Under the impact of humanism the historical sciences were placed in a paradoxical situation: philology, publishing, archaeology brought with them an enormous increase of factual knowledge, but the ancient universal and abstract perspectives still provided the necessary framework. If one compares a mediaeval chronicle to an Italian history from the 15th or 16th century, whether it be humanist or claims to be pragmatic, such as the work of Machiavelli, one is generally struck by an essential difference: the chronicler relates the events as a simple succession of facts, but for the Renaissance historiographer there is always an underlying theme, “human nature,” “the lessons of history,” the model of Rome.

What in reality, in its relationship with other parts of the world, is that part of America usually called Latin? On the socio-cultural level, in what way does it form a homogeneous sociological complex permitting it to be considered entirely Latin—quite apart from its geographical unity—and, at the same time, part of an American whole within whose sociological framework its Latinity continues to evolve in time and space?

The relations between Christianity and mythical thought can hardly be presented in a few pages. For the fact is that their relations raise several quite separate problems. First of all, there is the equivocal use of the term “myth.” The earliest Christian theologians took the word in the sense that had become current some centuries earlier in the Greco-Roman world, i.e., “fable, fiction, lie.” They therefore refused to see a “mythical” figure in Jesus and a “myth” in the Messianic drama. From the second century on, Christian theologians had to defend the historicity of Jesus against the Docetists and the Gnostics as well as against the pagan philosophers. We shall presently see the arguments they employed to support their thesis and the difficulties they had to meet.

Writing history, in the humblest sense of the word, is above all a process of dating events, inscribing them in a chronology. Yet this framework, empty and elementary though it may appear, possesses nonetheless properties of its own, somewhat as real extension, the domain of orientation and weight, differs from pure geometrical space. Concrete time, too, has certain qualities, qualities which are not necessarily everywhere the same, and which take their configuration from the conception of the world particular to each civilization. These local cosmologies remain implicit for the most part, even though they frequently give rise to doctrines which can be highly complex. Philosophers and theologians have framed such constructions, basing them to a certain extent on the body of astronomical knowledge which they found at their disposal. But these scholarly interpretations do not limit themselves to a mere translation of the factual data that an observation of the stars could provide. The astronomical data serve as simple points of orientation for the elaboration of vast graphs, on whose empty expanses the vicissitudes of history would trace their paths. These constructions are like niches erected in advance, awaiting the events to come, an immutable order of vintages to which the individual is so thoroughly accustomed that he finds it impossible even to conceive of a different disposition.

Of all the nations in the East, the Chinese have had and still have the keenest awareness of the function of history, influencing, to a lesser extent, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc.

The best evidence of this is the fact that events which occurred in China have been continuously recorded by the Chinese, chronologically and with accuracy as to dates, with greater and greater precision as time went on, up to today. We know that the First Emperor of the Ch'in Empire, the founder of United China, died on the 7th day of the 7th month of the 37th year of his reign, i.e., 210 B.C., just as we know that Sun Yat-sen died on March 12, 1925. We also know that the date of the T'ang Emperor Hsüantsung's retreat from his capital to avoid rebellious troops was the 13th day of the 6th month of the 15th year of T'ien-pao (if transferred to the Julian Calendar, July 14, 756 A.D.), just as we know that the date of the Empress Dowager's retreat from Peking to avoid the Boxers was August 15, 1900. Furthermore, we know that on that unfortunate morning in 756 it was raining.

The Spanish conquests of the Americas were not yet completed when famous Humanists already began to appear in the first generation of native-born Spanish-speaking Americans. A mestizo born in 1539 and who liked to call himself “the Indian whose mouth is full” thus published in 1590, in Madrid, the first-fruits of the Humanism of the New World. The son of an Indian woman, he succeeded in very unusual circumstances in writing a superb Castilian version of a classic work of Renaissance Neoplatonism. Its title reads: The Indian's translation of the three Dialogues of Love by Leone Ebreo, from Italian into Spanish, by Garcilaso Inca de la Vega, a native of the great city of Cuzco, capital of the Kingdoms and provinces of Peru.

In speaking of the value of symbols, I shall not go into the vexed problem of verbal symbols, but shall consider only symbols such as can be represented in sculpture or painting, visible forms; and in speaking of their value as historical data, I shall be concerned entirely with intellectual history, the history of ideas, of religion, Geistesgeschichte in general. Symbols can of course help in other ways. To find the recognized symbols of a special religion in an unexpected part of the world, such as Jewish symbols in Central China of a thousand years ago, at once suggests, indeed indicates, a contact between China and the Near East which must be taken seriously. Symbols on coins discovered in ancient sites similarly play an important part in identifying routes of trade. In these cases symbols become like heraldry, means of identification. My concern is much deeper, however, namely to ask whether the symbols of the past have much to tell us about the thoughts and ways of the people who used them.

The medieval view of the universe as entirely theophany, manifestation of God; and hierarchy, the ordered participation of all beings to God, could not conceive of an opposition between subject and object. Aut lux hic nata est aut capta hic libera regnat, “here the light is born, or here, captive, it freely reigns,” may be read in the vestibule of a chapel at Ravenna: that not yet created golden light enclosing heaven and earth in the selfsame unity where everything became perceptible at a single glance. From an infinite distance descended the Word, filling the void and becoming the universe; while from below, the rising wave of adoration gradually divested created beings of their terrestrial weight, introducing finiteness and multiplicity into the realm of immutable crystalline eternity. Light as the most efficacious means of sanctification, as the surest way of negating the restrictive power of thingness: this was the basis on which Robert Grosseteste formulated an entire light-cosmogony. The stained glass masters of the cathedrals of the West, and the Byzantine mosaicists held the same view. The description of Saint Sophia, made in the 6th century by Paul the Silentiaire, leads us right into the heart of this magical world of light:

The apse is like a peacock, whose plumage has a hundred eyes. One's sight is blinded by the brilliant light emanating from the golden immensity of the vault. It is a Latin and barbaric display at the same time. The altar is of gold; it rests on golden columns and golden supports; other than gold there are only sparkling gems. In the evening so much light is reflected from the temple that you would think it to be a nocturnal sun. Resplendent night laughs like dawn; it too seems to have rosy feet. The navigator needs no other lighthouse; he need only gaze at the radiant temple.

The history of religion has long and with some justification been under the tutelage of the positivists who have been content to line up witnesses, to catalogue rites and to compile an index of divine epithets—all this with great patience. But it is now being taken away from them, for it seems that it can no longer be confined to description; it must also make an effort to understand.

The subject is therefore evolving along several lines. Sometimes “the religious” is treated as a separate category and subjected to a kind of morphological analysis; sometimes it is viewed in the perspective of other social sciences like psychology and sociology. Each of these points of view is justified by itself to the extent that it agrees with the facts of the matter. But it also exposes the student of religion to the dangers of systematic exclusiveness and excessive generalization.

On the eve of Mexican independence one of the intellectual leaders of the movement, Dr. Servando Teresa José de Mier, whom the “new despotism” had incarcerated in the prison of San Juan de Ulúa, reflected on the Idea of the Constitution Conferred upon America by the Kings of Spain before the Invasion of the Old Despotism. He evoked with fervor the epoch—at the height of the reign of Charles V—when Fray Bartolome de Las Casas introduced the new laws protecting the Indians in the Council of the Indies (1542-1543), when he imposed upon the conquest the ideal of pacific evangelization formulated in his De unico vocationis modo, and in a memorable controversy finally triumphed over the “notorious Sepúlveda, advocate of war and slavery” (1550). “It was,” Mier maintained, “the most significant epoch of American history, for it marked the termination of America's major misfortunes and laid the foundation of her fundamental laws or true constitution.”

In a society based on democratic principles and equipped with powerful techniques of dissemination, the participation of the masses in cultural life and the elaboration of works adapted to the needs of this new and vast public become imperative. This participation and elaboration are fairly extensive, and the quality of the cultural work disseminated or created is relatively high, but all modern societies, whatever their reigning ideology and their level of technical evolution, face this problem in their own fashion.

My study cannot give more than some comments on a very extensive theme that requires a number of studies which have not even been precisely formulated, as yet. I should like to show that the specific thought pattern, the specific perception of reality, intrinsic to a specific cultural category—that which is the predominant one in the given cultural complex—influences all other categories and determines their nature. I want to illustrate my thesis on the relationship between literature and history. With some exaggeration I would formulate my thesis as follows : as literature is, so is history; the same perception of reality is in the background of both and determines their form. I will limit myself to this theme and I will not deal with the causes determining the differences of pattern in various fields of a certain culture; I will not attempt to solve the philosophical and sociological problems, neither will I seek for further connections in the total cultural complex, with which I illustrate my thesis, that is the Chinese cultural complex, although it would not be too difficult.

The East has not been a cultural unit as a whole. In the East there have been several cultural areas, the most important of which must have been those centering in India and in China. Japan has a peculiar and unique significance of her own in comparison with these two.

The notion of history differs greatly according to these cultural areas. We shall discuss them one by one.

That religion has a geographic dimension has long been recognized. Men like Alexander von Humboldt, C. Ritter, F. von Richthofen, F. Ratzel, V. de la Blache, and de Martonne repeatedly pointed to the interaction of landscape and religion. It must be admitted that in many cases the geography of religion became a study in the influence of environment upon religious conceptions, essentially of concern to the student of religion rather than to the geographer. On the whole, however, the geography of religion has concerned itself with the way in which religious conceptions work so as to modify the landscape, either directly or indirectly.

It is high time to draw up a map of power.

No experience is more direct, more immediate than that of power. No term gives rise to more confusion, willingly or unwillingly.

Everyone dreams of it, and when he believes he holds a part of it, he then strives to make people forget it. We can assume that the only true criterion of power would be the assertion of the power-wielder that he has nothing in his pockets, nothing in his hands. And yet we speak of the intoxication of power. But is this the same kind of power?

Although the problems of the Indian communities of Mexico are not identical with those of other Latin American countries, they are nevertheless similar, and I am sure that the solutions that have been tried in Mexico can also be used in other countries on that continent.

The present territory of the Republic of Mexico was divided, in the period prior to the Spanish conquest, into two great cultural provinces: There was on the one hand the Northern region which was generally inhabited by nomadic tribes—hunters and gatherers whom the Mexicans used to call by the name of chichimecas—and on the other hand the central region of the country which extended towards the North-West as far as Sinaloa along the Western Sierra Madre and towards the North-East as far as Soto la Marina along the Eastern Sierra—a province which is now called Mesoamerica—and which then comprised various native peoples with a plurality of languages and characteristic cultural features, whose manner of life was based essentially on the cultivation of corn, beans and other edible plants and who lived without exception in cities organized already according to a political system which was essentially monarchical and theocratic.

Among the many problems suggested by the theme of the symposium, there is one in particular which seems capable of shedding light on the fundamental attitude of Chinese historians to their documents : On what foundations does the notion of the Middle Empire—the counterpart of the Greek ombilikon—rest?

This notion is certainly familiar to anyone who examines the documents and who knows that a historian always attributes peculiar features to his own country. Basing himself on a long tradition, he sometimes contrasts the civilized with the barbarians, and sometimes he distinguishes the strong from the weak, arguing from ephemeral junctures of circumstances.

Anyone who has had any dealings with Burma and its religion will know the difficulties involved in the definition of the word nat. My own views will, I hope, become clearer in the course of this paper. At the start, however, I should perhaps stress two principal meanings. In the first place, nat refers to beings superior to humans who live very long lives in a number of refined abodes situated above the earth. Many of these nats are recognizable as Hindu deities who have remained in the Buddhist adaptation of Hindu cosmology and the Hindu pantheon. The word nat also refers to certain historical spirits, that is human beings, often but not exclusively Burmese, who—usually after a violent or unpleasant death—have assumed a superhuman status and are still held to play a role in the affairs of men. These nats are usually referred to as the “37 nats” though there are many more than 37 and this principal list of 37 only represents a particular case of a general process whereby certain human beings are still held today to become nats after their death.

The general expansion of western Asian peasant cultures through the Mediterranean to Iberia, France, Switzerland and ultimately to the channel coast and across into Ireland and the British Isles is well documented by detailed studies. The resultant local European cultures, collectively known as Western Neolithic, were the product of colonists who introduced the first domestic cattle into their areas of settlement. The period of the migrations to Europe can be bracketed roughly. Mesopotamian tholoi and other megalithic architecture were introduced into Cyprus in the fifth millennium together with snake symbolism. At the farthest reach of the migration lies Great Britain, and the neolithic colonists, known to the archaeologists as the Windmill Hill culture, arrived at the southern shores of Great Britain ca. 2300. Obviously the expansion into Europe was not a single movement, but proceeded by fits and starts with groups hiving off and even back tracking along the routes. Longifrons cattle were introduced into Europe with this migration. The important migration of the fifth millennium was followed in the third millennium by a second major expansion with West Asian colonists following the track of the first expansion, but this time taking two major additional routes, one into southeastern Europe via Asia Minor and the Aegean and the other into Europe via the Caucasus, the southern Russian grassland and forest steppes. In the settlement sites of this second migration, whether in Crete or in the Caucasus on the shores of the Baltic, the evidence for the cultural complex we have described becomes overwhelming, and primigenius, the sacred breed, is found at all major sites.

The colonial period left no fertile seeds for a culture in the soil of South America. As Ricardo Rojas assures us, “We do not find a single imaginative work in prose in these three hundred years.” “All of our colonial literature is confined within the limits of the historical genre…everything in it is the unfolding of a chronicle. To fix the memory of social facts, memorials were written to military conquests and hagiographies of spiritual ones, poems on the English invasions and the emancipation of America. Even the brief erotic and religious poems are only monuments in verse, and so are Tejeda's works whose autobiographical character cannot be denied.” (La Literatura Argentina)