The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is. For there are plenty of mistakes made by writers out of ignorance, and which any man finds it difficult to avoid. Readers should be very attentive to and critical of historians, and they in turn should be constantly on their guard. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. But the tale of history forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time, and checks in some measure its irresistible flow, so that, of all things done in it, as many as history has taken over it secures and binds together, and does not allow them to slip away into the abyss of oblivion.
Every past is worth condemning.
He constantly challenges even those memories that have survived intact. Each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time.