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What is history?: the George Macaulay Trevelyan lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge January-March 1961

Book by Edward Hallett Carr · 3 quotes · Men, Age, Collectors

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What is history?: the George Macaulay Trevelyan lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge January-March 1961 Quotes

“History is the long struggle of man, by exercise of his reason, to understand his environment and to act upon it. But the modern period has broadened the struggle in a revolutionary way. Man now seeks to understand, and act on, not only his environment, but himself; and this has added, so to speak, a new dimension to reason and a new dimension to history.”

“History in Burckhardt's words is 'the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another.' The past is intelligible to us only in light of the present; and we can fully understand the present only in light of the past. To enable man to understand the society of the past and to increase his mastery over the society of the present is the dual function of history.”