AQC for Today, for Tomorrow, and for ever . . . .
Allan Nevins writes of the importance of history in his magisterial essay "In Defence of History":
Mankind is always more or less storm-driven; and history is the sextant and compass of states which, tossed by wind and current, would be lost in confusion if they could not fix their position. It enables communities to grasp their relationship with the past, and to chart on general lines their immediate forward course. It does more. By giving peoples a sense of continuity in all their efforts, and by chronicling immortal worth, it confers upon them both a consciousness of their unity, and a feeling of the importance of human achievement. History is more than a mere guide to nations. It is first a creator of nations, and after that, their inspirer. Without it this world, a brilliant arena of human action canopied by fretted fire, would indeed become stale, flat, and unprofitable, a congregation of pestilent vapors.History gives us insight into the present. It does not enable us to foretell the future; but it does keep us from being utterly surprised by it, for we know that the future, whenever it comes, will have grown out of the present.
It may be true, from a superficial point of view (as I have read), that history is the record of a series of bad guesses, and shocking surprises. But when we really examine the situation, the seeds of the action were already there, just waiting to bloom.
This is an Archival Quality Communication
James Duvall, M. A.
Local History Research Specialist
Annals of Boone County, Kentucky
Boone County Public Library
Burlington, Kentucky
Nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem.
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