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History Is The Interpretation Of The Significance That The Past Has For Us.

-Johan Huizinga

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History Is The Interpretation

Johan Huizinga

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History Is The Interpretation Of The Significance That The Past Has For Us.

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Today The Average Inhabitant Of The Western Hemisphere Knows A Little Of Everything. He Has The Newspaper On His Breakfast Table And Wireless Within Reach. For The Evening There Is The Film, Cards, Or A Meeting To Complete A Day Spent In The Office Or Factory Where Nothing That Is Essential Has Been Learnt. With Slight Variation This Picture Of A Low Cultural Average Holds Good Over The Entire Range From Factory-hand Of Clerk To Manager Or Director. Only The Personal Will To Culture, In Whatever Field And However Pursued Raises Modern Man Above This Level.

History, As The Study Of The Past, Makes The Coherence Of What Happened Comprehensible By Reducing Events To A Dramatic Pattern And Seeming Them In A Simple Form.

Systematic Philosophical And Practical Anti-intellectualism Such As We Are Witnessing Appears To Be Something Truly Novel In The History Of Human Culture.

The More The Specific Feelings Of Being Under Obligation Range Themselves Under A Supreme Principle Of Human Dependence The Clearer And More Fertile Will Be The Realization Of The Concept, Indispensable To All True Culture, Of Service; From The Service Of God Down To The Simple Social Relationship As Between Employer And Employee.

From Whichever Angle One Looks At It, The Application Of Racial Theories Remains A Striking Proof Of The Lowered Demands Of Public Opinion Upon The Purity Of Critical Judgment.

Revolution As An Ideal Concept Always Preserves The Essential Content Of The Original Thought: Sudden And Lasting Betterment.

Original Thought

Do You Know Anything That In All Its Innocence Is More Humiliating Than The Funny Pages Of A Sunday Newspaper In America?

We Have To Transpose Ourselves Into This Impressionability Of Mind, Into This Sensitivity To Tears And Spiritual Repentance, Intothis Susceptibility, Before We Can Judge How Colorful And Intensive Life Was Then.

If, Then, This Civilization Is To Be Saved, If It Is Not To Be Submerged By Centuries Of Barbarism, But To Secure The Treasures Ofits Inheritance On New And More Stable Foundations, There Is Indeed Need For Those Now Living Fully To Realize How Far The Decay Has Already Progressed.

The Modern City Hardly Knows A Pure Darkness Or True Silence Anymore, Nor Does It Know The Effect Of A Single Small Light Or That Of A Lonely Distant Shout.

The Title Of Hero Is Bestowed By The Survivors Upon The Fallen, Who Themselves Know Nothing Of Heroism.

We Are Living In A Demented World. And We Know It. It Would Not Come As A Surprise To Anyone If Tomorrow The Madness Gave Way To Afrenzy Which Would Leave Our Poor Europe In A State Of Distracted Stupor, With Engines Still Turning And Flags Streaming In The Breeze, But With The Spirit Gone.

Life Is Made Too Easy. Mankind's Moral Fibre Is Giving Way Under The Softening Influence Of Luxury.

The Slogan Offers A Counterweight To The General Dispersion Of Thought By Holding It Fast To A Single, Utterly Succinct And Unforgettable Expression, One Which Usually Inspires Men To Immediate Action. It Abolishes Reflection: The Slogan Does Not Argue, It Asserts And Commands.

The Susceptibility Of The Average Modern To Pictorial Suggestion Enables Advertising To Exploit His Lessened Power Of Judgment.

Play Is A Uniquely Adaptive Act, Not Subordinate To Some Other Adaptive Act, But With A Special Function Of Its Own In Human Experience.

Culture Means Control Over Nature.

If A Serious Statement Is Defined As One That May Be Made In Terms Of Waking Life, Poetry Will Never Rise To The Level Of Seriousness. It Lies Beyond Seriousness, On That More Primitive And Original Level Where The Child, The Animal, The Savage, And The Seer Belong, In The Region Of Dream, Enchantment, Ecstasy, Laughter. To Understand Poetry We Must Be Capable Of Donning The Child's Soul Like A Magic Cloak And Of Forsaking Man's Wisdom For The Child's.

Play Is Older Than Culture, For Culture, However Inadequately Defined, Always Presupposes Human Society, And Animals Have Not Waited For Man To Teach Them Their Playing.

Without Metaphor The Handling Of General Concepts Such As Culture And Civilization Becomes Impossible, And That Of Disease And Disorder Is The Obvious One For The Case In Point. Is Not Crisis Itself A Concept We Owe To Hippocrates? In The Social And Cultural Domain No Metaphor Is More Apt Than The Pathological One.

The Awareness Of The All-surpassing Importance Of Social Groups Is Now General Property In America.

History Is The Interpretation Of The Significance That The Past Has For Us.

Science, Unguided By A Higher Abstract Principle, Freely Hands Over Its Secrets To A Vastly Developed And Commercially Inspired Technology, And The Latter, Even Less Restrained By A Supreme Culture Saving Principle, With The Means Of Science Creates All The Instruments Of Power Demanded From It By The Organization Of Might.

What The Study Of History And Artistic Creation Have In Common Is A Mode Of Forming Images.

When The World Was Half A Thousand Years Younger All Events Had Much Sharper Outlines Than Now. The Distance Between Sadness And Joy, Between Good And Bad Fortune, Seemed To Be Much Greater Than For Us; Every Experience Had That Degree Of Directness And Absoluteness Which Joy And Sadness Still Have In The Mind Of A Child

People Accept A Representation In Which The Elements Of Wish And Fantasy Are Purposely Included But Which Nevertheless Proclaims To Represent "the Past" And To Serve As A Guide-rule For Life, Thereby Hopelessly Confusing The Spheres Of Knowledge And Will.

Quite Apart From Any Conscious Program, The Great Cultural Historians Have Always Been Historical Morphologists: Seekers After Theforms Of Life, Thought, Custom, Knowledge, Art.

In Order To Begin An Analysis, There Must Already Be A Synthesis Present In The Mind.

It Is An Evil World. The Fires Of Hatred And Violence Burn Fiercely. Evil Is Powerful, The Devil Covers A Darkened Earth With Hisblack Wings. And Soon The End Of The World Is Expected. But Mankind Does Not Repent, The Church Struggles, And The Preachers And Poets Warn And Lament In Vain.

Barbarisation May Be Defined As A Cultural Process Whereby An Attained Condition Of High Value Is Gradually Overrun And Supersededby Elements Of Lower Quality.

Culture Must Have Its Ultimate Aim In The Metaphysical Or It Will Cease To Be Culture.

Educators Are Aware That They Can Reach The Youth Only By Making Use Of Gang Spirit And Guiding It, Not By Working Against It.

You Only Live A Short Time... And You Are Dead A Long Time.

Physical Nature Lies At Our Feet Shackled With A Hundred Chains. What Of The Control Of Human Nature? Do Not Point To The Triumphsof Psychiatry, Social Services Or The War Against Crime. Domination Of Human Nature Can Only Mean The Domination Of Every Man By Himself.

He Who Wishes To Maintain That The Past Of Mankind No Longer Has Any Absolute Value In Lifemust Also Be Ready To Deny His Ownlife Until The Present Moment, Indeed In Advance Until The Last Moment, As Worthless. He Who Realizes That Culture Is The Giving Of Form Will Also See That The Highest Forms That It Is Given To The Human Spirit To Recognize Have Always Been, Psychologically Considered, Such Evasions From The Present. Considerations Such As These Do Not At All Square With The Direction Of America's Mind.

The Content Of The Ideal Is A Desire To Return To The Perfection Of An Imaginary Past.

The Repudiation Of The Primacy Of Understanding Means The Repudiation Of The Norms Of Judgment As Well, And Hence The Abandonment Of All Ethical Standards.

Ethical Standards

Nelson's Famous Signal Before The Battle Of Trafalgar Was Not: "england Expects That Every Man Will Be A Hero." It Said: "englandexpects That Every Man Will Do His Duty." In 1805 That Was Enough. It Should Still Be.

Whatever Our Creed Or Belief, We All Know That There Is No Way Back, That We Must Fight Our Way Through.

William James Once Said: "progress Is A Terrible Thing." It Is More Than That: It Is Also A Highly Ambiguous Notion. For Who Knowsbut That A Little Further On The Way A Bridge May Not Have Collapsed Or A Crevice Split The Earth?

These Are Strange Times. Reason, Which Once Combatted Faith And Seemed To Have Conquered It, Now Has To Look To Faith To Save It From Dissolution.

Play: It Is An An Activity Which Proceeds Within Certain Limits Of Time And Space, In A Visible Order, According To Rules Freely Accepted, And Outside The Sphere Of Necessity Or Material Utility. The Play-mood Is One Of Rapture And Enthusiasm, And Is Sacred Or Festive In Accordance With The Occasion. A Feeling Of Exaltation And Tension Accompanies The Action.

But One Sound Always Rose Above The Clamor Of Busy Life And, No Matter How Much Of A Tintinnabulation, Was Never Confused And, Fora Moment Lifted Everything Into An Ordered Sphere: That Of The Bells.

The Things Which Can Make Life Enjoyable Remain The Same. They Are, Now As Before, Reading, Music, Fine Arts, Travel, The Enjoyment Of Nature, Sports, Fashion, Social Vanity (knightly Orders, Honorary Offices, Gatherings) And The Intoxication Of The Senses.

Culture Requires In The First Place A Certain Balance Of Material And Spiritual Values.

The Art Of Watching Has Become Mere Skill At Rapid Apperception And Understanding Of Continuously Changing Visual Images. The Younger Generation Has Acquired This Cinematic Perception To An Amazing Degree.

In Europe Art Has To A Large Degree Taken The Place Of Religion. In America It Seems Rather To Be Science.

It Is The Goal Of The American University To Be The Brains Of The Republic.

The Spirit Of Playful Competition Is, As A Social Impulse, Older Than Culture Itself And Pervades All Life Like A Veritable Ferment. Ritual Grew Up In Sacred Play; Poetry Was Born In Play And Nourished On Play; Music And Dancing Were Pure Play....we Have To Conclude, Therefore, That Civilization Is, In Its Earliest Phases, Played. It Does Not Come From Play...it Arises In And As Play, And Never Leaves It.

A Crude Mind Could Easily Think: Something Is Valid, Therefore It Is True.

Without Claiming Superiority Of Intellectual Over Visual Understanding, One Is Nevertheless Bound To Admit That The Cinema Allowsa Number Of æsthetic-intellectual Means Of Perception To Remain Unexercised Which Cannot But Lead To A Weakening Of Judgment.

An Aristocratic Culture Does Not Advertise Its Emotions. In Its Forms Of Expression It Is Sober And Reserved. Its General Attitude Is Stoic.

If The Americans, In Addition To The Eagle And The Stars And Stripes And The More Unofficial Symbols Of Bison, Moose And Indian, Should Ever Need Another Emblem, One Which Is Friendly And Pleasant, Then I Think They Should Choose The Grapefruit. Or Rather The Half Grapefruit, For This Fruit Only Comes In Halves, I Believe. Practically Speaking, It Is Always Yellow, Always Just As Fresh And Well Served. And It Always Comes At The Same, Still Hopeful Hour Of The Morning.

Every Age Yearns For A More Beautiful World. The Deeper The Desperation And The Depression About The Confusing Present, The More Intense That Yearning.

One Does Not Realize The Historical Sensation As A Re-experiencing, But As An Understanding That Is Closely Related To The Understanding Of Music, Or Rather Of The World By Means Of Music.

The Second Fundamental Feature Of Culture Is That All Culture Has An Element Of Striving.

All Seemingly Profound Thinking Which Passes For Realism, Because It Conveniently Does Away With All Troublesome Principles, Has Agreat Attraction For The Adolescent Mind.

Whether The Aim Is In Heaven Or On Earth, Wisdom Or Wealth, The Essential Condition Of Its Pursuit And Attainment Is Always Security And Order.

No Other Discipline Has Its Portals So Wide Open To The General Public As History.

History Can Predict Nothing Except That Great Changes In Human Relationships Will Never Come About In The Form In Which They Have Been Anticipated.

A Superstition Which Pretends To Be Scientific Creates A Much Greater Confusion Of Thought Than One Which Contents Itself With Simple Popular Practices.

The New Knowledge Has Not Yet Settled In Culture. It Has Not Yet Been Integrated In A New Cosmic Conception.

The Eternal Gulf Between Being And Idea Can Only Be Bridged By The Rainbow Of Imagination.

Under Weak Government, In A Wide, Thinly Populated Country, In The Struggle Against The Raw Natural Environment And With The Freeplay Of Economic Forces, Unified Social Groups Become The Transmitters Of Culture.

A New Culture Can Only Grow Up In The Soil Of A Purged Humanity.

Culture Arises And Unfolds In And As Play... Culture Itself Bears The Character Of Play.

You Can Deny, If You Like, Nearly All Abstractions: Justice, Beauty, Truth, Goodness, Mind, God. You Can Deny Seriousness, But Not Play.

Every Work Of History Constructs Contexts And Designs, Forms In Which Past Reality Can Be Comprehended. History Creates Comprehensibility Primarily By Arranging Facts Meaningfully And Only In A Very Limited Sense By Establishing Strict Causal Connections.

Most Thoughtful Americans Of Today Seem To Have Forgotten How Strongly Their Own And Immediate Predecessors, Emerson, Hawthorne And Whitman, Were Still Preoccupied With The Essence Behind Things.

There Are No Instances Known To Me Of Cultures Having Forsaken Truth Or Renounced The Understanding In Its Widest Sense.

If We Are To Preserve Culture We Must Continue To Create It.

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