Since 1940 I have been attempting to give a new orientation to the study of the early relations between Brazil and France. Preceding works have been limited to the examination of grandiose or picturesquely dramatic events—the piracy of the Normans in the Northeast, the Brazilian festival at Rouen, the repercussion of the French Revolution upon certain Brazilian revolutions such as the Inconfidencia Mineira or Villegaignon at Rio de Janeiro, the mission of French artists at the Brazilian court of Don João VI. Finally some interest has been shown in contacts with French scholars, among them Saint-Hilaire, and with Portuguese America; further interest has been evidenced in the influence which French scholars and artists exerted during the course of the nineteenth century upon the most cultivated people of Brazil.

We are still far from a religious history of Europe (l'histoire réligieuse de l'Europe) which would satisfy the requirements of modern religious scholarship. We do, however, have a picture of the religions of Europe, the old and the new, of their metamorphoses and effects on the intellectual world of European man, which we can use as a temporary survey. A modification in this survey concerns not only scholars; the religious history of Europe is our religious history, regardless of the value it has for the individual as creed or philosophical doctrine. Unlike religion, religious history cannot be repudiated on the basis of doubts as to its truth or its existential validity (could this be “my” religion?). What is more, such a history cannot be side-stepped, for even the repudiation of all religion is an act within religious history; and a presentation of the religious history of Europe which does not concern itself with Nietzsche would not satisfy our demands as scholars.

For a good while, men of high intelligence have been extolling a strictly descriptive phenomenological theory of art, concerned with the work of art itself and with its effect upon the spectator or the audience. Moreover, theories exist which tend in this direction, but sometimes they are still contaminated with the methods of psychological aesthetics, and sometimes they devote too much effort to combating those methods and to defining their own theory rather than putting it to the test of application.

The work of art is an object that exists solely for the human understanding, but which exists for it objectively—that is to say, outside or beyond individual variations of perception. Anyone who wishes to achieve results in this field—provisional results, to be sure, but at least concrete and capable of being verified or corrected—must describe both the common denominators and the distinctive traits of such objects.

The arrow and the wheel have both been used to represent time, which has been measured by the flowing of water or sand, unilateral and definitive, or by the movement of a needle on a dial, an ever recurring cycle. These two aspects of time—the unlimited advance without stop or return and the cycle which passes again and again through exactly the same states— have for various reasons preoccupied both philosophers and astronomers. A universe of infinite duration which never returns to any of its preceding states, the sort suggested by application of the second principle of thermodynamics, has little appeal for certain thinkers and leads them to a sort of cosmic pessimism. A cyclical evolution, on the other hand, with an eternal return to states, if not identical, at least very similar, to the one in which we live, gains more sympathy by providing the mind with a sort of repose, a vague consolation for death. This preference can be observed in action whenever the progress of astrophysics presents a new hypothesis on cosmic evolution. The expansion of the universe, an irremediable evolution, met with a hostility which, under cover of scientific arguments, concealed an affective malaise induced by metaphysical anguish in the presence of this final fading-away, far as it might be from our day.

Socio-psychological delegation of feeling and fictive identification play a role in the life of society, a role which indicates that they are a constitutive structural element of any healthy social organism. To be sure, in this case we are concerned with a special form of delegation or identification which is characterized by its positive, serious, and purposeful tone. This particular form presupposes a firm, lasting relationship between the partners of the interrelation, has as an objective the attainment of very definite purposes, and is based upon a more or less intensive cooperation of the “delegating” component. This conviction was expressed recently among others by Roger Caillois in regard to games, and its importance was especially emphasized.

Criticism of the traditional periodization of history (antiquity, the Middle Ages, the modern age), generally centered on the medieval period as the crucial point, has not even stooped to consider what is called the “contemporary age.” This new and poorly defined phase, proposed by the methodologists to inclose in history the events and times which immediately precede us or in which we live, has not in general been accepted as such a theoretical unity by those who have been occupied with the other pretentious “ages” in order to deny their equal validity.

In the ingenious and controversial scheme outlined here, certainly, the contemporary age represents a concept so artificial, so devoid of unified personality and feeling and of clear differentiation, that it only disturbs the already slight harmony of this controversial and antiquated system.

Both late pagan and early Christian expression may be considered subdivisions of some larger whole—call it the Style of Gnosis. Both are embraced in the earthly gloom and the search beyond gloom for transcendent form. As we look back on the larger motion, it seems inevitable that a faith should have grown from that world hunger. That it would be mystical is also clear. Material Rome was a Lazarus beyond even Christian revival. The faith must be one that could outlive Rome reading in its fall the divine purpose. It must be a faith beyond this life, since this life grew darker from year to year. It must give man what he searched for, a will and power to suffer and die, to meet loss and martyrdom, not in frenzied struggle, but in peace. It must give order to a new society, incorporating the somber Stoic morality in a group-righteousness of love, attended with all the promises of the immortality cults.

The relationship man-world is of very great importance for the primitive man who finds himself perpetually (even when deeply engaged in mechanical or technical pursuits) in a state of subjective participation with his milieu. No distinction whatsoever exists for him between the self and the world, but rather a constant and intimate liaison, made real by a mythical behavior which leads us to consider the myth as the most archaic stage of knowledge (Leenhardt).

Prehistoric myths were prolonged in the cosmologies by which the civilizations of ancient Asia tried to contemplate the world under the category of totality. The procedure of their attempts was the opposite of that of contemporary science, whose attitude is extroverted. They accounted for phenomena by projecting upon them, lacking all objectivity, their own sensory, emotive, imaginative, or intellectual reactions as well as their own subjective notions, introverted in value, of hierarchy and order. Pushed on by an invincible anthropomorphic tendency, they constructed a humanized nature by means of analogical deduction.

What is shamanism? What is the social nature of this institution which at times seems so clearly to be situated on the fringe of society that one is tempted to call it anti-social? There is indeed no lack of definitions, but where religion is concerned definitions are never satisfactory, for the limits of various phenomena are too uncertain and shadings between them too subtle. The social position of the shaman is so variable that it seems hardly possible even to state the question precisely. On the other hand, we find in mythology and ritual numerous elements indicating the place held by the shaman in collective, and especially in more general, representations of divinities. An attempt to establish, as evidenced in mythology, the position of the shaman in relation to the divinities will lead us to indications as to his social nature, that is, to society's conception of the shaman.

According to Auguste Comte, whose extravagant statements are almost always meaningful, the whole of the physical and mathematical sciences, once integrated into positivist dogma, must become cosmology—or, more properly, he qualifies, geology, in the etymological sense of the word: the study of the earth, of the “human planet,” as the necessary environment “of all the higher functions, vital, social, and moral.” Even astronomy should be no more than “the heavenly study of the human planet, that is to say, the knowledge of our relations with those stars that are liable to affect and destroy our destinies by modifying the conditions of the earth.” His religion is focused on the world, not on the universe.

One cannot understand religion in general, and religious truth or error, save by stressing at the start the fact that, although it goes beyond the narrow confines of Comte's positivism, it flows from the cosmos of the world, the historico-geographical domain of man, not of nature, as an ensemble of the non-temporal laws or laws of the universe, devoid of center, which interests science. Religions contradict the positivist and humanist limitations of Comte. But this contradiction, this transcendence, is intelligible only if we define that which is transcended; and, in order to understand this, we must go all the way back to animal psychology.

Much has been written on the life of Muhammad, prophet of Islam. (“Mohammed” and the French “Mahomet” are the result of a long-standing and now traditional deformation.) Aside from his picturesque and romantic character, sure to excite the interest of Occidentals drawn to active, impassioned lives of genius, the importance of the Moslem achievement which he initiated has given rise to important works, the solid and honorable production of historians and specialists of Islam.

We see, then, that many pages have been written on this astonishing man. Critical discussions, often heated ones, have been devoted to the least of his words or deeds. However, very few of these pages have been devoted to the fundamental problems raised by his life in the minds of those who reflect on the evolution and the destiny of societies.

Until now, the analysis of dreams has dealt almost exclusively with their contents and has been concerned with an attempt to extract all their meaning from the images which appear in them. As is well known, the incorporation into science of the analysis of dreams began with Freud, who, upon discovering a basic hypothesis or subject, quickly arrived at a kind of metaphysics of which dreams are the manifestation: the libido, which is, in essence, desire.

But, in dealing with the phenomenon of dreams as a part of human life, one must first study their form: the form of the dream, first of all; later, the species of dreams, if such species exist. One must, that is, arrive at a phenomenology of the dream and of dreams. Such a phenomenology does not exhaust the study of dreams; it is simply a first approach to knowledge of dreams, an introduction.

The term Christendom (Christianitas) meaning a territorial area took many centuries to establish itself, but by the twelfth century it had become part of the regular vocabulary of the Latin-speaking and -writing world. During the long period of the emergence of Christendom the world Europe was not a competitor, for it was used only in a geographical sense in scientific works and in exegesis on those passages of the Bible which described the peopling of the world. There is, however, a marked change in the fourteenth century in this regard. Europe is a rare word in Dante: in Petrarch it is frequently found. It is true that there is one isolated example of the adjective in the eighth century, in a chronicle describing the united resistance to the Moors. Thereafter there is, I believe, no further example until the fourteenth century. Dante in fact, who has no inhibitions about using the words “Asian” and “African,” deliberately avoids “European.” The next generation sees Boccaccio use the word “Europaic”—an old invention, which was not to have any parallels either in Latin or in vernaculars. And it is not till we come to Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini that we find Europaeus emerging. The adjective is found more than once in his voluminous writings. In the following generation we find Erasmus using Europaeus and in the next generation again we find the word entering the vernacular languages of Europe. It is, of course, true that Christianitas (or more commonly respublica Christiana) continues to be used with great frequency during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, together with the vernacular equivalents of these expressions.

The aim of this paper is to try to define the concept of the Barbarian and, at the same time, to show some aspects of the role that peoples entering into this category played in the course of history. We shall use the term “barbarian” in a very loose sense and will forego altogether the study of the history of the word itself. We know that it denoted successively the non-Hellene, the non-Roman, the non-Byzantine, the non-Christian, and, finally, even the non-Italian. In spite of numerous secondary applications and even misapplications of the word, it is quite clear, and has been asserted more than once, that in its primary and principal meaning the term is the antonym of “civilized” and is, therefore, for all practical purposes synonymous with “uncivilized”; it has a distinctly pejorative flavor.

The fact that in its earliest, Greek, application “barbarian” simply meant “foreigner,” together with some other considerations, would suggest that this pejorative flavor is due to chauvinism: Country A tends to regard Country B as barbarous and vice versa. Superficial proofs could easily be found to warrant such a theory: the Romans were barbarians for the Greeks; China and Europe regarded each other as barbarians. However, to accept such proofs would lead us very much astray. A closer examination of, for example, Chinese-European relations would soon reveal if not a mutual esteem at least the recognition that each civilization is what the Germans call a “Hochkultur,” a word which, for want of a better expression, we could translate “major civilization.” For the Chinese, India was never a country of barbarians, nor was Persia, oddly enough, for the Romans or the Byzantines.

The history of philosophy, like every area of human endeavor, has given rise to criticisms and reservations. Nobody has expressed this more vehemently than Schopenhauer. “To study philosophy, not by reading the actual works of the philosophers, but with the aid of summaries of their doctrines in a history of philosophy, is like having someone else chew one's own food.”

In a general way, Schopenhauer's reservations apply to all history of philosophy, not only to one of its aspects. Nor are they directed against history itself, but specifically against the history of philosophy. The plight of the history of philosophy is worse than that of other fields of history precisely because philosophy itself happens to have the most favorable conditions. In effect, political or economic events are in the realm of the past, while philosophical events remain in the present in the form of manuscripts and books. For this reason political or economic history has a raison d'être: in it a historian reconstructs that which no longer exists, whereas a historian of philosophy merely reproduces what is.

Economists today are increasingly concerned with the problem of economic growth. They are inquiring whether it is possible for our economic system to continue the seemingly miraculous business of putting more people to work, making more goods, and adding to the national income. Back in the 1930’s their major concern, however, was with depression and instability. The economy then was heading downward in what seemed to be a never ending plunge. The rate of population growth had dropped rapidly, and nineteenth-century chatter about race suicide revived. The limits of our territorial frontiers had long been reached. National output moved sluggishly, and the unemployed huddled with puzzled brows around makeshift fires and apple boxes. Then came the war, and there was a burgeoning need for men in jobs. But, despite expanded income and overtime pay, fewer goods were available than might have been expected. This was the anomaly of inflation, and economists had on their hands a new, though not unfamiliar, problem, which stayed with them even after the war.

Unlike any other type of culture, popular culture—a full-fledged style of living with a distinct pattern of feeling, thinking, believing, and acting— was made possible and in the end necessary by mass production. Unless the requirements and effects of industrialization are fully grasped, popular culture does not become intelligible.

In the last two centuries, machinery and specialization have immensely increased economic productivity—the amount of goods produced per manhour—in Europe and America. This process has gone farthest in America, where popular culture too has gone farthest. Although enrichment led to a vast population increase, production per head rose stupendously and is still rising. Everybody benefited materially, but the main beneficiaries were the poor. Their income rose most. Furthermore, if the income gap between poor and rich had not narrowed as it did, an expanded national income distributed in unchanged proportions still would have augmented the welfare of the poor disproportionately. If the income of poor and rich alike increases by 50 per cent, the welfare of the poor is raised far more than that of the rich. Our progressive tax system—which taxes additions to the income of the poor less than additions to the income of the rich—is based entirely on this roughly correct view.

One of the perennial problems of theoretical ethnology has been the interpretation of cultural similarities between remote peoples. In fact, the question troubled observers long before the rise of anthropology as a distinct branch of learning. When the painter George Catlin saw Mandan Indians crossing the Missouri in hide-covered craft resembling an inverted open umbrella, he recalled the Welsh coracle and concocted the amazing theory that the Mandan were the descendants of Welsh immigrants to America. Equally flimsy was the view that the natives of America represented the Ten Lost Tribes of Irsael because redskin and Jew shared such observances as menstrual taboos—customs by no means peculiar to them.

à Mauritz Friis
en souvenir des soirées
de Görväln et de Pampachica

Francisco was born in 1573 in the old capital of the Incas, a pretty town stretching along a high valley of the Andes 11,000 feet above sea level but close enough to the earth's breast to enjoy a gentle springtime throughout the year, even in winter. 1573: forty-two years since the first Spaniards, three of them, reached the city as emissaries of the conqueror, who was then especially occupied with the last Inca whom he held prisoner in a northern village and of whom he demanded an enormous ransom. Guided and protected by officers of the empire, they came to hasten the despoiling of temples and palaces and to collect vases and plaques of gold ordered by Atahualpa, who vainly hoped to gain his freedom. Three years later, on March 23,1534, before an astonished crowd of Indians, opening a new era in the name of the king and the pope, the founding of the new Spanish and Christian order in Cuzco solemnly took place. Then, one after another, material catastrophes occurred: in 1536 the conqueror's brother, the first governor, endured the siege of an army of twenty thousand Indians commanded by a phantom Inca, the second Manco, and the city, its thatched roofs ravaged by fire, was blown up by mines and countermines; in 1538 the newly rebuilt houses were destroyed by the rivalry of Pizarro and Almagro; in 1541, after the assassination of the former, new troubles caused new ruins.

If there is one well-established commonplace, self-evident and completely reliable, it is the difference between information and propaganda. Any honest man knows that in our times information is indispensable. It is, indeed, a positive acquisition, and to know each morning what is happening in China or the decisions of our own government is one of those advantages that distinguish us from men of earlier days. Moreover, Alfred Sauvy has shown us that information is the key to democracy. There can be a valid democratic way of life only if the people are correctly informed on the political, economic, and social questions which the democracy, as sovereign, must decide. This, too, is part of our self-evident truth. And if information is, by nature, completely honest, unadorned, and clear, then propaganda, we know, is falsehood, desire for power, Machiavellianism, crooked in intent. This reassuring contrast enables us, as men correctly informed, to sleep peacefully and, it goes without saying, to be invulnerable to propaganda.