The European Cultural Foundation has conceived an ambitious project: by means of interdisciplinary studies on an international basis it is setting out to "forecast" the future of Europe in the year 2000 in four major fields of human development (education, industrialization, urbanization and the transformation of rural society). In this sense "forecasting" implies defining what is inevitable in the future of this civilization, and identifying the choices open to Europeans in so far as they are free to exert their collective will to influence the future. I should like here to pay due tribute to the Secretary General of the Foundation, Mr. George Sluizer, who had the boldness to launch this initiative, the drive and perseverence to mobilize sufficient funds to carry it into effect, and the clear-sightedness to devise bodies and procedures that could serve as a flexible and effective framework for the development-necessarily aleatory-of such a large-scale project ... A udaces fortuna juvat. Our friend Sluizer must often have modelled his attitude on that of his great compatriot, William the Silent, thinking to himself: "It is not necessary to hope in order to act, nor to succeed in order to persevere". If this maxim was good enough to forge a nation, it can also serve our purposes to-day.