ABSTRACT
It is not easy to say when one generation ends and another begins (as Karl Mannheim noted in his essay on “The Problem of the Generations”), for people are not produced in batches, as are pancakes, but are born continuously. And it is only in certain countries and in certain epochs that historical events, as unconsciously transmitted through parents to their children, lead to a generational gap rather than a smooth and silent succession—a gap across which the young cannot easily talk to the old who grew up in a different world. Obviously, moreover, even the most drastic changes fail to break the continuity in every family, and there will always be members of any current generation who resemble their ancestors more than they resemble their peers.
