Economic growth and progress are the two major themes of our society, representing mankind's wish for well-being and for greater, true equality. It is a spiritual hope as well, because the idea is well-established that a rise in the standard of living is related to a society's cultural, moral, and spiritual progress. If there were doubts about the beneficial character of wealth at other times, such doubts cannot be taken too seriously today when the wealth is that of the society. Starting from this general direction, previous social beliefs have tended to lose their focus or to reorient themselves. Let us take some examples:

For the moment at least Socialism seems to be deserting its original model and some of its values. It is really only a question of organizing the economy in a more or less Socialist fashion to provide the maximum of economic efficiency with the speediest rise in the standard of living of the largest number of people.

Among all the religions of pre-Columbian Mexico, we know the Aztecs the best. Observed and described while their religion was still alive, illustrated by a thousand monuments, bas-reliefs, and illuminated manuscripts, from the 16th century to our own day it has prompted a wealth of commentaries and studies on the part of innumerable indigenous or Spanish chroniclers and by scholars from all over the world. The museums of the world overflow with religious statues and sacred objects, the libraries are full of books dealing with the beliefs, rites, and gods of Mexico. It is no surprise that the Aztec religion, that is, the last indigenous form of religious phenomenon in central Mexico, has fascinated researchers to the point of putting in the shade earlier or peripheral forms of the non-Aztec peoples.

The expression of the nature and identity of mankind in the abstract, however clear it may be as a concept, is neither well thought out nor fully explored; hence it is at once the triumph and defeat of speculative and empirical anthropology. To be human is to participate in mankind in general, and to participate in a particular culture; it is the latter which is known best. Objectively, the individual achieves his human nature only through the channel of the particular culture, not through that of mankind in general; in this sense we speak of particular human nature. The unity and uniqueness of mankind as the culture-bearer, while having gained formal expression, has been given little substantial content. Moreover, the concept of the abstract concept, the totality as unity, has few consequences in relations between peoples and between social classes. The individual identity of man is engendered by the expression of his being of his own kind as opposed to the being of those other nations and classes, and as opposed eventually to the being of the other; this mode of achieving identity is counterposed to the concept of the unity of man, and the unity of the separate human group with mankind as a whole.

During the last five years or so there has been a happy revival of interest in social change and evolution. The remark by Talcott Parsons: “Slowly and somewhat inarticulately, emphasis in both sociological and anthropological quarters is shifting from a studied disinterest in problems of social and cultural evolution to a ‘new relativity’ that relates its universais to an evolutionary framework,” epitomises the direction of the trend. Of course such recognition has not altogether banished the emphasis on static studies that has reigned in the fields of sociology and anthropology for the last four decades. Under the influence of this insistence on the study of societies as they are at a point in time, all serious endeavor to understand the broad course of social change has been at a discount. Attempts in that direction have been looked upon with suspicion and discarded as “unscientific,” “metaphysical,” or “architectonic.”

Any classification of games, no matter how determined and what principle of division is chosen, reveals an irreducible category: games of chance. This does not mean that this category is destitute of ambiguity. Because, after all, is it sufficient for chance to play a part in such recreational activity and thus transform it into a game of chance? We can investigate the nature of chance, the part it must play and the extent of its role. It is rather clear that in many games one can discern an element of chance, without this being enough to define these games as games of chance. The chess-player who develops a system of attack cannot take into account all the possibilities of his antagonist's reply. He is naturally inclined to speculate on a partially fortuitous future and to rely on a certain amount of “good luck: “ si fortuna iuvat. We have chosen a rather paradoxical example, since in such competition the best calculator is theoretically sure of winning or of stalemating. But in all human occupations, and therefore a fortiori in recreational activities, the indetermination of the future plays a role which can be lessened but not reduced to nothing. From this point of view, what game is not a game of “chance?” Without what sport commentators call “the glorious uncertainty of sport” which is simply the global name for a vertiginous number of unforeseeable factors, determined beyond doubt, but indeterminable in their totality, and so foreign one to another that they cannot be “integrated,” a match of rugby or tennis would have no spectacular interest. It would be the equivalent of an experimental verification.

It is possible to propose purely empirical and extrinsic criteria to distinguish a philosophic question from other kinds: it interests and stimulates research and discussion, and it is susceptible to a purely rational approach, although there may not be any solution which will receive a unanimous consensus *.