13 - Some Contemporary Doctrines I

Summary

‘The old past is dying, its force weakening, and so it should. Indeed, the historian should speed it on its way, for it was compounded of bigotry, of national vanity, of class domination. It was as absurd as that narrow Christian interpretation which Gibbon rightly scorned. May history step into its shoes, help to sustain man's confidence in his destiny, and create for us a new past as true, as exact, as we can make it, that will help us achieve our identity, not as Americans or Russians, Chinese or Britons, black or white, rich or poor, but as men.’

J. H. Plumb The Death of the Past 1969 p. 145.

‘This notion of historians, of history devoid of aesthetic prejudice, of history devoid of any reliance on metaphysical principles and cosmological generalizations, is a figment of the imagination. The belief in it can only occur to minds steeped in provinciality – the provinciality of an epoch, of a race, of a school of learning, of a trend of interest – minds unable to divine their own unspoken limitations.’

A. N. Whitehead Adventures of Ideas 1933 (1961 edition) P. 4.

‘It is a strange land in which God's people live. I must retain my ideals among people who do not share them. I must demand moral principle where voices question the axioms on which my principle rests … I must sing though some tell me that it is the song of a dreamer.