The student who reads history will unconsciously develop what is the highest value of history: judgment in worldly affairs. This is a permanent good, not because "history repeats" - we can never exactly match past and present situations - but because the "tendency of things" shows an amazing uniformity within any given civilization. As the great historian Burckhardt said of historical knowledge, it is not "to make us more clever the next time, but wiser for all time."
Friday, October 8, 2010
Wiser for all time
From Jacques Barzun's Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning
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