Man not only lives within history; he is changed by it, and he causes it to change. This interplay between individual lives and wider historical forces is many-sided, erratic, seemingly contradictory, charged as it is by capricious human emotions. Yet there are common patterns—shared images and styles of imagery—which men call forth in their efforts to deal with the threat and promise of a changing outer and inner world. These patterns can sometimes be seen most clearly in cultures outside of one's own, and I have found them to be extremely vivid in present-day Japan.

The following comments on Dr. Lifton's paper will not concern themselves with the validity of his observations about the imagery of historical change in contemporary Japan – I would hardly be competent for such a task. My concern will be exclusively with the conceptual premises of Dr. Lifton's study, and, by implication, with the method of his observations. If psychology is used to explain change, can it be done by means of such categories as those Dr. Lifton has chosen? They, in turn, must inevitably refer to the more basic relationship between individual motives and trans-individual social determinants; or to the distinction between concepts pertaining to psychological, and to social systems. Thus, my comments would be much the same if Dr. Lifton had in a similar manner studied post-war changes in the Netherlands or in Italy.

By convention the medieval period of Indian history is supposed to begin either with the death of Harsha, c. 648, or, as in this study, with the Turkish conquest of Northern India (about the beginning of the 13th century), and to end on the eve of the British conquests (about the middle of the 18th century). Although this sets a very late date for the close of the Indian medieval period, the arrangement is not illogical, since it was only with the British conquests that India became subject to the modern capitalistic system. But if we can say with certainty that the society of the period previous to British rule was not capitalistic, it is yet not a simple matter to define its basic elements. It is no longer possible to accept the assumption that its economy was based primarily on production for use, and not exchange, and that commodity production and money economy are entirely a gift of British rule.

While Professor Habib's main concern is to indicate the extent to which the monetization of the Mughal Empire was accompanied by the development of large-scale money-lending and credit, his discussion suggests three propositions which might be subjected to comparative analysis. These propositions are: (1) A demand for credit tends to emerge as a society's economy becomes at all differentiated, be it literate or not. (2) Demand almost invariably generates supply in the sense that necessity generates invention. (3) How this demand is met is conditioned by the extent to which a population is nonhomogeneous and differentially subject to credit-restricting constraints.

Is it quite certain that analysts of political forces in Africa are looking in all the right corners? We may perhaps recall that there have been critical lacunae before. After all African nationalism crept up unawares on a previous generation; and if, to take a wider example, one looks at studies of Indian politics before about 1950 there is hardly any analysis of the role of caste. It seems worthwhile, therefore, to go a-probing.

Anthony Low is surely right in urging students of modern African politics to probe deeper into African society and culture than they have been accustomed to do. In part because of the speed with which political events have unfolded during the past decade – making it difficult enough just to keep up with day-to-day events – and in part because of the disjunction between traditional socio-cultural groupings and modern political boundaries – making it easy to believe that the former are irrelevant to the latter – much recent writing on African affairs, even when “well informed”, has been exceedingly superficial. Low's work on Buganda, including especially his sensitive study of Ganda-British relations during the early years of the Protectorate, stands as an admirable exception. Both in the earlier studies and in his present analysis of populism, twentieth-century Baganda are shown to act in ways, and out of sentiments, that are understandably related both to contemporary circumstances and to the Ganda past.

“ …from the moment when a tribal community settles down finally upon a definite space of land, the land begins to be the basis of society in place of the Kinship. The change is extremely gradual, and in some particulars it has not even now been fully accomplished, but it has been going on through the whole course of history. The constitution of the Family through actual blood-relationship is of course an observable fact, but, for all groups of men larger than the Family, the Land on which they live tends to become the bond of union between them, at the expense of Kinship, ever more and more vaguely conceived.”

Throughout his career Gilberto Freyre has refused to be classified as a fullfledged member of any academic craft union. He has preferred the title “writer” or “essayist” rather than “historian” or “sociologist”. Such courage is refreshing in an era when the labels of scholarly expertise, however baroque in their refinements, have come to be taken more and more seriously. Disdainfully rejecting the cult of specialization, Freyre has set out to “see the truth and see it whole”.