ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a lecture, given as the keynote address to the 1981 National Conference of State Humanities Councils, in Washington D.C., reflects in historical and philosophical perspective on the lessons of the ten years of existence of the program. It deals the context of needs and values to which the program was addressed. The chapter suggests some lines of self-assessment: the work of the councils, the reaction of the grass roots, the problems of the humanists. It then deals with hesitations, external attacks, and inner doubts: how people may get beyond the recurrent elitist-populist controversy, how to understand and respond to the fuss over “secular humanism” and the humanities, whether the humanities can really be “practical.” The state councils got their bearings early. They already had the all human perspective of national needs. Their urgent focus was on the states—state consciousness, state geography and demography, state interests, and problems.
