General expose?there flows an inexhaustible stream of intellectual creation. Europe, in
fact, is like a volcano which often presents the agreeable aspect of a
firework display but sometimes arouses the fear induced by a confla-
gration. At such times the only salvation-the fire-escape or, to use
another metaphor, the Noah‘s Ark-is education.
Education of course, is not a European invention. If we speak of
discoveries, it would be truer to say that the Europeans invented the
organiyation of education, were the originators of the various compli-
cated educational systems and hence, at the same time, of the existing
confusion in teaching methods. Every would-be leader of education
in Europe devises a new and totally unknown system for combating
the mal du dcle, and presents it as the one true panacea. We Europeans
quarrel endlessly about methods and procedure. The over-all picture
is therefore all the more remarkable: on the one hand, a ghastly spec-
tacle of wars, revolutions, misery, despair and poverty; on the other,
admirable educational systems of the utmost lucidity and purity, firmly
grounded on philosophy, psychology, aesthetics, ethics and social con-
science, adjusted to the requirements of individual countries, classes and
ages, and propagated by liberal or conservative political programmes.
The characteristics of European education are that it is anchored in the
spiritual and the scientific, and that it permeates the whole social struc-
ture. Its greatest achievement has been, perhaps, the discovery of child
education in ‘the century of the child’.
We said that education was not a purely European discovery; we must
say the same of music. Here, too, Europe’s contribution has been in the
field of organization, the development of polyphony and harmony; and
once again, complex development sows the seeds of confusion. A-tonal
and a-harmonic music is a European ‘invention’. Examples of such
creative stresses can be traced from Philippe de Vitry’s isorhythmic
motet, through Gesualdo’s madrigals, to the twelve-tone scale. Be that
as it may, the originators of a reform or a revolution in Europe in-
variably feel the need to cast off the burden of historical tradition in order
to be free to start afresh. ‘Children, create something new !’-this appeal,
voiced by Richard Wagner, has been heard in many ages, yet everyone
has felt the weight of tradition, that tremendous and often paralyzing
heritage, heavy on his shoulders ; all have been compelled, despite them-
selves, to pay tribute to the past. We cannot simply say ‘let the past belong
to the past’; we Europeans all have our moments when we see ghosts,
when spectres appear to us as they did to Hamlet, to Faust or to Don
Giovanni. SO history, for us, is a basis for cultural progress, but also
a burden hampering and confining the life of the present.