‘And yet there were in Martin Bodmer’s letters and conversations references to purchases whose nature disturbed me,’ admitted Breslauer. ‘ I am thinking of his growing interest in the very oldest vestiges of art, or even of life on earth.’

Did going back in time to trace the origins of world literature and extending it to include the creations of mankind have anything to do with literature as such? Did he want to create a sort of museum of man? An article by Martin Bodmer, published in 1970 in Image,  ‘reveals that he had only a distant interest in his 1947 project: world literature was no more than a much broader historical scheme.’ (Breslauer)

Martin Bodmer tried to give a structure to the journey of the human mind by using language. His endeavour included some 80 different examples of literature. But, as Hans E. Braun said:

‘… what has been transmitted in writing is nothing compared to what was transmitted before writing. The modest 6,000 years of written tradition (from cuneiform tablets, nailheads, ostraka, papyri, jade and bronze to more modern media) contrast sharply with the gigantic 170-million-year gap represented at the Foundation by the ichthyosaurs and other fossils that symbolize the first traces of animal life on earth. They remind us that man emerged from the dark and became what he is today thanks to his grasp of spoken and written language.’

In his lecture, The cultural and spiritual ideas behind the Bodmeriana (London, 1967), Martin Bodmer gave the following explanation:

‘… human nature is contradictory. The human race is characterized by its mediocrity, cruelty and selfishness. Basically, it is by nature anti-human. The miracle is that a small group of individuals, a drop in the ocean, finally prevailed and are the final embodiment of history.’