ABSTRACT
The Rise of a New World' is the subtitle of the German edition of Keyserling's America Set Free, and is in every respect the most succinct resume of the theme of the book. 'The Rise of a New World' is as much concerned with Europe as with America, for the book is the product of the mutual impact of Keyserling and the United States. European psychology is translated into American terms that sound foreign to our ears, and this gives rise to a disconcerting and fascinating play of light and shadow, through which two fundamentally incommensurable worlds are alternately compared and contrasted. A purely objective comparison would remain stuck in superficialities. Temperamental and downright as his utterances are, they are never hypostatizations. The vastness of the continental land-mass, the preponderance of immense open spaces, produce, so the author thinks an atmosphere which resembles that of Russia and Central Asia.
