 Bertrand Russell Quotes 366 |
Not only do they [letters and memoirs] contain much intimate detail which makes it possible to realize that the men concerned really lived, but there is the advantage that the writers did not know what was going to happen, as the historians do. Historians are apt to represent what occurred as inevitable, so that it comes to seem as if contemporaries must have foreseen coming events. Everything becomes much more vivid when one sees the mistakes and perplexities of those who could only guess at the outcome, and often guessed wrong.
Source: How to Read and Understansing History; the past as the key to the future.(Girard, kansas, Haldeman-Julius, 1943, 24 p. 22 cm.)
Repr. in: Understanding History, and Other Essays, 1957.
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