There’s also this, from the preface that the seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote to his translation of the ancient Greek historian Thucydides: “For the principle and proper work of history [is] to instruct and enable men, by the knowledge of actions past, to bear themselves prudently in the present and providentially towards the future.” I cannot express too strongly how passionately I agree with this commendation of attending to the past.
