American Council of Learned Societies Occasional Paper No. 45 ACLS Publications The Charles Homer Haskins Lecture Series Charles Homer Haskins Lecture for 1999 A Life of Learning by Clifford Geertz Overture It is a shaking business to stand up in public toward the end of an improvised life and call it learned. I didn't realize, when I started out, after an isolate childhood, to see what might be ...