Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

So many other things for us to see, Things to be, Our history so full of tragedy and misery.

It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving - as if it were an individual person - its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.

Darwin has interested us in the history of nature's technology.

The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature.

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.