The European Cultural Foundation has conceived an ambitious project: by means of interdisciplinary studies on an international basis it is setting out to "forecast" the future of Europe in the year 2000 in four major fields of human development (education, industrialization, urbanization and the transformation of rural society). In this sense "forecasting" implies defining what is inevitable in the future of this civilization, and identifying the choices open to Europeans in so far as they are free to exert their collective will to influence the future. I should like here to pay due tribute...