,
dramas and lyrics, their choice and development of great arts, the
detail of their craftsmanship and choice of materials—let alone
appreciated the decisive importance of these matters for the form-
problems of history. Who amongst them realizes that between the
Differential Calculus and the dynastic principle of politics in the age
of Louis XIV, between the Classical city-state and the Euclidean
geometry, between the space-perspective of Western oil-painting
and the conquest of space by railroad, telephone and long-range
weapon, between contrapuntal music and credit economics, there
are deep uniformities? Yet, viewed from this morphological
standpoint, even the humdrum facts of politics assume a symbolic
and even a metaphysical character, and—what has perhaps been
impossible hitherto—things such as the Egyptian administrative
system, the Classical coinage, analytical geometry, the cheque, the
Suez Canal, the book-printing of the Chinese, the Prussian Army,
and the Roman road-engineering can, as symbols, be made
uniformly understandable and appreciable.
But at once the fact presents itself that as yet there exists no
theory-enlightened art of historical treatment. What passes as such
draws its methods almost exclusively from the domain of that
science which alone has completely disciplined the methods of
cognition, viz., physics, and thus we imagine ourselves to be
carrying on historical research when we are really following out
objective connexions of cause and effect. It is a remarkable fact that
the old-fashioned philosophy never imagined even the possibility of
there being any other relation than this between the conscious
human understanding and the world outside. Kant, who in his main
work established the formal rules of cognition, took nature only as
the object of reason’s activity, and neither he himself, nor anyone
after him, noted the reservation. Knowledge, for Kant, is
mathematical knowledge. He deals with innate intuition-forms and
categories of the reason, but he never thinks of the wholly different
mechanism by which historical impressions are apprehended. And
Schopenhauer, who, significantly enough, retains but one of the
Kantian categories, viz., causality, speaks contemptuously of history.
[2]
That there is, besides a necessity of cause and effect—which I
may call the logic of space—another necessity, an organic necessity
in life, that of Destiny—the logic of time—is a fact of the deepest
inward certainty, a fact which suffuses the whole of mythological
religions and artistic thought and constitutes the essence and kernel
of all history (in contradistinction to nature) but is unapproachable
through the cognition-forms which the “Critique of Pure Reason”
investigates. This fact still awaits its theoretical formulation. As
Galileo says in a famous passage of his Saggiatore, philosophy, as
Nature’s great book, is written “in mathematical language.” We await,
to-day, the philosopher who will tell us in what language history is
written and how it is to be read.
Mathematics and the principle of Causality lead to a naturalistic,
Chronology and the idea of Destiny to a historical ordering of the
phenomenal world. Both orderings, each on its own account, cover
the whole world. The difference is only in the eyes by which and
through which this world is realized.
 IV
Nature is the shape in which the man of higher Cultures
synthesizes and interprets the immediate impressions of his senses.
History is that from which his imagination seeks comprehension of
the living existence of the world in relation to his own life, which he
thereby invests with a deeper reality. Whether he is capable of
creating these shapes, which of them it is that dominates his waking
consciousness, is a primordial problem of all human existence.
Man, thus, has before him two possibilities of world-formation. But
it must be noted, at the very outset, that these possibilities are not
necessarily actualities, and if we are to enquire into the sense of all
history we must begin by solving a question which has never yet
been put, viz., for whom is there History? The question is seemingly
paradoxical, for history is obviously for everyone to this extent, that
every man, with his whole existence and consciousness, is a part of
history. But it makes a great difference whether anyone lives under
the constant impression that his life is an element in a far wider life-
course that goes on for hundreds and thousands of years, or
conceives of himself as something rounded off and self-contained.
For the latter type of consciousness there is certainly no world-
history, no world-as-history. But how if the self-consciousness of a
whole nation, how if a whole Culture rests on this ahistoric spirit?
How must actuality appear to it? The world? Life? Consider the
Classical Culture. In the world-consciousness of the Hellenes all
experience, not merely the personal but the common past, was
immediately transmuted into a timeless, immobile, mythically-
fashioned background for the particular momentary present; thus the
history of Alexander the Great began even before his death to be
merged by Classical sentiment in the Dionysus legend, and to
Cæsar there seemed at the least nothing preposterous in claiming
descent from Venus.
Such a spiritual condition it is practically impossible for us men of
the West, with a sense of time-distances so strong that we habitually
and unquestioningly speak of so many years before or after Christ,
to reproduce in ourselves. But we are not on that account entitled, in
dealing with the problems of History, simply to ignore the fact.
What diaries and autobiographies yield in respect of an individual,
that historical research in the widest and most inclusive sense—that
is, every kind of psychological comparison and analysis of alien
peoples, times and customs—yields as to the soul of a Culture as a
whole. But the Classical culture possessed no memory, no organ of
history in this special sense. The memory of the Classical man—so
to call it, though it is somewhat arbitrary to apply to alien souls a
notion derived from our own—is something different, since past and
future, as arraying perspectives in the working consciousness, are
absent and the “pure Present,” which so often roused Goethe’s
admiration in every product of the Classical life and in sculpture
particularly, fills that life with an intensity that to us is perfectly
unknown.
This pure Present, whose greatest symbol is the Doric column, in
itself predicates the negation of time (of direction). For Herodotus
and Sophocles, as for Themistocles or a Roman consul, the past is
subtilized instantly into an impression that is timeless and
changeless, polar and not periodic in structure—in the last analysis,
of such stuff as myths are made of—whereas for our world-sense
and our inner eye the past is a definitely periodic and purposeful
organism of centuries or millennia.
But it is just this background which gives the life, whether it be the
Classical or the Western life, its special colouring. What the Greek
called Kosmos was the image of a world that is not continuous but
complete. Inevitably, then, the Greek man himself was not a series
but a term.[3]
For this reason, although Classical man was well acquainted with
the strict chronology and almanac-reckoning of the Babylonians and
especially the Egyptians, and therefore with that eternity-sense and
disregard of the present-as-such which revealed itself in their
broadly-conceived operations of astronomy and their exact
measurements of big time-intervals, none of this ever became
intimately a part of him. What his philosophers occasionally told him
on the subject they had heard, not experienced, and what a few
brilliant minds in the Asiatic-Greek cities (such as Hipparchus and
Aristarchus) discovered was rejected alike by the Stoic and by the
Aristotelian, and outside a small professional circle not even noticed.
Neither Plato nor Aristotle had an observatory. In the last years of
Pericles, the Athenian people passed a decree by which all who
propagated astronomical theories were made liable to impeachment
(εἰσαγγελία). This last was an act of the deepest symbolic
significance, expressive of the determination of the Classical soul to
banish distance, in every aspect, from its world-consciousness.
As regards Classical history-writing, take Thucydides. The mastery
of this man lies in his truly Classical power of making alive and self-
explanatory the events of the present, and also in his possession of
the magnificently practical outlook of the born statesman who has
himself been both general and administrator. In virtue of this quality
of experience (which we unfortunately confuse with the historical
sense proper), his work confronts the merely learned and
professional historian as an inimitable model, and quite rightly so.
But what is absolutely hidden from Thucydides is perspective, the
power of surveying the history of centuries, that which for us is
implicit in the very conception of a historian. The fine pieces of
Classical history-writing are invariably those which set forth matters
within the political present of the writer, whereas for us it is the direct
opposite, our historical masterpieces without exception being those
which deal with a distant past. Thucydides would have broken down
in handling even the Persian Wars, let alone the general history of
Greece, while that of Egypt would have been utterly out of his reach.
He, as well as Polybius and Tacitus (who like him were practical
politicians), loses his sureness of eye from the moment when, in
looking backwards, he encounters motive forces in any form that is
unknown in his practical experience. For Polybius even the First
Punic War, for Tacitus even the reign of Augustus, are inexplicable.
As for Thucydides, his lack of historical feeling—in our sense of the
phrase—is conclusively demonstrated on the very first page of his
book by the astounding statement that before his time (about 400
B.C.) no events of importance had occurred (oὐ μεγάλα γενέσθαι) in
the world![4]
 Consequently, Classical history down to the Persian Wars and for
that matter the structure built up on traditions at much later periods,
are the product of an essentially mythological thinking. The
constitutional history of Sparta is a poem of the Hellenistic period,
and Lycurgus, on whom it centres and whose “biography” we are
given in full detail, was probably in the beginning an unimportant
local god of Mount Taygetus. The invention of pre-Hannibalian
Roman history was still going on even in Cæsar’s time. The story of
the expulsion of the Tarquins by Brutus is built round some
contemporary of the Censor Appius Claudius (310 B.C.). The names
of the Roman kings were at that period made up from the names of
certain plebeian families which had become wealthy (K. J.
Neumann). In the sphere of constitutional history, setting aside
altogether the “constitution” of Servius Tullius, we find that even the
famous land law of Licinius (367 B.C.) was not in existence at the time
of the Second Punic War (B. Niese). When Epaminondas gave
freedom and statehood to the Messenians and the Arcadians, these
peoples promptly provided themselves with an early history. But the
astounding thing is not that history of this sort was produced, but that
there was practically none of any other sort; and the opposition
between the Classical and the modern outlook is sufficiently
illustrated by saying that Roman history before 250 B.C., as known in
Cæsar’s time, was substantially a forgery, and that the little that we
know has been established by ourselves and was entirely unknown
to the later Romans. In what sense the Classical world understood
the word “history” we can see from the fact that the Alexandrine
romance-literature exercised the strongest influence upon serious
political and religious history, even as regards its matter. It never
entered the Classical head to draw any distinction of principle
between history as a story and history as documents. When, towards
the end of the Roman republic, Varro set out to stabilize the religion
that was fast vanishing from the people’s consciousness, he
classified the deities whose cult was exactly and minutely observed
by the State, into “certain” and “uncertain” gods, i.e., into gods of
whom something was still known and gods that, in spite of the
unbroken continuity of official worship, had survived in name only. In
actual fact, the religion of Roman society in Varro’s time, the poet’s
religion which Goethe and even Nietzsche reproduced in all
innocence, was mainly a product of Hellenistic literature and had
almost no relation to the ancient practices, which no one any longer
understood.
Mommsen clearly defined the West-European attitude towards this
history when he said that “the Roman historians,” meaning especially
Tacitus, “were men who said what it would have been meritorious to
omit, and omitted what it was essential to say.”
In the Indian Culture we have the perfectly ahistoric soul. Its
decisive expression is the Brahman Nirvana. There is no pure Indian
astronomy, no calendar, and therefore no history so far as history is
the track of a conscious spiritual evolution. Of the visible course of
their Culture, which as regards its organic phase came to an end
with the rise of Buddhism, we know even less than we do of
Classical history, rich though it must have been in great events
between the 12th and 8th centuries. And this is not surprising, since
it was in dream-shapes and mythological figures that both came to
be fixed. It is a full millennium after Buddha, about 500 A.D., when
Ceylon first produces something remotely resembling historical work,
the “Mahavansa.”
The world-consciousness of Indian man was so ahistorically built
that it could not even treat the appearance of a book written by a
single author as an event determinate in time. Instead of an organic
series of writings by specific persons, there came into being
gradually a vague mass of texts into which everyone inserted what
he pleased, and notions such as those of intellectual individualism,
intellectual evolution, intellectual epochs, played no part in the
matter. It is in this anonymous form that we possess the Indian
philosophy—which is at the same time all the Indian history that we
have—and it is instructive to compare with it the philosophy-history
of the West, which is a perfectly definite structure made up of
individual books and personalities.
Indian man forgot everything, but Egyptian man forgot nothing.
Hence, while the art of portraiture—which is biography in the kernel
—was unknown in India, in Egypt it was practically the artist’s only
theme.
 The Egyptian soul, conspicuously historical in its texture and
impelled with primitive passion towards the infinite, perceived past
and future as its whole world, and the present (which is identical with
waking consciousness) appeared to him simply as the narrow
common frontier of two immeasurable stretches. The Egyptian
Culture is an embodiment of care—which is the spiritual
counterpoise of distance—care for the future expressed in the choice
of granite or basalt as the craftsman’s materials,[5] in the chiselled
archives, in the elaborate administrative system, in the net of
irrigation works,[6] and, necessarily bound up therewith, care for the
past. The Egyptian mummy is a symbol of the first importance. The
body of the dead man was made everlasting, just as his personality,
his “Ka,” was immortalized through the portrait-statuettes, which
were often made in many copies and to which it was conceived to be
attached by a transcendental likeness.
There is a deep relation between the attitude that is taken towards
the historic past and the conception that is formed of death, and this
relation is expressed in the disposal of the dead. The Egyptian
denied mortality, the Classical man affirmed it in the whole
symbolism of his Culture. The Egyptians embalmed even their
history in chronological dates and figures. From pre-Solonian Greece
nothing has been handed down, not a year-date, not a true name,
not a tangible event—with the consequence that the later history,
(which alone we know) assumes undue importance—but for Egypt
we possess, from the 3rd millennium and even earlier, the names
and even the exact reign-dates of many of the kings, and the New
Empire must have had a complete knowledge of them. To-day,
pathetic symbols of the will to endure, the bodies of the great
Pharaohs lie in our museums, their faces still recognizable. On the
shining, polished-granite peak of the pyramid of Amenemhet III we
can read to-day the words “Amenemhet looks upon the beauty of the
Sun” and, on the other side, “Higher is the soul of Amenemhet than
the height of Orion, and it is united with the underworld.” Here indeed
is victory over Mortality and the mere present; it is to the last degree
un-Classical.
 V
In opposition to this mighty group of Egyptian life-symbols, we
meet at the threshold of the Classical Culture the custom, typifying
the ease with which it could forget every piece of its inward and
outward past, of burning the dead. To the Mycenæan age the
elevation into a ritual of this particular funerary method amongst all
those practised in turn by stone-age peoples, was essentially alien;
indeed its Royal tombs suggest that earth-burial was regarded as
peculiarly honourable. But in Homeric Greece, as in Vedic India, we
find a change, so sudden that its origins must necessarily be
psychological, from burial to that burning which (the Iliad gives us the
full pathos of the symbolic act) was the ceremonial completion of
death and the denial of all historical duration.
From this moment the plasticity of the individual spiritual evolution
was at an end. Classical drama admitted truly historical motives just
as little as it allowed themes of inward evolution, and it is well known
how decisively the Hellenic instinct set itself against portraiture in the
arts. Right into the imperial period Classical art handled only the
matter that was, so to say, natural to it, the myth.[7] Even the “ideal”
portraits of Hellenistic sculpture are mythical, of the same kind as the
typical biographies of Plutarch’s sort. No great Greek ever wrote
down any recollections that would serve to fix a phase of experience
for his inner eye. Not even Socrates has told, regarding his inward
life, anything important in our sense of the word. It is questionable
indeed whether for a Classical mind it was even possible to react to
the motive forces that are presupposed in the production of a
Parzeval, a Hamlet, or a Werther. In Plato we fail to observe any
conscious evolution of doctrine; his separate works are merely
treatises written from very different standpoints which he took up
from time to time, and it gave him no concern whether and how they
hung together. On the contrary, a work of deep self-examination, the
Vita Nuova of Dante, is found at the very outset of the spiritual
history of the West. How little therefore of the Classical pure-present
there really was in Goethe, the man who forgot nothing, the man
whose works, as he avowed himself, are only fragments of a single
great confession!
After the destruction of Athens by the Persians, all the older art-
works were thrown on the dustheap (whence we are now extracting
them), and we do not hear that anyone in Hellas ever troubled
himself about the ruins of Mycenæ or Phaistos for the purpose of
ascertaining historical facts. Men read Homer but never thought of
excavating the hill of Troy as Schliemann did; for what they wanted
was myth, not history. The works of Æschylus and those of the pre-
Socratic philosophers were already partially lost in the Hellenistic
period. In the West, on the contrary, the piety inherent in and
peculiar to the Culture manifested itself, five centuries before
Schliemann, in Petrarch—the fine collector of antiquities, coins and
manuscripts, the very type of historically-sensitive man, viewing the
distant past and scanning the distant prospect (was he not the first to
attempt an Alpine peak?), living in his time, yet essentially not of it.
The soul of the collector is intelligible only by having regard to his
conception of Time. Even more passionate perhaps, though of a
different colouring, is the collecting-bent of the Chinese. In China,
whoever travels assiduously pursues “old traces” (Ku-tsi) and the
untranslatable “Tao,” the basic principle of Chinese existence,
derives all its meaning from a deep historical feeling. In the
Hellenistic period, objects were indeed collected and displayed
everywhere, but they were curiosities of mythological appeal (as
described by Pausanias) as to which questions of date or purpose
simply did not arise—and this too in the very presence of Egypt,
which even by the time of the great Thuthmosis had been
transformed into one vast museum of strict tradition.
Amongst the Western peoples, it was the Germans who
discovered the mechanical clock, the dread symbol of the flow of
time, and the chimes of countless clock towers that echo day and
night over West Europe are perhaps the most wonderful expression
of which a historical world-feeling is capable.[8] In the timeless
countrysides and cities of the Classical world, we find nothing of the
sort. Till the epoch of Pericles, the time of day was estimated merely
by the length of shadow, and it was only from that of Aristotle that the