This investigation deals with the underlying motivation of Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West. Sources include the published and translated works of Spengler: books, essays, and selected letters. Contingent areas of exploration, arranged in separate chapters, are the philosophy of history, using the works of Dilthey and Herder; philosophy, using the concepts of Husserl's Phenomenology, Bergson's Time and Free Will, and Goethe's Conversations with Eckermann; the contemporary human potential psychology of Abraham Mazlow and Rollo May, and the contemporary philosophy of Alan Watts and Ortega y Gasset. R. G. Collingwood as critic of Spengler is dealt with. The conclusion is drawn that Spengler did not attempt a system of history except as a vehicle for expressing a directive to live fully in the eternal now.