Barbarisation may be defined as a cultural process whereby an attained condition of high value is gradually overrun and supersededby elements of lower quality.

The spirit of playful competition is, as a social impulse, older than culture itself and pervades all life like a veritable ferment. Ritual grew up in sacred play; poetry was born in play and nourished on play; music and dancing were pure play....We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play...it arises in and as play, and never leaves it.

The second fundamental feature of culture is that all culture has an element of striving.

Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.

One does not realize the historical sensation as a re-experiencing, but as an understanding that is closely related to the understanding of music, or rather of the world by means of music.

The new knowledge has not yet settled in culture. It has not yet been integrated in a new cosmic conception.

Nelson's famous signal before the Battle of Trafalgar was not: "England expects that every man will be a hero." It said: "Englandexpects that every man will do his duty." In 1805 that was enough. It should still be.