Opening paragraphs.........................

As his studies come to a close the historian faces the challenge:  Of what use have your studies been?  Have you found in your work only the amusement of recounting the rise and fall of nations and ideas, and retelling "sad stories of the death of kings"?  Have you learned more about human nature that the man in the street can learn without so much as opening a book?  Have you derived from history any illumination of our present condition, any guidance for our judgments and policies, any guard against the rebuffs of surprise or the vicissitudes of change?  Have you found such regularities in the sequence of past events that you can predict the future actions of mankind or the fate of states?  Is it possible that, after all, "history has no sense," that it teaches us nothing, and that the immense past was only the wary rehearsal of the mistakes that the future is destined to make on a larger stage and scale?

-Will & Ariel Durant,  The Lessons Of History