premise: Todays historians aim to construct a record of human activities and to use this record to achieve a more profound understanding of humanity. This conception of their task is quite recent, dating from the development from 18th and early 19th centuries of scientific history, and cultivated largely by professional historians who adopted the assumption that the study of natural, inevitable human activity. Before the late 18th century, history was taught in virtually no schools, and it did not attempt to provide an interpretation of human life as a whole. This is more appropriately the function of religion, of philosophy, or even perhaps of poetry.
hypothesis: In the 17th century, history would not have been thought of as a way of understanding humanity.