For about a century, Western culture has really been two cultures: the traditional kind—let us call it ‘High Culture’—that is chronicled in the textbooks, and a ‘Mass Culture’ manufactured wholesale for the market. In the old art forms, the artisans of Mass Culture have long been at work: in the novel, the line stretches from Eugène Süe to Lloyd C. Douglas; in music, from Offenbach to tin-pan alley; in art, from the chromo to Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell; in architecture, from Victorian Gothic to suburban Tudor. Mass Culture has also developed new media of its own, into which the serious artist rarely ventures: radio, the movies, comic books, detective stories, science-fiction, television.

In his book on the myths of the African peoples Hermann Baumann sums up the myths of a primeval paradisial era. In those times, he says, men did not know of death: they understood the language of the animals and were at peace with them; they did not work, and found abundant nourishment at hands’ reach. Following upon a certain mythical event—which we will not undertake to discuss—this paradisial stage ended and humanity became what we know it to be today.

Between the numbers of men (or their ‘pressure’) and the domination which is exercised upon them, various relationships exist, the knowledge of which seems to be very useful to an understanding of historical evolution. These relationships are often of so markedly reciprocal a nature that, as against the difficulty of separating cause from effect, it seems preferable to speak simply of accommodation, or even of relative harmony.

The letter of Professor John U. Nef in the first number of Diogenes cites, en passant, a formula concerning the seventeenth century that has become traditional among modern critics of the present position of science in our intellectual outlook. In the perspective of what has happened since, it is now easy to speak of the scientist's emphasis on quantity destroying the understanding of quality and values, which in turn have been relegated to the sphere of personal intuition, intangible and therefore beyond the realm of rational and objective discussion.

Of all the sciences pertaining to Man it is the science of prehistoric man which has made the most sensational progress during the last fifty years. With this in mind it seems possible to construct a synthesis of all the facts known at the present time, in spite of the risks incurred by such an attempt. It is surely necessary at certain times to be rash, and in science as well as in life one must be willing to dare greatly, to act dangerously.

When on January 30, 1933, the leader of the National Socialist Party had become German Chancellor, he assumed this position as representative of a united national movement. On the outer edge of this ‘popular movement’, bloated by opportunists of all kinds, was the army of the civil war, the Brownshirts. Having been distracted for some time by the hunting down of enemies of the State, they were now awaiting the final decision: the introduction of a ‘German Socialism’.

Scholars’ congresses enjoy outside the circles of those who participate in them a quite unjustified reputation for dulness. They have never attracted the attention of novelists. The printed volumes of their proceedings don't look inviting. Participation, even on the fringe as an observer, completely reverses this impression. There is a natural happiness and cordiality amongst men and women who are enjoying a rare opportunity of discussing their special subjects of study with those who are equally interested and competent. There is often more than a glint of passion in argument. There is reversal of roles when great scholars return to the students’ benches to listen to one another—or instead play the truant in order to talk together in cafés. There is intellectual excitement when new views and discoveries are announced. There is the preoccupation with the common cause of enlarging and organising knowledge when pressing practical problems of the particular branch of scholarship are discussed. There is the perpetual conflict between the systematic approach devised by the organisers of the congress and the individual wishes of participants and would-be contributors of papers which fit into no general programme.

Among the reasons why the study of the classics is supposed to become increasingly useless, the argument recurs again and again that there is hardly anything new to be discovered and said in the realm of antiquity; the field of ancient literature has been ploughed over so often since the great centuries of humanism that its fruitfulness is nearly exhausted.