It is always unnerving when someone announces that mankind is just now going through “a true watershed period”—that one generation has an essentially different vocation from that of any other. When this verdict is delivered by a leading contemporary intelligence and policy adyisor such as W. W. Rostow, one's only protection from psychological disaster is to recall Eve's remark to Adam that their's was a time of “great transition.”

This is not to deny that we can and must try to “make some shape out of the major experiences through which we have all passed since 1945” — or since some other date. If reason is to rule in any measure, we can and must impose some shape upon the political experiences and problems into which we seem likely to be moving for the next decades.