ABSTRACT
People's common concern is with frontiers, not barriers: not limiting but extending the boundaries of knowledge. This is what the scientist seems to be doing, with an almost supersonic rapidity. The social scientist, just as soon as he calls himself by that name, has his work cut out for him. Yet, so far as it accumulates, that accumulation - the very exhaustion of obvious rhymes and re-echoing chords and probable combinations - increases our knowledge; our systematic study of the arts can thus be progressive and, for whatever the term may be worth in this connection, scientific. At this point, when people should be securely settled within their assigned terrain, one other distinction is likely to supervene. Though it may seem unduly paradoxical to take this backward glance at a moment when we should be looking forward, that paradox is firmly built into this institution, the latest development of Western man's longest tradition.
