ABSTRACT
Let us not waste time arguing about what is meant by “contemporary”. It goes without saying that any time we speak of has already become an historical past, a past that seems to crumble away at the hinder end the further we recede from it. Phenomena which a younger generation is constantly relegating to “former days” are, for their elders, part of “our own day”, not merely because their elders have a personal recollection of them but because their culture still participates in them. This different time-sense is not so much dependent on the generation to which one happens to belong as on the knowledge one has of things old and new. A mind historically focussed will embody in its idea of what is “modern” and “contemporary” a far larger section of the past than a mind living in the myopia of the moment. “Contemporary civilization” in our sense, therefore, goes deep into the 19th century.
