The importance of language for the real understanding of culture is being more and more felt by most students of civilisation. A linguistic system is an expression, though not a complete one, of the system of perception which a social group has of its surroundings and of itself. No civilisation can be fully understood by one who ignores its linguistic means of expression. Modern anthropologists cannot work any more through interpreters if they want to collect really reliable material. As Edward Sapir writes, ‘Some day the attempt to master a primitive culture without the help of the language of its society will seem as amateurish as the labors of a historian who cannot handle the original documents of the civilization which he is describing.’

A panorama of ethnological studies during the last two or three years must cover considerations as apparently remote as the margin of error in estimating the age of radio-active elements on the one hand and, on the other, the question of whether ethnology originates from the sciences of Man or the sciences of Nature. This widening of the scope of ethnological studies is matched by the widening of public interest in ethnological problems, or, to put it more precisely, in problems presented in the terms and by the aid of ethnological formulae. It should be noted, moreover, that also the traditional domain of ethnology is in a process of expansion, stretching from the study of the so-called savage or primitive social forms, without hesitating any longer, to the field of modern society and its most complex activities.

Perhaps nothing is more indicative of an advanced civilisation than informed interest in the arts. There have always been connoisseurs and persons of taste; more recent, however—it goes back only two or three generations—is the academic discipline which has brought the serious historian into a domain which had long been reserved for the enthusiast, the lover of virtu, and the artist. When Nietzsche noted Burckhardt's and Taine's success in combining the history of art with that of civilisations, he wondered whether this was a symptom of decadence. Little inclined to propose, easy tasks to modern man, he perceived a mortal danger in ‘pedantic’ simplifications and did not doubt that the need for ‘scientific’ explanations in matters of art would have as its counterpart a growing paralysis of the creative faculties. To the extent that this meant hypertrophy of memory, it would gradually enervate the fecundity of talent; was it even certain that it always favoured the development of sure and keen taste?

When on January 30, 1933, the leader of the National Socialist Party had become German Chancellor, he assumed this position as representative of a united national movement. On the outer edge of this ‘popular movement’, bloated by opportunists of all kinds, was the army of the civil war, the Brownshirts. Having been distracted for some time by the hunting down of enemies of the State, they were now awaiting the final decision: the introduction of a ‘German Socialism’.

Scholars’ congresses enjoy outside the circles of those who participate in them a quite unjustified reputation for dulness. They have never attracted the attention of novelists. The printed volumes of their proceedings don't look inviting. Participation, even on the fringe as an observer, completely reverses this impression. There is a natural happiness and cordiality amongst men and women who are enjoying a rare opportunity of discussing their special subjects of study with those who are equally interested and competent. There is often more than a glint of passion in argument. There is reversal of roles when great scholars return to the students’ benches to listen to one another—or instead play the truant in order to talk together in cafés. There is intellectual excitement when new views and discoveries are announced. There is the preoccupation with the common cause of enlarging and organising knowledge when pressing practical problems of the particular branch of scholarship are discussed. There is the perpetual conflict between the systematic approach devised by the organisers of the congress and the individual wishes of participants and would-be contributors of papers which fit into no general programme.

Scientific progress does not consist solely in the discovery of new truths; it also includes the exposure of mistakes. Often errors turned out to be necessary before the truth could finally be discovered. The history of science is thus not only a history of valuable finds, but also one of vagaries, gropings, and failures. There are some mistakes, however, which scarcely belong to the long series of honourable scientific errors and carry a wholly different meaning: these are the mistakes made by scientists or pseudo-scientists who, driven by the will-to-power, have abused science for the temporary achievement of their ambitions.

Among the reasons why the study of the classics is supposed to become increasingly useless, the argument recurs again and again that there is hardly anything new to be discovered and said in the realm of antiquity; the field of ancient literature has been ploughed over so often since the great centuries of humanism that its fruitfulness is nearly exhausted.

Archaeological discoveries, unless of unusual beauty, are generally of less inherent interest than the conclusions to which they point. Not that they are merely evidence in the court-room sense of the word; they certainly spur the imagination, and provide tangible links with those vast, unknown areas of human knowledge which scholarship seeks to restore to us. The public interest in recovered documents of the past, however, seems mainly in the discovery of the objects themselves rather than in the interpretation of those objects. It is as if proving there was a past at a given date is of more interest than the life which made up that past.

It is evident, for example, that public interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls is fading, now that publication of some of the new texts contained in them allows a preliminary assessment of their significance. Contact with the minds of men who composed them seems to be of lesser moment to many than the physical existence of manuscripts written and made use of two thousand years ago.