It seems impossible to foresee man's future. However, we do see clearly that the past determines our present in many realms : language, concept of the world, religion, science, law. Moreover, certain biological and physiological conditions appear to be so characteristic of the human species that we would not really be concerned with humanity if men managed to free themselves of these conditions.

What is health? What is it to be healthy? Our first answer must inevitably be the answer of St. Augustine, when confronted with the theoretical problem of time: “If no one asks me, I know the answer; if I want to explain it to the one who asks me, I do not know it.” In both cases the first sensation of one who aspires to theorizing is that of perplexity. I think, therefore, that this initial perplexity has its source in two principal reasons, capable of reduction to these two assertions: first, the idea of health has a complex structure, and, second, the idea of health has a variable structure. Without a thorough study of this complexity and this variability, the construction of the medical anthropology that our historical level requires would not be possible. We will try to point out the fundamental lines of both.

It has become a commonplace to say that Western civilization—all the civilizations of the globe, in fact—is in a state of crisis. Spengler and Toynbee, after studying the laws governing the development of great cultures of the past, expressed the opinion that our experience is repeating what marked the decline of each of them: development of universal empires, atony of languages, cultural as well as religious agnosticism. For those who may distrust such sweeping views, it is sufficient to observe that today's questioning attitudes represent neither mere matters of detail nor even the major renewals experienced by a civilization in a state of becoming. Humanism is shaken to its very foundations, and, the object of criticism and schism, has lost its inspirational force. Renaissance and revolutions broke with their immediate past only to breathe new life into an endangered civilization. This new breath was either drawn from an old tradition or anticipated in political and social readjustment. The French Revolution professed to be carrying out the aims of reason and nature, which had inspired the West for eight centuries, just as the Renaissance had professed to rediscover the spirit of antiquity. Our questions, on the other hand, arise not from a disorder in the old but from a conviction that the old has exhausted its principles and its possibilities and that it can henceforth only give way to something entirely new.

One of the characteristic features of our time is the growth of its historical sense. The reason for this development is clear : we have lived more history than any other epoch in the evolution of mankind. In the past, during that short period of historical stability which—cum grano salis— characterized the forty-three years between the French-German War of 1870-71 and World War I, a person could live without being interested in history. In our days such an attitude is no longer possible. We may try in vain to take no interest in history. History takes interest in us, in each of us. The last half-century showed us that to understand history is of equal importance to those who make it and to those who endure it. After having gone through two world wars and being confronted with the threat of a third one, people of my generation finally learned to understand that history is a perpetual collective becoming, of which each individual is, willy-nilly, a part. At the cost of great sacrifices we have acquired a new sense unknown to our fathers : a historical sense which guides us in life. As the seagull has a sense for meteorological storms, man, in the middle of the twentieth century, has developed a sense for historical storms : he feels the coming of wars and revolutions.

The sense of power has a double face : on the one hand, it is the will to power as a force impelling to action; on the other hand, it is a basic state of mind which essentially conditions our intellectual approach to reality. It is in this second perspective that we see why the interpretation of a series of relationships between man and reality in terms of power, inconceivable among the Zunis or the Arapesh, is natural to the Western mind, or, at any rate, is more or less in agreement with its general attitude. As Mannheim observed, “We enter at birth a world which has already been interpreted, a world which has already been made comprehensible, and each of whose parts has a meaning.” In this study we propose to examine to what degree and through what modes of expression this age-old spiritual conditioning has influenced our view of the world and of the realities of existence.

Intonation matters, in English as well as in Chinese. We may describe an item in the human record as historically (really) significant, or as (merely) historically significant. The distinction is between an empirical judgment of fruitfulness in time and a normative judgment of aridity in the here and now.

In Iroquois and Algonquin legend there is the story of a girl who submits in the dark of night to a man she believes to be her brother. Every detail seems to identify him: physical appearance, clothing, a scratched cheek attesting to the heroine's virtue. When formally accused by her, the brother reveals that he has a second self (Sosie) or, more precisely, a double; the bond between them is so strong that everything befalling the one is automatically transmitted to the other : the torn garment, the wounded face. In order to convince his incredulous sister, the young man kills his double before her eyes, but with this single blow he pronounces his own death sentence, since their destinies are one.

Although urbanism in terms of “a relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals” is not a general characteristic of traditional life, it is far from being unique in West Africa. In 1911 there were already twenty-nine towns of over 3,000 inhabitants in what is now southern Ghana, and this degree of urban concentration is small compared with western Nigeria. The Yoruba of that region have six cities of more than 100,000, including Ibadan, which is the largest Negro city in Africa. In 1931 some 28 per cent of the Yoruba lived in nine cities of 45,000 inhabitants, while 34 per cent of the population lived in sixteen cities of over 20,000 inhabitants. In addition, there were twenty-seven centers with populations between 10,000 and 19,999. Bascom has calculated that the estimated index of urbanization of Yoruba cities falls between that of the United States and Canada and that the distribution of population in urban centers is very similar to that of France.

How did it become possible to philosophize about history? Man has generally sought to locate himself in natural space rather than in historical time. The various oriental philosophies give no place to history. “Humanistic” Greece herself, in other respects so eager to explore human conduct in all its characteristic dimensions and in all its aspects, prudently recoiled from anything which might give value to time or cause history to appear as the specifically human mode of existence. No other culture, perhaps, carried so far the concern for harmonizing human relationships, and yet the idea of progress was completely lacking in it. The organization of the terrestrial city always remained the central point of the reflection of Greek poets and philosophers, who were almost all teachers and law-givers—but they never thought to situate the true destiny of man in the historical world, much less to grant man a place in the universe which would make him forget the precariousness of his condition and his subordination to that which surpasses him. And, if we listen to Aristotle: “The life of moral virtue,” he says, “is happy only in a secondary degree. For the moral activities are purely human, ανθρωπικαι.” Naturally, “it is true that, being a man and living in the society of others, he chooses to engage in virtuous action, and so will need external goods to carry on his life as a human being, πρos τo ανθρωπɛνɛσθαι.” But we must take care not to assert “that man is superior to the other animals … since there are other things far more divine in their nature than man, for instance, to mention the most visible (ϕανɛρωτατα), the things of which the things of which the celestial system is composed.” Aristotle was referring to the stars—and, indeed, it was in the circular motions of the luminaries, much more than in the human domain, that the classic Greeks saw that which is manifested in being with the greatest splendor. If we limit ourselves to the specifically human—as do those whom Plotinus designates under the frankly disdainful term oι ανθρωπικωτɛρoι—we risk losing contact with the Good that revolves in the cosmos and is our sole guaranty against the senseless non-being which threatens us from every side. Under these conditions the question of knowing whether or not history has meaning, and whether or not it is provided with an appropriate logic which expresses the profound structure of our being, appears meaningless.

The rise and rapid progress of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries a.d. drew the East and West much closer than any force had yet done and opened out numerous channels of intrecourse, material and spiritual. Travel and trade increased when the first shocks of war and hostility subsided, and, thanks to the writings of Arab travelers, geographers, and historians, we possess a more than usually complete record of the transactions of the age. The early Arab geographers gained from India the notion that there was a world center which they styled arin, a corruption of the name of the Indian town of Ujjayinï, where there was an astronomical observatory and on the meridian of which “the world cupola” or “summit” was supposed to be located.

One does not have to be an ethnologist to know that fear of incest—a fear whose influence on modern man's behavior psychoanalysis has so ably demonstrated—is as ancient as human society. The overwhelming majority, if not all, of those primitive societies that it has been possible to study have revealed an organization governed by the law of exogamy —that is to say, by the obligation to marry solely outside the kinship group to which one belongs.

Following the Grammarians, the Poets in ancient India concerned themselves with certain problems of semantics, the solution of which, they felt, would make possible a better perception of the relationships between language and thought. Thus they distinguished the meaning of words, depending upon whether it was directly expressive or indirect and allusive. The indirect meaning, they said, is introduced whenever the primary meaning has been hampered by some sort of incompatibility. At times it retains its connection with the primary sense : this is precisely what is termed “metaphoric” meaning; at others, it frees itself from the primary sense entirely or in part, and this constitutes the gamut of “implicit” meaning. In addition, the indirect meaning is “internal”; the other is “external.” This, to be sure, can signify that one is concealed and the other apparent; but what is indicated above all is that one is profound or essential while the other is superficial or minor.

Informed Christians have learned in our day that Islâm is not a primitive desert religion spread by the sword, for which faith is reduced to fatalism and women have no souls. Yet Christian historians of religion who avoid such gross errors still tend to present Islâm as at best an imperfect and parochial version of Christian truth, lacking any distinctive genius truly worthy of its independent dignity among the world religions. But until modern times, when the Christianity (and Judaism) of Europeans has been radically transformed along with their secular life, Christianity must long have struck an observer from Mars as, compared to Islâm, the relatively localized faith of largely backward lands. Islâm was the vehicle of a complex and sophisticated sense of social order in a varied and highly creative civilization which was expanding continuously until its field of action encompassed half mankind; it was the only one of the major historical religions which had successfully displaced in large areas other major faiths such as Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The Martian observing human history in the later Middle Ages might find it easier to understand why Muslims have looked on Christianity as merely an abortive form of Islâm, as for instance in the approach of those Şûfîs, Muslim mystics, who see the perfection of Islâm in its uniting at once the dispensation of Law, which reflects the Majesty of God, and the dispensation of Grace, which reflects his Beauty, whereas Judaism and Christianity are limited to only the one or the other. This Muslim conception is as inadequate, however, as its Christian counterpart. Probably any widespread religious system will find a place for all major types of religious insight and practice and is in its own way complete. Yet, as each system has matured, it has revealed a characteristic persistent pattern of norms in the interrelation and subordination to one another of all the elements embodied in it. If Christians are to perceive the genius of Islâm, it must perhaps be through the comparison of such persistent patterns.

It would be romanticism to evoke the Middle Ages from its tomb to serve as a model for our own thinking about political morals. However, quite apart from the specific and characteristic medieval features, there is another element which goes back to antiquity and forward into our modern epoch—the great continuity of ideas embraced in the terminology and the practical rules which make for their efficiency. It may be worthwhile to study these ideas instead of dismissing them as unimportant generalities.

A complex of transformations, carried into effect with varying tempos since the beginning of the era of industrial revolutions, has disrupted a certain number of human societies: societies which the ethnologists often call “modern” in opposing them to those labeled “traditional.”

The problem referred to in this passage is well known both from the literature on the subject and the practice of historiography: historical works get old, the development of science—particularly of historical science—determines a new approach to old problems, and, consequently, history is rewritten in a different way. The fact is incontestable. But how should it be interpreted? Why is it so?

The tolerance which the Islamic tradition showed—not in theory alone but in practice as well—toward the infidels, the “protected” (dhimmi) Jews and Christians, is well known. In several places in the Koran, Mohammed proclaimed the inalienable right of these two “Peoples of Scripture” to worship the common God of Abraham in their very imperfect fashion. The passages in question ordinarily mentioned Christians and fetus, and the imprecations which in another context (in the “Sura of the Cow,” for example) the Prophet hurled against the Jews of Medina who would not recognize him, in no way altered the cardinal principle developed later by the commentators in the hadith (“tradition”). The two categories of dhimmi were placed under the same legal and political control. In conformity with the “pact” of Caliph Omar (the second successor to Mohammed) the dhimmis had to recognize Moslem supremacy, lavish many signs of subordination and respect upon the true believers, behave as loyal subjects, and above all, pay tribute. By this means the free exercise of their cult under the protection of Islam was assured.

There are certain terms which, for reasons no longer discoverable, have taken on an emotional force which impels people either to admire what they seem to stand for or to dislike it. Among such terms are the temporal and the eternal, the dynamic and the static, the unified and the multiple, the universal and the local. At the present time to say that a work of art, for instance, has been “universally admired” is presumably also to say that it is better than one which is admired only in France or Italy or the United States. To say that courage or truthfulness or charity have always been “highly esteemed” is also to say that they are inherently nobler qualities than, for example, originality or wit, which are highly esteemed only in certain epochs. It is this curious aura of emotivity which Professor A. O. Lovejoy in one of his ingenious terminological inventions once called “metaphysical pathos.” “Metaphysical pathos” is not merely the name for the power which terms have of stimulating pleasant emotions, of making men feel that the things they name are good. It may also be of an unpleasant sort. It may induce dislike as well as admiration. Where one man speaks of the dynamic with something approaching awe, another calls it “aimless striving” or “spiritual restlessness,” forgetting that only a hundred and fifty years ago the German Romantic philosophers could think of no nobler end of man than striving for striving's sake. Hence it is always useful and for the most part necessary to look closely at those abstractions by means of which we justify our programs. It is for this reason that it may be well to examine one of our own sacred words, “tradition,” which seems to have replaced even that perennial favorite of the poets, “nature.”

Most of Europe's indigenous myths are divided into two large traditional currents, one common to all of the conquering peoples who came down from the North during the two millenniums which preceded our era, the other inherited from more or less confused Alpine and Mediterranean substrata. This proposed classification, debatable perhaps because it is too schematic, has become such a classic that we no longer need to show the abundant arguments on which it is based. But it does explain so many contrasts, contradictions, or anachronisms in the history of the West that it is always fitting to return to it.

“Jewish emancipation”—the term itself started to come into common use after the achievement of the Catholic emancipation in England in 1828—is a weighted phrase. Like the corresponding Roman legal concept, it connotes the release of Jews from previous bondage into a state of freedom. As such it has represented a major stage in the struggle of liberal forces for the attainment of equality of rights for all men and was the dominant factor in the political and legal evolution of modern Jewry. From that standpoint modern Jewish history has often been equated with the progress of legal equality. In fact, most historians have dated its beginning with the emancipatory legislation of the French Revolution, that is, with the proclamation by the French National Assembly in January, 1790, of the equality of rights of Sephardic (Spanish-Portuguese) Jews and of the Ashkenazic (German-Polish) Jews in September, 1791. So widely accepted was this periodicization that it was considered an expression of American nationalism when, some three decades ago, two American Jewish historians, Max L. Margolis and Alexander Marx, pushed back the inception of that period a few years to the era of the American Revolution.