There is a bit of truth in that old saying. The facts of history are dead and meaningless like a pile of rusty bolts in a junkyard. The facts, dates and carcasses of history have to be injected with life and blood, they have to be arranged into a meaningful pattern and design, they have to be tested and transformed by individual and group experience. Only the living mind of the engineer-historian can do that. And he does it by a process of scientific method and artistic finesse.
History is the memory of living yesterdays and the promise of predictable tomorrows.
Even our uneducated, uncivilized, materialist Henry Ford would have found life a meaningless shell, a Barbi doll stuffed with sawdust, if it had to be lived in the fleeting moment of the present. We all live and breathe and think in the realm of history. Because we are human beings, possess a memory, function by using experience, our own and that of others. If you have a philosophical bent of mind we could stop here and you would be content that your reading, writing and thinking about history this semester will be well worth the effort. But I suspect that most of you are not yet satisfied.