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THE DECLINE OF THE WEST--Oswald Spengler -- Translated by Charles Francis Atkinson--Knopf ($6). The U. S. publication of what is commonly regarded as the outstanding historico-philosophical treatise of 20th Century Germany is an item of import to be noted if not investigated by the average man. The book itself, of a profoundly speculative nature, will have to pass through numerous academic abridgments and crystallizations before it can touch the consciousness of the mass of Western mankind, of whose ideational processes it tells. In its own words, "The attempt is made for the first time to determine history in advance, to follow up the fate of the civilization of Western Europe in the stages through which it has yet to pass. . . . Its narrower theme is an analysis of the decline of the culture of the West; but the goal is nothing less than the problem of civilization." Four cycles of civilization are traced--the Indian, the Antique (Greek), the Arabian and the Western (beginning with the Middle Ages). Each is divided into four seasons and studied, with Germanic thoroughness, in its religion, philosophy, art, science. The ultimate consideration is the evolution of the "morphology" of thought.