History Is Organized Memory, And

The English Love For Privacy Is Proverbial, And Has Not Been Exaggerated. A Stranger Who Strikes Up A Conversation Is Looked Upon With Suspicion - Unless He Happens To Be An American, When His Ignorance Of Good Manners Is Indulged.

History, We Can Confidently Assert, Is Useful In The Sense That Art And Music, Poetry And Flowers, Religion And Philosophy Are Useful. Without It - As With These - Life Would Be Poorer And Meaner; Without It We Should Be Denied Some Of Those Intellectual And Moral Experiences Which Give Meaning And Richness To Life. Surely It Is No Accident That The Study Of History Has Been The Solace Of Many Of The Noblest Minds Of Every Generation.

To Yearn For A Single, And Usually Simple, Explanation Of The Chaotic Materials Of The Past, To Search For A Single Thread In That Most Tangled Of All Skeins, Is A Sign Of Immaturity.

It Seems Fair To Say That While The Moral Standards Of The Nineteenth Century Persisted Almost Unchanged Into The Twentieth, Moral Practices Changed Sharply, And That Though The Standards Of The Nineteenth Century Persisted The Institutions That Had Sustained Them And The Sanctions That Had Enforced Them Lost Influence And Authority.

Freedom Is Not A Luxury That We Can Indulge In When At Last We Have Security And Prosperity And Enlightenment; It Is, Rather, Antecedent To All Of These, For Without It We Can Have Neither Security Nor Prosperity Nor Enlightenment.