In his short essay "Man and Technics" (1931), Oswald Spengler—continuing the line of reasoning he began in his treatise "The Decline of the West" regarding the cyclical nature of world history and the collapse of great civilizations—addresses, for the first time, the very essence of technology. Examining various stages in the development of human society, he moves beyond the common, purely instrumental view of technology; instead, he defines it as any purposeful activity—a "tactic of life"—rooted in struggle, or what Nietzsche termed the "will to power." In this sense, the "Faustian" culture of Western Europe and North America has subjugated both nature and other nations through the use of machine technology, thereby setting the stage for an inevitable ecological collapse. As Spengler saw it, the peoples of the West have themselves become victims of their own technology: "The master of the world has become the slave of the machine."