Meanwhile, ethnic groups which until now had no place in world
history except for glimpses and passing allusions (such as the
Oceanians, Africans and others) are preparing in their turn to enter
into the great currents of contemporary history and are already
impatient to do so. Not that there is any causal connection what-
ever between the rising of the "exotic" or "archaic" world above
the horizon of history and the return to favour, in Europe, of
symbolic knowledge. But the fact is that this synchronism is
particularly fortunate: one may well ask how else the positivistic
and materialistic Europe of the nineteenth century would have
been able to maintain a spiritual conversation with "exotic" cul-
tures, all of which without exception are devoted to ways of
thought that are alien to empiricism or positivism. This gives us
at least some grounds for hope that Europe will not remain
paralysed before the images and symbols which, in that exotic
world, either take the place of our concepts or take them up and
extend them. It is a striking fact that, of all our modern European
spirituality, two things alone really interest the non-European
worlds: Christianity and Communism. Both of these, in different
ways and upon clearly opposed grounds, are soteriologies--
doctrines of salvation--and therefore deal in "symbols" and
"myths" upon a scale without parallel except among non-
European humanity. ¹

A fortunate conjunction in time, as we said, has enabled
Western Europe to rediscover the cognitive value of the symbol
at the moment when Europeans are no longer the only peoples to
"make history", and when European culture, unless it shuts itself
off into a sterilising provincialism, will be obliged to reckon with

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