…the technique of Toynbee makes all civilizations contemporary with our own. The past is made immediately available as a working model for present political experiment. Margaret Mead’s Male and Female illustrates a similar method. The cultural patterns of several societies, quite unrelated to one another or to my own, are abruptly overlayered in cubist or Picasso style to provide a greatly enriched image of human potentialities. By this method the greatest possible detachment from our own immediate problems is achieved. The voice of reason is audible only to the detached observer.