¹ The original publication was followed by other specialized studies, e.g. Towards a New International Order: an Appraisal of Prospects. (Report on the joint meeting of the Club of Rome and the International Ocean Institute, held in Algiers from 25-28 October, 1976). The Roman publications are mentioned here only as an arbitrary but characteristic example. There are many publications and innumerable research institutes involved with these problems at various levels. Worthy of particular attention is the Aspen Institute (USA) and other research organizations.

² E. Benz, Akzeleration der Zeit als geschichtliches und heilsgeschichtliches Problem; Mainz, 1977.

³ According to the World Bank's latest report, 800 milion people are living in dire poverty right now, i.e. undernourished and without access to even the most elementary public services.

⁴ Edwin O. Reischauer; Toward the 21st Century: Education for a Changing World, New York, 1973.

^* Translator's Note: “Kalpa” (Hindu). One of the ages of the world, the present one being the fourth.

⁵ See Jagdish N. Bhagwati ed.: The New International Economic Order; The North-South Debate, Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press, 1978.

⁶ See Lester R. Brown: Human Needs and the Security of Nations, Headline Series N-238, February 1978. The writer treats the security problem from all points of view: the idea of “national security”, population, energy, biological systems, climatic changes, global alimentation insecurity, etc.

⁷ For information concerning the biosphere, the ecological systems and the topsoil erosion see John M. Storer: The Web of Life, 1956; Pierre Samuel: Ecologie: détente ou cycle infernal, 1973; V.G. Carter and T. Dale, Topsoil and Civilization, revised ed., 1974; C.S. Hicks: Man and Natural Resources, 1975.

⁸ According to the latest evaluations of the ILO we may expect that within the next 25 years Mexico City will have 32 million inhabitants and thus become the largest city, followed by Sao Paolo with 26 million. The population of the capitals of Columbia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Indonesia will triple, and the capitals of Zaire and Nigeria quadruple. Once more the Third World and its poorest people will suffer most from this “urbanization”. According to a recent study not only the cultivatable soil diminishes with a terrifying rapidity but also the farming population (see the Worldwatch Institute report published by Lester R. Brown). True, many symptoms seem to indicate that the birth rate tends to become steady and that our contemporary neo- Malthusians are speeding exaggerated panic, but the World Bank in one of its recent publications still presupposes a double birth rate within the next 25 years. True again, Europe registers a minimum growth and in some countries even a decrease; but in Africa the birth rate increase is 72%, in Asia 48% and in South America 47%. The average life span is 71 years in Europe, but 42-45 in Africa.

⁹ René Dubos: Choisir d'etre humain, Denoel, “Regards sur le monde”, Paris, 1974, p. 207.

¹⁰ There is a huge mass of literature on the East-West subject, and some periodicals, as for erample the Philosophy East and West publisched by the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, are dedicated to it exclusively. For the above-mentioned points see P.K.K. Tong, “A Study of Thematic Differences between Eastern and Western Religious Thought” in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, X (1973) pp. 337-360 (the author is a Chinese Catholic) and John T. Marcus; “East and West. Phenomenologies of the Self and the Existential Basis of Knowledge” in the International Philosophic al Quarterly, XI (1971), pp. 3-48.

^* Greater Vehicle

^** The illusory world of this earth

^*** Compassion