Since 1940 I have been attempting to give a new orientation to the study of the early relations between Brazil and France. Preceding works have been limited to the examination of grandiose or picturesquely dramatic events—the piracy of the Normans in the Northeast, the Brazilian festival at Rouen, the repercussion of the French Revolution upon certain Brazilian revolutions such as the Inconfidencia Mineira or Villegaignon at Rio de Janeiro, the mission of French artists at the Brazilian court of Don João VI. Finally some interest has been shown in contacts with French scholars, among them Saint-Hilaire, and with Portuguese America; further interest has been evidenced in the influence which French scholars and artists exerted during the course of the nineteenth century upon the most cultivated people of Brazil.

The relationship man-world is of very great importance for the primitive man who finds himself perpetually (even when deeply engaged in mechanical or technical pursuits) in a state of subjective participation with his milieu. No distinction whatsoever exists for him between the self and the world, but rather a constant and intimate liaison, made real by a mythical behavior which leads us to consider the myth as the most archaic stage of knowledge (Leenhardt).

Prehistoric myths were prolonged in the cosmologies by which the civilizations of ancient Asia tried to contemplate the world under the category of totality. The procedure of their attempts was the opposite of that of contemporary science, whose attitude is extroverted. They accounted for phenomena by projecting upon them, lacking all objectivity, their own sensory, emotive, imaginative, or intellectual reactions as well as their own subjective notions, introverted in value, of hierarchy and order. Pushed on by an invincible anthropomorphic tendency, they constructed a humanized nature by means of analogical deduction.

According to Auguste Comte, whose extravagant statements are almost always meaningful, the whole of the physical and mathematical sciences, once integrated into positivist dogma, must become cosmology—or, more properly, he qualifies, geology, in the etymological sense of the word: the study of the earth, of the “human planet,” as the necessary environment “of all the higher functions, vital, social, and moral.” Even astronomy should be no more than “the heavenly study of the human planet, that is to say, the knowledge of our relations with those stars that are liable to affect and destroy our destinies by modifying the conditions of the earth.” His religion is focused on the world, not on the universe.

One cannot understand religion in general, and religious truth or error, save by stressing at the start the fact that, although it goes beyond the narrow confines of Comte's positivism, it flows from the cosmos of the world, the historico-geographical domain of man, not of nature, as an ensemble of the non-temporal laws or laws of the universe, devoid of center, which interests science. Religions contradict the positivist and humanist limitations of Comte. But this contradiction, this transcendence, is intelligible only if we define that which is transcended; and, in order to understand this, we must go all the way back to animal psychology.

The aim of this paper is to try to define the concept of the Barbarian and, at the same time, to show some aspects of the role that peoples entering into this category played in the course of history. We shall use the term “barbarian” in a very loose sense and will forego altogether the study of the history of the word itself. We know that it denoted successively the non-Hellene, the non-Roman, the non-Byzantine, the non-Christian, and, finally, even the non-Italian. In spite of numerous secondary applications and even misapplications of the word, it is quite clear, and has been asserted more than once, that in its primary and principal meaning the term is the antonym of “civilized” and is, therefore, for all practical purposes synonymous with “uncivilized”; it has a distinctly pejorative flavor.

The fact that in its earliest, Greek, application “barbarian” simply meant “foreigner,” together with some other considerations, would suggest that this pejorative flavor is due to chauvinism: Country A tends to regard Country B as barbarous and vice versa. Superficial proofs could easily be found to warrant such a theory: the Romans were barbarians for the Greeks; China and Europe regarded each other as barbarians. However, to accept such proofs would lead us very much astray. A closer examination of, for example, Chinese-European relations would soon reveal if not a mutual esteem at least the recognition that each civilization is what the Germans call a “Hochkultur,” a word which, for want of a better expression, we could translate “major civilization.” For the Chinese, India was never a country of barbarians, nor was Persia, oddly enough, for the Romans or the Byzantines.

If there is one well-established commonplace, self-evident and completely reliable, it is the difference between information and propaganda. Any honest man knows that in our times information is indispensable. It is, indeed, a positive acquisition, and to know each morning what is happening in China or the decisions of our own government is one of those advantages that distinguish us from men of earlier days. Moreover, Alfred Sauvy has shown us that information is the key to democracy. There can be a valid democratic way of life only if the people are correctly informed on the political, economic, and social questions which the democracy, as sovereign, must decide. This, too, is part of our self-evident truth. And if information is, by nature, completely honest, unadorned, and clear, then propaganda, we know, is falsehood, desire for power, Machiavellianism, crooked in intent. This reassuring contrast enables us, as men correctly informed, to sleep peacefully and, it goes without saying, to be invulnerable to propaganda.

When a new method of scientific study comes to the fore in any field, its raison d’être can be explained only in relation to previous research. We shall try, then, to assess the value of nineteenth-century contributions to the knowledge of pagan religion among the Germanic peoples. At a first glance their value seems hardly to justify the tireless efforts of the illustrious scholars who devoted themselves to the task. The failure of so much scientific endeavor is no longer surprising, however, when we recall the character of that era. Opposing the bold and often fanciful syntheses of Romanticism, the nineteenth century advocated a rigorous analysis of the mythological tradition; it wanted first of all to discover what was authentic material in a confused mass of texts emanating from a period that was at once backward and colored by a long Christian tradition. A close examination, largely philological in nature, seemed to reveal that most of the myths and legends conserved in the rich literature of the Eddas consisted of mere fables or simple popular tales embellished with names of gods by adapting hands little concerned with the old pagan traditions.

In the prose commentary to Chapter VI of his poem De monade, Giordano Bruno designates Ficino as one of the princes of Platonism: “unus e principibus platonicis Ficinus.” Statements of this kind are all the more valuable because they are rare. Bruno seldom cites his sources; he utilizes his authors more often than he names them, and it requires a certain attentiveness to perceive that he knows Platonism and particularly Neo-Platonism only through and thanks to Ficino. On occasion Bruno makes use of Plotinus’ opinion, quoting texts that one would seek in vain in the Aeneid; they have been taken from the Ficinian commentaries. The same is true as regards Porphyry and Jamblichus.