Archives des sciences sociales des religions - Année 1976 - Volume 41 - Numéro 1 - Pages 37-45Africa may still appeal to many with its exotism; as continent caught up in far-reaching mutations it may capture the interest of religious sociologists, but over and above these attractions it poses today the question of becoming. Africa was formerly world made for man where everything was integrated in meaningful system: nothing was left out. Colonisation and its consequent traumatisms, the extensions of Islam and Christianity into the once closed field of the agrarian religions, the arrival of Education and Knowledge unfamiliar to the Ancients, all these features radically upset the ancient order at its base and revealed the horizons of an inordinate world. Today the future has to be invented new wisdom and new reasons for believing have to be found without repudiating the princeless lesson of an age which now belongs to the past, namely the need for man to root himself in land, a memory; the assurance that man is more than his work and what he produces; the profound certainty that the secret law of ontological balance is his porosity to the world. 9 pages Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.