Diogenes has set itself the task to present to its readers the most recent developments in all important branches of the Humanities. Among the most burning questions in the sphere of contemporary political sciences is the one raised by the almost universal demand for the ‘Welfare State’.

The twentieth-century state owes to man not only order, peace, and justice, it owes him also material well-being. The search for and the study of the means by which public power can provide for such well-being have added an important chapter to the history of political theory and the art of government.

Professor A. C. Pigou has had a decisive part in the genesis of this great intellectual and moral mutation. He is the uncontested master of the new technique. Diogenes is proud and happy indeed to have the privilege of presenting his original and deep thoughts on the idea of the State as the producer of well-being, on the origins of this concept and the methods of its development. These ideas throw new light on the evolution of the great modern states and put a new and efficient tool into the hands of those who strive to understand and explain this evolution.

I remember when I was a youth and excitable, I went to a performance of Ibsen's Ghosts. The question may be asked, excitable in which direction. Certainly it was not the one Ibsen intended. The truth is, I had absorbed (second or third hand) The Decline of the West, and was all for the spiritual expression of the early cultural ages and the sweep and energy of the first secular expansion (the Renaissance), but I would have run blocks to avoid the romantic and nineteenth century, or any of the products of the conscious and disillusioned selfhood. Under these circumstances it was manifestly absurd to go to Ghosts anyway. I came away with no very amiable remembrance. Such a play I refused to call tragedy, the name was too noble. I coined another word, ‘pathody’, the story of pathetic suffering, and dubbed it so.

We have learned by now not to see myth as simple entertainment or a babbling. Where the nineteenth-century eye could find only an out-of-date toy left behind by childish peoples or a cultural stage-set for leisured social circles, the human sciences have taught us to recognise an authentic expression of man: myth says with utmost seriousness something that is of essential importance. What is more, it is a way of living in the world, of orienting oneself in the midst of things, of seeking an answer in the quest for the self. We owe this alteration of perspective to a whole group of scholars: Cassirer, Van der Leeuw, Unger, Preuss; we owe it in a quite special way to Maurice Leenhardt and to the original work which his recent death left uncompleted.

About a hundred years ago a student of the University of Berlin would have been able to hear Boeckh lecturing on Enzyklopädie und Methodologie der philologischen Wissenschaften and Droysen lecturing on Enzyklopädie und Methodologie der Geschichte (Historik). He could also hear Ranke, whose Epochen der neueren Geschichte were delivered, not however in Berlin, in 1854·

The following article is an excerpt from Professor Gerhard Ritter s contribution to a Symposium on the origins and methods of National Socialism. This Symposium, whose publication in English translation is forthcoming, was organised under the auspices of the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies.

The International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies has assured complete freedom of expression to all participants while obviously not endorsing any of the opinions expressed in the Symposium.

In presenting the material of this Symposium the publishers wish to make it clear that the opinions expressed are those of the authors themselves and do not represent the policy of Intercultural Publications or the views of its personnel.

The Voices of Silence resembles a long monologue proceeding from affirmation to affirmation. With this work, André Malraux has finally concluded a meditation of twenty years. The proud assurance of his intelligence, reinforced by an extraordinary array of works left in his memory from travels and from reading, and by a brilliant mastery of his style, expects neither contradiction nor reply. Caught in the enchantment of his phrases, convinced by the choice and the scholarly relevance of the photographs, the reader has some difficulty in freeing himself from Malraux's reasoning. If anybody should nevertheless wish to answer, Bernard Berenson's last book offers the chance for a discussion. In a sort of impromptu conversation, in a tone at times lyric and at times peevish, Berenson challenges contemporary taste in those of its aspects which Malraux meant to justify: From a conviction formed by long familiarity with the works, he answers almost point by point Malraux's theses, which perhaps he does not know and which he does not mention.

It may be an exaggeration to say that a reappraisal of the concept of evolution is taking place. But it cannot be denied that in the last few years a number of extremely important studies have given new formulations to some of the fundamental questions concerning the rhythm, structure and meaning of biological evolution. It might be of interest, therefore, to discuss the present state of these problems and to indulge in some critical considerations regarding them.

At the library of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, the dissertations in the Humanities are arranged in chronological order. A single glance suffices to tell us that this classification by years coincides almost exactly with a classification by bulk. As we pass along through time, year by year, the volumes grow thicker; pamphlets merge imperceptibly into modest books, these into larger books, these in turn into weighty tomes; until finally we come across works embracing several volumes, each volume imposing in its own right. The explanation is simple: every author is normally led to consider the opinions of his predecessors in the same field or in neighbouring fields; these opinions he discusses, contests, approves, or amends; and finally this leads to the growth in bulk, gradual but unlimited, so evident on the shelves at the library.

Treatises on Indian philosophy have multiplied in the last thirty years, in the “West as well as in India itself. And in spite of the demanding nature of this subject—it exacts, so to speak, a uniform presentation; it entails a whole succession of systems, each one of which is elaborated in a more or less independent manner—this abundance is nonetheless profitable. Each author makes his contribution in the detailed account of new views and strives to rejuvenate a somewhat refractory material, even if this involves the taking up of old views, discarded or neglected by the new generation of scholars.