The problem of spontaneity and the capability of adaptation in the development of civilizations, which is the subject of the current issue, is in my view inseparable from the problem posed by the relations between reality and the images of reality. Two cultures existing side by side confront each other in many ways and in countless sectors. And in every case this confrontation gives rise in each of them to a particular image of the other. Unstable, changing images succeed each other, and from the moment they appear condition the terms of the confrontation to the extent to which they constitute the key that every culture possesses for judging the singular characteristics of the other. It is this image that gives meaning to each of the isolated elements and consequently to the whole. Judging—or prejudging—on the basis of this established meaning, the social groups through which two cultures make contact with each other accept or reject the peculiar characteristics of their opposite number, and react in this confrontation with conditioned attitudes. Thus, the image of a cultural reality has become an established fact of the reality and operates as such. What appears spontaneous in one culture, which has become merged with another, or what results from adaptation, may derive from certain genuine forms of the other culture but also from the idea that one culture may have gained of another. And as this belief —which operates as a given factor of the reality—has been elaborated through very obscure psycho-social processes, it is indispensable to start from the basis of the accepted forms that have created it and to follow from there the process of its formation.