History: What is history?

What kind of knowledge is history? What is the use of studying it? This question, in the knowledge of the people, will not hesitate to answer: history is a guide. What does that mean? Without hesitation, they would reply, "I can set a model for what was done in the past; If it fails, try to avoid it; This is called the Dharma Precepts. This may sound true, but upon reflection it is not. Is there really the same thing in the world? The so-called same, are not fine, mistakenly different things for the same. Don't talk about it if it's far away. After the Europeans came to the East, how we dealt with them was not based on our historical experience? What is the result? But is history useless? And I do not know the past, the person who is determined to do something, and how undefeated. But what exactly? Although history is a book of events, what we seek is reason, not facts. Reason is a summary of things, things is only one. There are no two things in the world really the same, the way to deal with this matter, to deal with that thing, natural failure. Not so, according to the principle which contains all things, in order to deal with facts. However, reason is because of things and see, give up things and seek reason, there is no place. Therefore, we should study without regard to the facts, and we should not remember the facts. To deal with a thing, you must understand its nature. After understanding, coping skills, do not ask for it. And to understand the nature of a thing, it is not necessary to predict its past. A person, why can become such a person? For example, people who have been in officialdom for a long time are somewhat bureaucratic; There is babbitity among those who trade for generations; People who have always read books are a little pedantic. Was he born that way? No doubt, is decades of official, business, reading to develop. But the same is true of a country, of a society. Why is Chinese society different from European society? Why is European society different from Japan? It is a matter of indifference, and it is a matter of indifference that the reasons are very far-reaching and complex. But how not to study the past? But there are so many things in the past, Ann can remember all? What happens in society every day is recorded in the newspapers as one tenth of a trillion. A day's newspaper, already can not be read, let alone the accumulation of ten years, one hundred years, thousands of years? It is important to know a man, and not to remember all his past events. Me? Why am I like this? Introspection is always easy to understand, and how can you keep your past things in mind? But to understand society as it is, it is not necessary to remember all that has happened in the past, but to know "what makes the present society the present society". That, however, is difficult. To inquire about the origin of any thing, we do not know much now. It can answer, and nine times out of ten unreliable. But can we set ourselves in the past to account for the present? That is why we are so foolish, and that is what history seeks.

The purpose of history is nothing more than (1) to seek the facts of the past, (2) to explain them, (3) to illustrate the present society, and (4) to indicate the way in which we shall proceed by speculating about the future.