Until the nineteenth century, history was largely a chronicle of the deeds and misdeeds of kings, nobles, and armies. In revolt against a general obliviousness to the daily life and affairs of ordinary people, democratic historians swung to the opposite extreme: so the part actually played by kings has, during the last half century, been grossly under-rated, even though most of the attributes of kingship are now exercized, on a larger scale than ever before, by the all-powerful sovereign state.

In his book Der Mensch und die Technik (Zurich, 1953, p. 18), the Swiss engineer Gustav Eichelberg painted a humorous picture of the overall development of society, which he represented as a 60 km. marathon race, with each kilometer representing 1,000 years.

In advocating the difficult art of defining concepts Socrates started a revolution which continues to our day. The implementation of this art is both difficult and thankless because it deprives man of the pleasure of talking without knowing what he is speaking about, a factor which contributes a good deal to the art of conversation. Let us begin, therefore, by making clear that our reflections do not aim at modifying experience as such. All photographers, professional or otherwise, who believe they have the right to the title of artist, are not only justified in their claim to a certain degree, but may reserve the right to say they are artists in any sense they may wish to give the word. One simply begs permission for the philosopher, meticulous in his use of words, to ask himself whether photography is truly an art and if so, in what sense?

We live in an age of profound upheavals. Under the stimulus of technology, the tempo of historical evolution has been abruptly accelerated. In almost all fields, the old formulas are losing their value and we are forced to invent new ones. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the game of confrontation between human collectivities, where the changes have been so profound that players and observers find themselves baffled by the new and subtle forms of modern conflicts, just when important and urgent decisions must be made at every moment. The appearance of nuclear arms and the development of mechanized warfare on one hand, and the effectiveness of primitive forms of combat in the “wars of liberation” on the other, create a contradictory situation which seems so much the more without historical precedent that our notions about armed conflicts remain largely determined by the recent experiences of the two world wars. A radical revision of these notions is absolutely essential.

“Few African Gods have attracted the attention of travellers as has Dangbé, the Good Serpent,” writes Pierre Verger in the introduction to the chapter he devotes to the Dahoman Python. At the end of the 17th century Guillaume Bosman attributed to the Serpent the rank of “divinity.” He describes the “House of the Serpent” (the Temple of the Serpents which still exists in Ouidah); the offerings that are brought to him; the pilgrimages that the Kings of Fida (Ouidah) made there every year and the punishments meted out to Europeans or Africans who failed to pay him due respect. In the preface to his Voyage du Chevalier des Marchais the Reverend Father Labat relates how this “great Serpent” came out of the ranks of the army of Ardres (Aliada, south of Abomey) to enter those of the army of Juda (Houéda, from which Ouidah). He describes the Serpent as being one and a half arms in length, or seven and a half feet long, with a very beautiful skin “ marked by wavy stripes in which yellow, blue and brown combine in a most agreeable way.” The animal, quite innocuous as are all pythons is “ extremely patient and never attacks people.” He concludes: “The Serpent is in Ouidah a superior and excellent Divinity. He looks after and into everything, everybody appeals to him for advice, for rain, for good weather or in case of sickness or war, for trade, for harvest, for weddings.” It is possible to perceive already in this confusion of heteroclitic attributes the divinity that in our time has come to symbolize, and is said to procure fertility, fecundity, good health, wealth, peace, wisdom and happiness.

Indian Philosophy, like Indian culture, seems peculiarly prone to arouse either violent antipathy or violent enthusiasm. Rarely does it engender an attitude which tries to present and assess it coolly and calmly, without positive or negative emotion. Nothing perhaps stands more in the way of such an attitude than the universally accepted ideas which I wish to explore in this paper. These three ideas are treated as indubitable facts about Indian philosophy. They seem so self-evident to enthusiasts and detractors alike that to question them seems to question the very concept of Indian philosophy as it has been traditionally conceived and presented by almost every writer on the subject. Yet, it seems to me that the time has come to question the traditional picture itself, to raise doubts about the indubitable, to investigate the sacrosanct and the self-evident. Myths have always masqueraded as facts and many a time the emperor's nudity has only been discovered by a child's disingenuity.

The history of modern Asia, at least in western countries, for a long time has been conceived only in function of European history. The question was to meditate on the “problem of the Far East,” which is to say on the conditions and objects of the intervention of great Powers in Asia. It consisted in granting privileges to European activities in Asia: missions and trading, military expeditions and diplomatic negotiations. Such a tendency is, for example, very clear in the otherwise notable works of authors such as H. B. Morse or H. Cordier; while the first had been in China for many years as officer of the Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs Service, the second was the son of an agent of the Paris National Bank in Shanghai. Nevertheless neither of them knew any Chinese and they did not consider the use of that language any more necessary for an historian of modern China than it had been for a businessman residing in Shanghai concessions during the belle époque of the unequal treaties. The works they published are dedicated to the history of relations between China and the great Powers (Open Door, concessions and extraterritoriality, functioning of treaties), and are only marginally and occasionally interested in the deep movements of Chinese society and Chinese politics: Tai-ping, reformatory movements, social struggle.