The Spiritual Interpretation of History #252093

History is more than the record of history. It is a phase of the universal process in which we live and of which we are: the continuous stream of human life flowing from times far more ancient than can be known from any written records. It is not composed of natural men with social compacts in their ghostly arms stalking from generalization to generalization, but of very real persons who loved and traded and fought. For this reason it is desirable that the inter preter of history should have helped, though only in some small but real way, to make it. Only thus can one thoroughly gain insight into the working of group consciousness. But if such participation in affairs is impossible the historian should continually remind himself that history does not wait upon philosophy. The interpreter of history faces not hypotheses but a never-ending attempt of human beings at the adven ture of living.