Until a few decades ago the study of the peoples and civilizations of the Orient did not appear to require any apology, since it was considered one of the most uncontroversial and innocuous branches of the science. The orientalist was, and still is in some of the less up-to-date sectors of European communis opinio, a scholar who chooses as the object of his research one of the most remote fields of knowledge, far removed in space or time, or both, barred from access by incomprehensible languages and writings, whose religions, philosophies and literatures are quite apart from the main stream of classical and Western tradition. This was the conception of orientalism among the Bouvards or Pecuchets of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In reality, the interest in oriental civilizations itself constitutes a brilliant chapter in contemporary European culture and civilization, developing from this modest level of estimation to a more important historical concern. This is illustrated in certain respects, if not yet in its entirety, by works that are at the same time a history of ideas and a balance sheet of the results achieved. Orientalism has been respectively an aspect of Enlightenment and of Romanticism, of Positivism and of European historicism, and to sketch its complete history would be tantamount to going through the entire evolution of Western culture. It was precisely in this latter field that it had projected itself outside of itself, toward something other than itself, and by this very act (this should appear obvious and should not be the object of polemics or raised eyebrows) establishing its own view of civilization and history, politics and religion, society and poetry.