The Idea of History

by R.G. Collingwood

History, like theology or natural science, is a special form of thought. If that is so, questions about the nature, object, method, and value of this form of thought must be answered by persons having two qualifications.

Opinion is the empirical semi-knowledge we have of matters of fact, which are always changing. It is our fleeting acquaintance with the fleeting actualities of the world; it thus only holds good for its own proper duration, for the here and now; and it is immediate, ungrounded in reasons, incapable of demonstration.

Barbarians could become Greeks. This graecizing of Barbarians is called in Greek Hellenism (hellenisdein means to talk Greek, and, in a wider sense, to adopt Greek manners and customs); and the Hellenistic period is the period when Greek manners and customs were adopted by Barbarians.